6MMRPC Week Twenty-Four: Please Stand By

I went and bought Fallout 4 last Friday and the digital world has affected my analog hobbies since.  The game has been super-awesome so far.  That said, I did manage to get a litle bit of work in before the Bomb dropped, as it were.

I got an initial wash laid down on the Great War landships and guns, and also put a panel wash on the Ki-45.  I also started to base the D&D minis I worked on a few weeks ago, just need to do a few highlights, some pigments and tufts to finish them.  

Slow progress is still progress, I guess!

Another hour and these should be done.

I also received a large shipment of parts for my Mustang, might see it back from the body shop by the end of the year.  I was able to take advantage of a great sale at my old haunt, Sacramento Mustang.  

6MMRPC Week Twenty: Progress in the Cabinet

This week I was able to dedicate a couple of afternoons in my garage airbrush cabinet.  My lovely wife just returned from a trip to California and brought me back several colors of Tamiya acrylics, allowing me to finally get a nice match for both the Great War armor and the Ki-45.  I was also able to get an initial filter layer on the Great War artillery and armor.

My home-built spray booth.

The Mark IV and Whippet tanks were first primed in Tamiya Grey primer and then I airbrushed the recognition stripes.  Once those were masked I mixed up a dark tan color from Deck Tan and Field Brown.  Not much is certain when it comes to the color of these in 1918, but the one surviving Mark IV in original colors is a pretty good match.  The guns and mortars were airbrushed NATO Green.  

Slowly coming along...

The Ki-45 received a spotted came color of Japanese Army Green, and then I went back and sprayed the underside color between some of the spots.  Not perfect, but good practice.

My masks slipped and I will need to remove some paint from the canopy, but the rest came out pretty good!

I hope to get the landships finished up soon before moving on to some infantry.

6MMRPC Week Nineteen: D&D Terrain Scenery

I finished the Dungeons & Dragons scenery bits from Baueda that I primed last week, and worked on a few other things as well.  No zombies though.

These were pretty simple to paint up, I airbrushed them with Tamiya colors and then painted the details in with Vallejo acryllics.  A quick thinned-down wash of Secret Weapon's Dark Sepia, a drybrush of Vallejo Iraqi Sand, and a quick spray of Matte Varnish seaded the deal.  These should look nice mixed into the other items I painted up several months ago, or in the back of a wagon.

All of these are from Baueda except for the large chest on the right.  Got that in a pile of bits at a swap meet.

I also got some work in on the Great War landships, masking and painting their identification stripes was a pain, so many rivets and other odd bumps wouldn't let the masking tape settle.  I'll need to touch them up later.

I hope to get these finished up this week.

 I even got the base color down on the Ki-45, though it came out a bit green.

Making some progress on several fronts!

I finally get to check something off as finished!  Three piles of terrain taken off of the Mountain!

6MMRPC Week Fifteen: A Little Bit of Everything

This week I dabbled a bit into several projects.  My paint finally arrived for my Ki-45 and I was able to get some work done on it.  I continued working on Sam's Great War British, priming the landships and getting some infantry and guns cleaned up.  I made a decision on my Shifting Sands list, and I also dug out my Kensei figures and worked on them a little.

This particular color of paint for the Ki-45 took way too long to arrive, was back-ordered or something.  I should've just mixed something I already had, oh well.  I airbrushed the interior areas and then finished up all of the details before putting a basic wash on it.  Once that was dry I assembled the body and wings, and moved on to masking the canopies.  I've never done that before and it was tedious for sure.  Next up is camo.

The cockpit assembly came together pretty well.  Fit on the wings left a gap I'll need to fill.

Canopy masking in this scale is a pain...

The landships got a coat of primer but the male sponsons all need to have some uneven spots filled on the top.  I also got most of the guns cleaned up and some infantry too.

I almost forgot to put the front MGs on the Mark IVs.  I was wondering why I had so many extras!

The Kensei stuff I bought on a whim from Bartertown several months ago.  Some of them were already assembled and primed but I need to go back and clean up a few mold lines.  They also got beat up pretty bad and I'll need to do some repair work on the sashimono banners and yaris.  Date Masamune also seems to have lost his trademark crescent moon helmet crest.

Such good sculpts!  I also got mounted samurai, nodachi samurai and a few other single figs, like a geisha, ninja, and a few monks.  Also ended up with some mythological monsters.

