Light Tank Sweat Shop

As with every new book, come new ideas and experimentation when it comes to building a list, buying new models and painting an army. Clearly with all the work my Light Tank Company list is burying me in, I should have re-evaluated which direction I wanted to go when Devils Charge was released. I was excited about adding to my expanding arsenal of Australian and German forces. My last project was my PAK-40's a month ago, so I had a clean hobby area that was ready to take on a new project. I had my eye on the new Chaffee platoon, they're a light tank with a serious anti-tank punch that should bring some serious opposition to anything that can be tabled against them.

After cleaning them up, I had 15 new tanks to assemble and paint all in the few weeks before our club heads down to Petawawa for a tournament on the 25th of November. None of the chassis had any major issues and the casts seemed to be pretty good for the most part. The tracks took a little longer to prep than what I have been used to in the past, but with this many Chaffees on the go at one time, I had to expect it. The one good thing about painting US tanks, is that they are one color....green! I also decided they looked a little too plain, so I started experimenting with mud! I came up with my own mix of white glue, a very small grain of ballast and paint. I mixed about 1-2 oz. of this muck and applied it to my primed Chaffee, and M-10 Tank Destroyers. After an application of varnish to harden the mud, I let them dry overnight. You can see the changes being made in the pictures below.

First coat of paint!

Muddy and freshly varnished.

Mud/Varnish dry, fresh dark wash applied and drying.

 

 

 

 

 

Just have to work on the dry brushing, adding some decals, antennae and they'll be ready to take on their next opponent. The hull mounted MG was giving me a bit of an issue and the particular turret you see in the picture has an issue with the .50 CAL mount on it and can not take a gun without some careful repair or messing around. Once the wash had dried, they really make the hull details pop and bring out the definition of these great casts from Battlefront. The M-10's that will be complimenting this army on the table are the new ones with the plastic tracks. They actually have plastic .50 CAL pieces as well, and this is the first boxed platoon that I have opened that has stickers included. An easy set to glue, crew and paint! I'll be sure to get some more pictures up once the entire army is ready to hit the table and take on all comers this weekend.

Soviet Army: T-34 Winterizing.

 Now that the IS-2's are done, time to tackle the tiny (see above) T-34s

 Close-up of the IS-2 slogan-age, or is it slogan-ry?

Hey guys, with 10 days left, I have to paint 12 T-34s.  So tonite I use my trusty test model method (this time using an Objective) to come up with a scheme that looks something like the following:

 I've seen black and white photos, but this one is color to show what it will look like.. winter, very weathered.

 Here is another color shot.    Looks like the turret white was touched up, as it isn't worn at all.  Note to Lothlann, I guess not ALL Soviet tankers wore blacks!

 Whats the deal with the "track marks"?   I have seen many pics of this camo on Winter War (Finland) T-34s..

This pic is the closest to what I am aiming for.

Video below to show my progress and methods.. (currently uploading)

Not quite finished, but I REALLY like it, AND it was quick enough to do 6 of these to this stage in an evening!! (note, green stippling, black wash, re-drybrush white have NOT been done yet..but still)

Painting my Soviet Army Part 1:Test model, 1st platoon

Howdy guys, since I am a sucker for punishment, instead of taking one of my LW armies to the Petawawa tournament in 2 weeks, I have decided to paint a whole new army, and film the steps taken.

I'll simply let the pics and vid do the talking:

 Test hull: Inked and drybrushed

 Test hull with white camo, chip stippled then inked then drybrushed with a hint of white

 Close-up of the weathering effects, I am now happy with the test model..

 1st platoon, 3 x ISU-122s

 The white final drybrush brings out the rivets even on the green.

 Repairs:  This trackpiece was miscast..

 ..so I used a Zvezda T-34 and the Hobby Choppa to help out..

 Good as new

The gap here will be filled in with dirt and mud effects.

Here is the vid:

Part 1:  Getting stuff assembled, test model ideas.









Part 2: Test model Success!  Fixing the IS-2 track and gunning forwards with the IS-2 platoon.    1000 pts complete (the easy, 8 model 1000pts mind you!)

2 Tournaments,6 days: OMG Doubles and Fall Fubar

Hey guys, I have some coverage of two tournaments we just had, which brings to a close some frenzied painting..  We had the OMG doubles tournament, which was LW 1000 pts each player.   It was a great tourney, and I don't say that only because we won or anything!    Big-Willie from Covering Fire was my teammate and we rocked King Tigers and Panthers and a ME-262.  There was guys with crazy armies, like 16-gun 25lbr army, and so on.

                                                                  Jeff's Aufklarung BMWs

                                                               How many 25lbers?!?!





Here is the OMG Doubles Video

                                              This hurricane is so good at gunning Panthers...

Next up, we have our own Fall Fubar at the Barrhaven Legion (MW 1625 pts).  Normally we would have had this closer to Nov 11, but it got pushed up, as the Legion understandably had Veterans Events planned out.   I worked night and day on my Desert Rats Kingforce army, and they really turned out well, so I was happy about that.  Here are a few pics and the Vids.

                                                        Rob's Canadians win Best Painted

 Ca$h would win overall with the supposed useless Brummbars.   I'm sure the Ferdinand helped!

                        Stef came up from Toronto to play, here is his sweet German force.

Enigma codes have been hacked!

                                               (Kingforce Churchills going up LongStop hill)

 Hey guys, I got a bit of bad news. Long Story Short, my gmail acct got hacked because it was the safe email for my Blizzard acct. Turns out it was some d-bag from China (IP was from there) who was trying to gain access to anything that could make money, luckily for me, my Diablo III acct has no Real Money attached to it, I hadn't played WoW in over 2 years, etc, but I guess they tried to reset my Youtube account to monetize it or something? So he deleted all my videos. And of course, I didn't keep very many on my drive, sending most of the big raw vid files to the recyle bin. I have a FEW, which I will upload this week and renumber haha. In a way, its almost a blessing in disguise, because it means I can 'do-over' a few things, namely my How-To vids. I had planned to post up the rest of my How-To paint a Brit army after the tournament, but now I am trying to speed paint Soviets, so I will document that instead.

Expect the quickvids of Fall Fubar and OMG DOubles tournaments, which occurred within 6 days of each other, tonite sometime.

Cheers

Matt V

GameSummit and Dice Devils

Great news!

I am pleased to announce that our club will be running the Flames of War Tournament at the upcoming GameSummit 2013!!

Registration will be handled by GameSummit, which can be found here: http://www.gamesummit.ca/

It will consist of 24 players, be a regional qualifier, and most likely Late War, but expect more details to come shortly!

Kick on over to our forums for more information and discussion.

Cheers,

CA$H out.