DreadTober - Konflikt 47 Allied Grizzly Walker (Finished)

Got the last coat of varnish on with pretty much just a day to spare!  Really enjoyed this project and following everyone else's progress for DreadTober.  Since this follows how I paint up my WW2 American vehicles, I really should post that up.  There were some steps I had almost forgotten.  Hopefully soon.

DreadTober - Konflikt 47 Allied Grizzly Walker (Update 4)

The end is near.  I wasn't able to work on this guy a lot this week, but I'm still hitting the home stretch.  Mostly just varnishing and weathering powders left.  Hopefully I can wrap it up over the weekend.  Can't wait to hit it with a dull coat.

DreadTober - Konflikt 47 Allied Grizzly Walker (Update 3)

The semi-gloss has gone on to support weathering.  Pin wash applied and streaking has begun.  So much streaking left to do.  I'd be more confident it was coming together if it wasn't so shiny from the semi-gloss. 

DreadTober - Konflikt 47 Allied Grizzly Walker (Update 2)

So, second week into DreadTober and I've gotten the color modulation and chipping done on the entire walker.

Pretty happy with it so far.  The chipping is maybe a little to heavy on parts of the torso, but I had to "erase" some issues with my poor color modulation application.  Next up is to seal it, paint some of the non armor parts and begin pin wash, streaking, and weathering powders.

DreadTober - Konflikt 47 Allied Grizzly Walker (Update 1)

If you'd like to know more about what DreadTober is, who all is participating, and/or their progress/prjects, follow this link:  DreadTober.

As anything "big and stompy" is appropriate for DreadTober, I decided to brush the dust off an project that was abandoned in the early stages and would need to started over from scratch.  That project would be my Allied Grizzly Walker for K47. 

Seriously, what kind of sense does it make to stop at
this stage of painting?  Where did I leave off at, what was I thinking.
Why does only half the torso have green on it?

Given this guy has sat around for a least a year in this state, I was pretty sure whatever subtractive chipping method I was planning to use was now OBE.  So time to start over.  I threw some rocks made of cork on the base to add some elevation/variety to the final base, hit those with some primer, and the rest of the model with the same brown you see above. 

After that, I tackled the just the legs (the way I have it assembled, the torso can be removed or rotated).  I took this approach for two reasons, the first being less of the figure would be in the way of the spray pattern of my airbrush and the second reason is it let me break the work in smaller chunks that I could accomplish in a night, hopefully.  In any case, below is where I ended up for the first (partial) week of DreadTober.  I'm pretty happy so far with the mini.

More next time.

November/December Recap

Finished up the year fairly strong with games played and a bit of a slow down on models painted, although there was a good bit of assembly.  Between November and December, I continued on in the new Bolt Action escalation league playing about 8 games.  The recent games in the league have been a bit brutal as the Allied players (myself included) faced 3 straight weeks of superior Axis forces (1.5x, 2x and 2x respectively) as we play through the scenarios in Western Desert.

Allies prepare for the Italian assault.

In addition to the Bolt Action games, I also actually got two games of Konflikt 47 in at 1000 pts.  Both were fun games.

Uh Joe, we gotta a serious problem over here.

Sadly with the chaos of the holidays in full affect, I still haven't gotten a game of Guild Ball with the new Season 4 rules.  Maybe soon.  

Painting was primarily limited to getting a Sherman and a light anti-tank gun painted for the escalation league, along with model assembly for what I had planned out for the rest of the league.  I managed a little work on Wild West Exodus attack and gun dogs, but haven't managed to wrap them up yet.  Then on the very last day of the year, to make sure I could count them in my totals with a clear conscience, I finished the last bit on my Chaffee and Greyhound Bolt Action vehicles (which was just dust, mud and varnishes).

In any case, a pretty good year for painting and playing even if it has been heavily focused on Bolt Action.  Not a such good year for my hobby budget allegedly...  More on that when I work up the nerve for my 2018 retrospective.