Shifting Sands is in January and it is an Early War Blitzkreig event.  I've requsted that they add a few more lists that historically fought in the theatre but we will see if they allow them.  So far I'll be taking the Liechte Pionier list from the Blitzkrieg book, seven platoons of Confident Veteran Mechanized infantry for 1500 points.  One platoon of pioniers will be mounted in armored half-tracks, one in trucks, I have motorcycle reconnaissance, the ubiquitous 3.7cm PaK36s, a pair of 10.5cm howitzers for smoke and pinning, a pair of Panzer IV Ds, and three Panzer Is with demolition charges.  The Company Commander also gets a Panzer I.  It's not the most competetive list for sure, but I think it will be fun to build and play.  I need to buy several models still, so that'll cost me another joker. 

What I have so far.  Need to buy four tanks, five half-tracks, the howitzers, three trucks, and the motorcycle troops.

I also burned my second joker this week, bought a lot of Gebirgsjäger from a friend.  

6MMRPC Week Thirteen: Great War Landships WiP

This week I was able to get the three landships from Sam's Great War British commission project assembled and also worked some on the Kawasaki Ki-45.  This also gets me nearly to the half-way point in the challenge, I'll have a follow-up later this week.

Sam asked me to build two Mark IVs and a Mark A Whippet for his British army and they came together pretty easily.  All of those machine gun barrels and the frames on the Mark IV were time consuming, but it was pretty straight-forward with minimal clean-up.  The resin tracks on the Mark IVs were really clean, though the sponsons have some sink marks I'll need to fill.  I also decided to magnetize the sponsons so Sam could run them as either Male or Female.  (Insert joke here)

A Mark IV still in it's original paint.  There's some controversy as to what color these should be, but I'll go with something like this.

All assembled but I ran out of primer...  Guns are next up.

Magnets for easy swap-out of Male to Female. (Artillery Guns or Machine-Guns)

The Ki-45 is still waiting on the interior paint color, it's a mysterious one from what I've been able to dig up on the inter-webs.  I did get all of my sub-assembly finished and put a coat of Tamiya surface primer on it, which went down like a dream.

Three main sub-assemblies, with some small parts left off until after painting.  Closed up the wheel wells for simplicity.

6MMRPC Week Twelve: Throw-back to the year 2000

This week I was sitting at my desk, trying to break through the hobby coma that recently hit me.  I wanted desperately to pull some Flames of War models out and put paint to pewter, but I didn't have a clue what to do.  Sam's Great War British need all of their mold lines cleaned up before I can put any paint on them, and the first basecoat will be from my airbrush once all of them are ready.  My next event will be in January but I'm still uncertain what I want to bring.  Without an army in mind, I find it very difficult to get anything accomplished.  I sat there, befuddled, until my eye caught a stack of cardboard boxes collecting dust on the top of my bookshelf...

This.  This would be my next project, the first model airplane I've worked on in fifteen years.  I bought this a few years back from the consignment pile at Viking Hobbies when I still lived near Sacramento, CA.  It's not even a subject I really like!  I got an idea in my head back then about building aircraft from the Battle of Midway and went in to shop around, but they didn't have a single subject I wanted.  I settled on this because, hey, it's Japanese, and in the right scale. (1/72)  This Kawasaki Ki-45 kai 'Toyru' would be perfect to practice some different techniques and might just break me out of my funk.

Plastic airplanes were my gateway drug, man!  Way back in about 1987 or so I bought my first model kit and that led into miniature wargaming fifteen years later.  Things are coming full circle, as I think the skills I've developed through building and painting Flames of War minis will translate back to models.  Multi-media with resin and metal?  Check.  Airbrush work?  Done it.  Weathering and detailing?  Yep. Additionally, now that so many Flames of War minis are going plastic, practicing on this makes sense.   I won't be afraid of 'messing up' this one, as I have no plans for it after I'm done.  Maybe I'll hang it from my kids' ceiling, like I used to do.  

Eight sprues of grey and clear plastic.  Hasegawa makes some of the nicer kits in this scale, if I remember correctly.

Sub-assemblies before airbrushing the interior.  

I'll need to wait on a paint order before I do much else, the interior color is a strange one.  I hope this little project holds me over until I can finalize a list for Shifting Sands in January.  Once I have that nailed down, I can start building it once I finish the commission projct of Sam's.