Cool Cubes!

This is a bit of a sneak peek at the building German force for the France 1940 campaign, and the dice to go with them!

Like all of my army dice, they are from Dice of War.  They are very high quality, and you can find just about any national symbol or even army/divisional symbol!!

I really enjoy them, because they add a lot to the overall feel and look of the game.  Also, the larger size is more comfortable to use than the smaller 30 dice in a container style.

Again, there's a massive variety to choose from.  I also have the Afrika Korps version, two different Italian dice, two Hungarian dice, three French sets, and more! 

The vast majority of the designs are actually inset into the surface, as opposed to printed.  However, I have many sets of the printed dice, and they are quite nice as well.  Those designs are usually national flags.

So far, I have only done blog posts on the Panzer IV and the Opel Blitz truck.  As you can see, there are many other troops, weapon teams and vehicles that are yet to show up on the blog.  I was very curious to see how it was all starting to look together, and it seemed like a good opportunity to put out the dice too!

In fact, there's a whole lot of early war Heer that is being built and painted at the moment.  I am trying to include every type of weapon system that was employed in the France '40 theatre.  This means PZ 35's, 38's, etc., with all forms of artillery and lighter weapon teams.

My goal is to include as many tutorial style articles on these items as possible.  Once everything is prepped and readied for Google Hangouts, I want to do some of those as well.  More of them will likely involve infantry units, but vehicles and even terrain are things I'd like to cover also.

Stay tuned!!

Moulding the Future

It was great to see the good folks from Happy Seppuku at Reapercon, as they were showing off their new products and designs.  Here I have some images of the 'classic' moulds, along with some peeks at the newest versions!

Here's a link to their website:

http://happyseppuku.com/

These casts were all done by rolling pink or grey extra firm sculpy over the moulds in a relatively thin sheet.  I need to do a new round of basing, so it was time to get raw building materials!!

These industrial and sci-fi versions are going to be used for more Gates of Antares bases.

This brick pattern will be excellent for both roads and as broken walls.  The idea is to create a vertical piece, and cover a portion of it with stucco paste while leaving some of the brick texture exposed.  I'm hoping to create a destroyed village wall in the process!

This pattern will be fantastic for roads in small French towns, or city sidewalks.

Here are some of those new texture stamps that Happy Seppuku was showing off at Reapercon.

I can't wait to try these guys out!!!

The latest round of baking yielded bases, sheets of texture from Happy Seppuku and even Green Stuff World.  A new roller just arrived, so stay tuned for some fun with a brand new texture!!

Scissor Hands

Meet the wulkin version of Edward Scissorhands!

That particular feature made him interesting to paint, that's for sure!

This was also another case of utilizing the Reaper clear paints for glazing, both in the 'traditional' sense of transparent washes, but also mixed with opaque colors to work in the all important midtones.

He's also here:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/222317027695?ssPageName=STRK:MESELX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1558.l2649

Have a biscut, chaps!

This grenade tossing soldier is not exactly bowling in a cricket match... he means real business!

This is part of the BEF plastic kit from Warlord Games.  To fit in with the France '40 campaign, they were all built with early war weapons, and units structured accordingly.  We shall see how they fare in the version 2 rule set.

As with previous French and German figures for this theatre, I used some of the Mig AMMO mud products on the base, and the lower sections of the figure itself.

Firepower

I don't quite remember which heavy weapon this is from the Dark Eldar arsenal... I'm not sure it ever made into one of my lists.

By doing all the heavy combinations of the old and new kits, like the figures you have seen in previous weeks, I had more of the newer pieces available for specialty weapons such as this.

While all the individual weapons were on the sprues, you would end up short on 'regular' splinter rifles if you made all the special weapons.  Not only did using the old time parts provide half a dozen extra figures per box... they had a little more interest to them as well.

Even here, I could not resist sticking one of the old head crests onto one of these "new" kits :-)

The Guardian

We go back to the future with some Gates of Antares.  This is another Isorian trooper . 

As with the previous figures, fluorescent paints were used to enhance the glowing effect.

I recently posted a multiple step by step article on how to get the object source lighting and the color transition on the armor.

The base was made with sculpey sheets pressed into a Happy Seppuku mould and cut to fit the Warlord plastic base.  I cut around the edges with an exacto knife... and I was able to make a beveled edge quite easily!  Stay tuned for much more!

The Dead are Risen

Since I have not had much "glowy" stuff on the page lately, I thought I would bring back a few Lord of the Rings figures that had a touch of fluorescent paints.  In this case, the dreaded Army of the Dead!

Be sure to check out the Army of the Dead section for many more examples of this interesting combination of highly saturated fluorescent paints and 'dirtier' rust colors, etc.

These were very fun to work on, because that balance of heavily weathered surfaces lit by Object source lighting created an unusual ethereal effect similar to what I had seen in the movies.

He's also here:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/222312917485?ssPageName=STRK:MESELX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1555.l2649