September/October Recap

It's almost Thanksgiving and I still had not caught up with September & October recaps.  Mostly due to not having much activity gaming wise the past couple of months.  However, I have gotten some hobbying done and got several miniatures fully painted in the past 2 months.  Hopefully I will get these posted up soon.

For both September and October, I only managed to get in 2 games of Guild Ball.  Both of those games were in September, so sadly I have not tried Season 4, yet.  It looks pretty good for the Masons but only time will tell.  I had hoped that Season 4 would streamline some things and reduce some of the inter-dependencies, and in a lot of cases it did but not so much for the Masons.

Also, despite running an escalation league for Konflikt 47 I did not manage to get any games in for the past two months (at the 750pt or 1000pt increments).  As the organizer, I needed to bow out when there were an odd number of players which was the trend for those months.  We ended up wrapping the league up a couple of weeks early to avoid overlapping a couple of major events at the game store.  Since the league was not anything I would call a success, that was more than fine by me.  

Lots of exciting news, IMO, hit toward the end of the October (maybe some of this is technically November).  The minds behind Test of Honour announced a similar game coming out called Mortal Gods: Test of Courage.  Ancient Greeks!  The figures are looking fantastic and should be very similar ruleset to Test of Hounor.  The other exciting tidbit is there seems to be some changes on the horizon for Test of Honour, which the creators taking it back over (or something).  Here is hoping they will break the horrible sales model that the game has suffered under (IMO).  Also, good news for SAGA in that the Book of Battles recently released containing new/revised scenarios usable for all the variations of SAGA.  This was followed up with the announcement that the Age of Magic would be the next expansion, bringing "fantasy" to the SAGA system!  

Coupled with an Adepticon challenge for 2019 and a new Bolt Action league kicking off, looks like my painting queue is going to stay packed.  Very packed.  

Lastly, some personal disheartening hobby news:  My new accountant discovered an egregious error in the book keeping.  While I thought I had managed to stay amazingly on track budget wise, he unearthed the fact that 3-4 months of purchases from early in 2019 had not be logged.  With virtually no time to "repair" the damage before the end of the year, looks like I'm really going to bust my budget for the year.  Of course the devil on my shoulder is shouting "Well, if you are going to break that goal, break it goooooood.  Real good."

Anyway, more soon.  Hopefully...

August Recap

I really should have written this before the NOVA Open, everything is a bit fuzzy now.  Anyway, fairly decent month of gaming for August.  As part of running the Konflikt 47 league, I managed to play two games at the monthly point level of 500 pts.  I also showed a new player Bolt Action with a small 500 pt game.

The rest of the month was pretty much consumed with painting.  From recent posts, you can see I knocked out a Firefly Jump Infantry squad for Konflikt 47, 2 new cars for Gaslands and a few Guild Ball Mason models.  I technically achieved my goals of having Guild Ball and Konflikt painted up for the NOVA Open, but with very limited selections for both.  Still, a win is a win.

Moving on to the NOVA Open, I'll go ahead and include that in this post while it is fresh in my mind.  Returning to the NOVA Open after a multi-year absence was pretty good.  It was really good to see many familiar faces and spend time with some great people.

Thursday was a pretty slow day for me.  I was registered to play in the Konflikt 47 tournament but multiple factors convinced me to bail on it.  I spent most of the day just wondering around and catching up with people.  For my taste and interest, the vendor hall did not offer much of a distraction and I ended the convention only spending $40 on the new Warlord US Infantry box (different sculpts that, hopefully, will help me get over the hump of not wanting to paint any more infantry units).  Mostly though, I just harassed my buddy John from the 40k Hobby blog.  This included Dave Taylor and I jumping into the photo shoot for John's amazing titan that was part of the charity auction.

Shamelessly stolen photo.

Friday I was scheduled for a Falconer's flight for Guild Ball, but again I let multiple factors convince me to bail on it.  Mostly because I am not sure I completely like Guild Ball and did not want to suffer through multiple rounds of it.  Instead, John's buddy Brian left a beautiful 4x4 terrain board in the dedicated hobby area that only had basic priming done to it.  He had hoped to have it completely finished by Sunday for a game, so John and I decided to surprise him while he was downstairs playing 30k.

