Move! Move! Move!

I decided to challenge another FOW player to a game with fully painted miniatures. We are both starting from scratch and have until the end of April to get everything painted. Unpainted units take major penalties if used aside from the ribbing and jibes we'll recieve from the veteran players. This challenge will be difficult considering how long it has taken me to paint the first platoon.

Having completed the camo patterns (on most of the minis anyway) I painted the webbing and pouches. This is fairly easy to do even though the minis have been glued to the bases. I used a mix of "Goblin Green", "Dark Angels Green" and "Scorched Brown" though I forget what ratio I used.
Next to be done is the flesh. A little care is needed to make sure the detail and shading is not obscured. I used a combination of dry-brushing and wet paint to get the desired effect. Note that you should use only bad brushes for the dry brushing and very fine tipped brushes for painting fingers and faces and so on.

I ink the skin. There are two ways to do this. First is to use a general watered down wash all over the skin and then touch up or high-light the raised portions. Second is to use a fine tip brush and apply the ink directly to the creases.

With the faces and skin completed it is time to finish the base. The bases provided are always flat. Some companies provide pretextured bases, but I prefer to save my money (for more minis) and do the texture myself. In this case I am using some left over drywall compound. I am not sure how durable it is on the gaming field, but "live and learn" eh? The commander and observation team is pictured below. I used a small flathead screwdriver to apply the compound to the base. I also added water to the compound to make it easier to apply. These two teams were spaced fairly far apart making it easier to apply the compound but I had to redo some of the gun teams after I brushed against some of the figures. As a side note; in Flames of War a group of figures on a single base is called a team, a group of teams is called a platoon.

The compound by itself did not look too inspiring. In fact, it was pretty bland. To spruce things up a bit I picked up some tree bark and very fine sand. The tree bark was broken into small pieces and set into the still wet comopund. Some drybrushing with black and two tones of grey ("Codex Grey" and "Shadow Grey") will make the bark look like a large rock in this scale. The sand was sprinkled lightly atop the compound to simulate larger rocks and broken ground. After the compound has dryed I painted it with "Scorched Brown". I then dry brushed layers "Terra Cotta", Vomit Brown" and a final brush of "Bleached Bone".

You can see the stages involved in basing from left to right in the picture above. The far left is the first coat of "Scorched Brown" and the three teams to the far right are complete.

I thought the ground effects turned out pretty well, though I may add some grass to the gun teams. I am still working out how to apply the grass correctly. When I have that down I'll post how.

Buoyed by the completion of my first platoon (and also because I spilled some brown paint), I have started one of the Airlanding Platoons. You can also notice a barely started team in some of the pictures above. That is the Staff team of the Airlanding Battery. These fellows are in charge of calculating ranges and elevations to the target. It is them I will blame when my dice go against my during artillery fire.

Slogging Through It.

Phew! What a week (or two). Busy at work and never at home. I still found some time to paint up a bit more of my first platoon; the "Airlanding Battery, Royal Artillery".

I had finished painting the smocks on all the minis so I moved onto the camoflauge stripes. I did the minis in batches. First I mixed up some brown paint which was mostly "Scorched Brown" and a little "Elf Flesh" to lighten the colour. Using my thinest brush (I am in need of new ones with better tips!) I painted wiggly lines all over the smocks.

I painted more lines with a mix of 3:2:1 "Goblin Green", "Dark Angels Green" and "Scorched Brown". This gave me a more military green which blended in nicely.

With most of the painting out of the way I started to work on the plastic bases. In order to get a natural look to the bases (which are flat and untextured) plaster and "static grass" will be applied. I'll detail this process in a future article. For now I will need to prepare the bases so that the glue and plaster will have something to adhere to. To this end I have taken a blade and scored the tops of the bases.
The miniatures are then glued to the bases. Here is the command team for the platoon. The officer is directing two of his guardsmen. The arrangement on the miniatures is quite plain, but I plan to be a bit more creative with future bases. For now I am content with just getting the platoon finished.
Below is a picture of a pair of gun teams ready for basing. The howitzers are not yet glued on. If I did glue the guns in place the wheels would appear to be below ground (note the extra height provided by the miniatures base). I'll glue the guns on later as the plaster is drying.
A tutorial for basing Flames of War figures can be found at: http://www.flamesofwar.com/Default.aspx?tabid=110&kb_cat_id=29