A new Caenpaign begins...

Armed with some new terrain pieces, it was time to continue the breakout of the Allied forces in northern France.  

This time, our neighbors to the north would be heavily involved.  Oh, Canada indeed!

The board prior to reserve rolls.  The Germans are heavily fortified in Caen.  Sandbags and wire, which are a pain to deal with all at once... even more so in buildings!

The first battle would involve Commonwealth combined forces of British and Canadians.

Looking out from the wooded jump off positions to the nearby town.

Reserves!  Some Desert Rats appeared to spearhead the charge into town.

Waffen SS and some Panzers were brought up by the desperate defenders.

The initial card set was balanced, which is good.  Advancing on the left would be hazardous, since there were multiple anti-tank units waiting for armored pushes. That meant that the infantry would also have to advance equally to take away some of that threat.

Also, the town in the center had valuable objectives, but the only way to get there would be with infantry.  Since only one unit was elite, the prospect of getting all the way back there was daunting.

I had mobile artillery on the right, which was a good counter to the fixed guns of the Axis.  I would have to use those two Recon 1 cards to try and boost my hand in that sector.  That also meant sneaking units from other areas towards the right.

I used the first Recon card to move the Desert Rats towards the first town.  Flush with victory in Tunisia, they were eager to get to grips with the enemy.

The Germans chose to fortify their positions even more!

The other Recon card was used to bring up the mobile artillery.  I was able to get some nice cards in exchange for these two.

More reshuffling by the Germans... the dust of tank units could be seen in the distance.

Charge!  The armor clears out the barbed wire for the subsequent advance by the Desert Rats.

A counter advance by the German infantry weakens the Armored unit, but the way is cleared for the British elite!

Monty himself orders the Desert Rats to claim the outer structures of Caen.

But a dastardly counter attack turns them into dessert for the waiting Panzer units.

It's up to the Canadians now... will they avenge their Commonwealth brethren?  Will the breakout be thwarted once again?  Wait and see!!!

The difficult made easy

Once again I take to the photo area to take advantage of the giant photo backdrops from Hangar 18.  This unit is another one of those darn near impossible units to photograph without having to do all kinds of Photoshop work to clean up the pieces of drawing paper I was using as a backdrop!

First we begin with a few very fun Reaper miniatures, from the Warlord line.  These were the Reptus figures, and they made really neat Kroxigors!  The Champion is a favorite of mine.

And on a different Hangar 18 color...

Look at how much space is left over, even with the giant Skink Tank!!

It made shooting the images of the unit a "snap".  Ouch.

I love how the fades go in an out through light and dark, so some of the weapons are more of a silhouette, and others are light.

And I certainly could not snap this view!

I have noticed that I can back the lights off about 3-5 inches from the old setup, which means I can actually get the camera in here without bashing into one of the lights!

These angled views are also much easier, as I don't have to rebuild the upper right hand corner in photoshop with the smear tool.

At times, there were 44-48 skinks in this unit, with a champion and a chief with a sneaky surprise.  Also a skink priest hid in another corner.

The back rows and the side columns needed a lot of conversion on the skinks to make them rank up and fit.  I used a lot of the old style plastic archers there... cutting off that stuff and giving them javelins.

Of course, making the sculpey bases and the movement trays was BLAST!  I have a number of posts in the Lizardman section of the blog showing the various methods.

The last view.  So many more things to put in front of the camera on these backdrops!  Yea!

It was a wild life

Along with all the astronomy images, Celtic mythology, fantasy scenes and such, I used to love painting wildlife.  It was a fun change of pace from the usual portrait work.

I also combined the Celtic knotwork with the wildlife paintings, such as this piece, called Nightsong.

Look at the birdie!  This is Lord of the Skies.  Painting these was great practice for all the eagle faces I have had to paint on miniatures!

The Lone Wolf and the North Star.  A painting that I made for my wife for Valentine's day, I believe.

Another rare pastel piece, called Just Hangin' Out.  This might have been the largest pastel painting that I ever did.

Some of you might recall the Pebeo paints which I used to paint on glass and ceramic tile.  It was really neat stuff, since you could fire it in a regular oven at low temperatures.  You had to approach it differently, since many of the colors were very translucent.

Once it was fired, it had great luster, and you could use it as a centerpiece to place hot serving plates.

One more ceramic tile piece.  The neat thing about these is that they will last forever... or at least as long as the ceramic tiles!  So, thousands of years from now once the 'cloud' has dissipated, this old fashioned method will still be around!

Gunboats on rails

More aspects of the middle cars to complete, including the gatling guns and the weathering.

I tried to get both of the cars to look as similar as possible before doing those effects.

Kinda wild to see them both together, and intimidating as well, since these are the smallest of the cars! Not sure how I will photograph the whole shebang!

With eight of the gatling guns to paint, I got some blue tac and stuck them to my empty paint jars.

A little blue tac to put them in place to see what they look like!

Ready to go!

Ambushing this train is gonna get messy!

Weathering commences in the same manner as the other cars.  It has to be kept simple, so that all four cars will match.  That meant three colors only... the burnt sienna, the cadmium red, and the black.

I tried to use the weathering as an accent where possible, in that it would create a little more interest in the recesses, which were obviously going to be very dark!

A few rust streaks on the roof to break up the large open space.  I chose not to do the U.S. freehand here, so that it would be more significant on the engine and caboose.

I started with a somewhat dark blotch, and then made it darker in some places.  The streak would originate from that point.

It took many hours to get both cars weathered!

The caboose also needed to get its weathering effects as well.

Wage has been very hard at work burning hundreds of disks the last few days while I work on Mechanicus and Wild West Exodus stuff!

The batch is almost complete!

All right... here are some quick shots of the bases as they stand right now.

More adjustments will be made to them once the miniatures are placed on them!

Dragon Forge bases are quite nice, since you don't have to deal with mould release, air bubbles, concave or sanded undersides, and so on.  The textures are always very clear and neat, which makes them easy to paint.  And that makes a painter happy!

I put a Mechanicus symbol on one of them, since I could not resist!  I will be painting that icon many more times in the coming weeks, that's for sure!

Here are the four different designs.

And the full group of five.

Now let's add one of the BIG bases to these 60mm bases.

You can find them all at:

http://www.dragonforge.com/