On the left is basically what we started with, the right is
what we got done Friday in about 6 hours.

While we did have an airbrush to paint the crashed ship, our other
"tools" were pretty limited.

Aside from the ship and the scattered structures, this was
pretty much the definition of "finger" painting.

We rounded out Friday night with Brian buying us an awesome dinner for all of our work.  Later we managed to find a secluded corner of the hotel bar and were joined by several more awesome people.

Saturday saw the arrival of my wife and kids early that morning (their Friday night flight having been cancelled).  I met them at the nearby airport and helped them get the rental car loaded up and squared away, before being dropped back off at the hotel for my first event I would actually attend:  A seminar by Vince Venturella.  I've never taken a class with Vince but turns out he does a really nice job with his classes and, much like his "Hobby Cheating" series on YouTube, focused very precisely on the seminar topic of Battle Damage.  Having taken other vehicle based weathering classes this class was a very good compliment (for me) focusing on smaller scale damage (such as space marines).  Vince does a great job with his classes and I'm glad I took this one.

Saturday night was a Wrath of Kings narrative event I had signed up for.  It was 3 vs 3 player game, having the Hadross defending their home from a multi-faction invasion hell bent on stealing Hadross's latest genetic manipulation feat.  I played as one of the 3 Hadross players who successfully fended off werewolves, celestial animals, and mask wearing demon women.

Another shameless stolen photo.

It was a fun game on a beautiful board.  The scenario ended up being a little lopsided for the other team, even as we made adjustments on the fly to let them bring reinforcements back on.  Still though, I think everyone ended up having a good time.  Along with my 2 teammates, I walked away with WoK two player starter box.  The event reminded me of just how great of a game Wrath of Kings is,  to bad it appears CMON is letting it atrophy and die a slow death.  I wrapped up the evening talking with Todd, from the weekly hobby hangout, while he waited for his dinner and ate.

That pretty much wrapped up the NOVA Open for me.  While I did not fly back till late Monday afternoon, the conclusion of Saturday night had me back on family duty.  Sunday morning we met our close friends and their kids at the national zoo and had fun catching up.  That night, I just hung out with Alex while the girls went to the spa.

Anyway, that's it with August and with the NOVA Open behind me time to move on to:  more K47 stuff, more BA stuff, wrapping odds-n-ends up, and new projects.

Konflikt 47 - American Firefly Jump Infantry

Leveraging off my existing Bolt Action American forces allowed me to jump straight to some of the "toys" that K47 introduces.  Since I knew even my BA American's were short on infantry squads (I just haven't had a desire to paint up more), I knew I needed my first K47 project to be an infantry squad and the Firefly Jump Infantry were the obvious choice (to me at least).  Truth be told, I actually did start first on some walkers before I realized that they were not what I should be focusing on.

Anyway, here they are:

Photo is a little washed out.

Not completely satisfied, but I called them done.  After all, I have another box of these guys.  I like these models and they were pretty fun to paint.  Except for the webbing, those details are not very pronounced and having to go over them 2-3 times (my color choice does not have the best single pass coverage) was excruciating.  Maybe hard to tell from the photo but the glow on the jet packs also did not turn out as well as I had hoped.  Still, good enough to move on, except some additional matte coat is needed in a few spots.

I painted these very similar to my American Bolt action infantry.  Instead of the RMS Worn Olive and RMS Faded Khaki (for the pants and jacket respectively), I used RMS Olive Drab instead for the jump suits.  I also limited the dust/mud weathering to just the boots given their nature on the battlefield and also because the knee pads already provide some visual interest in that area of the figures.

July Recap

Another good month of gaming goodness.  I kicked off July with a game of Gaslands at the local tap room.  We had two tables going with incredible tables by Darren over at Broken Sword Studios.

Table 1 is simply stunning.

Table 2 is not shabby either.

Both tables played Death Race with 5 players per table (a really great turn out).  Everyone had a really great time, although I believe both games were called not long after cars finally got past the first gate.  The game bogs down a bit in death race, esp with that many players.  Plus pretty much everyone was new to the game.  A week or two later, I got in another game of Gaslands where we played the zombie scenario, again with 5 players.  Definitely a much better scenario for that many players but it does still take a while to play.  All that being said, the abstractions of the game are simply amazing.  For me, it gives just the right balance of simulation and simplification.  Not only can I not wait to play again, I can't wait to see what Mike Hutchinson does for his next game.

With the Bolt Action league having concluded, we have transitioned to open play and gearing up for a short Konflikt '47 escalation league.  Having shown up one day to work on Konflikt league rules, I got pulled into playing Bolt Action with a perspective player.  I borrowed a 1250 pt Finnish tournament list (he wanted the "full" experience) and showed him the ropes.  He was sold, so we added another to our ranks.  I also ran another person through a 500 pt Konflikt game to acquaint her with the rules and to sate her excitement for the upcoming league.

Rounding things out, I squeezed a game of Guild Ball in on the very last day of July.  I really want to love Guild Ball, but I'm just not sold.  It definitely is not a bad game, although I think it should be "quicker."  It's just that the game requires very good knowledge of your opponents models and requires/rewards excessive pre-measuring.  Still, I will continue to give it a go a bit longer and finish up painting the models I have.

That pretty much rounds out July.  I made some really good progress on painting and I will post that up soon.  I'm not sure I will make either of my painting goals for the NOVA Open but I'm not sure the two events I am painting for are even going to happen due to low registration numbers.  We'll see.  Also August sees the kick off of two new leagues:  the Konflikt '47 league I'm running and a Gaslands league.  Feast or famine.  lol

Konflikt 47 - British Automated Infantry (MMG)

Well, here is another side project I have been working on:

The other 2 are painted, just not shown.  And look, I think
I finally got a decent photo!

I still have a few things left to finish up, along with the basing but I think these guys are mostly done.  For a fairly uninteresting model, I felt like these turned out pretty well and I am happy with them.  Of course they were not terribly difficult, just some quick airbrush work got 80% of the model done and then it was just painting a few details and some washes.

I'm not sure the white dot on the red lenses is appropriate, given how much that area is shadowed by the helmet, but I like how it draws my eye to that area and also helps bring the red out, so I think it's going to stay.  I also think the dials and the star (both white on the torso) need to be hit with a wash to make them look slightly dirty.  I haven't really decided though.  I'm also considering some slight battle damage/chipping and maybe bit more work on the lens.  We'll see.

The real downside though is putting these guys together.  Both legs are separate from the torso, so that creates a nightmare to getting a good solid bond while simultaneously trying to get a decent pose out of them.  But that nightmare turned out to be trivial when compare to attaching both arms to the torso AND the machine gun!  I have another squad of 5 of these guys that I am really not looking forward to.  That batch I may do some rust weathering on.

Anyway, that gets my Konflikt army started off.  Now I gotta jump back on Tail Feathers for my daughter.  She's getting a little tired of my "distractions."  Of which there are a few more distractions on my hobby desk right now too.

If I ever need to come back to it, here are the paints I used:

• Main Body:  RMS Muddy Olive (S), RMS Olive Green (B), Mix of RMS Olive Green and RMS Pale Olive 2:1 (H1), RMS Olive Green and RMS Pale Olive 1:1 (Highlight2)
• Vessels:  RMS Cloudy Grey (B), RMS Cloudy Grey and RMS Misty Grey 2:1 (H1), RMS Cloudy Grey and RMS Misty Grey 1:1 (H2)
• Gun:
• Black Portion:  Vallejo Panzer Aces Dark Rubber (B), Vallejo Panzer Aces Dark and Light Rubber 1:1 (H1), Vallejo Pazner Aces Light Rubber (H2)
• Brown Portion*:  RMS Uniform Brown (S), RMS Green Ochre (B), RMS Faded Khaki (H)
• Piping:  Terran Khaki (B)
• Bullets:  AP Greedy Gold and AP Gun Metal
• Lenses:  RMS Bloodstain Red (B), RMS Clotted Red (H)

I used washes to take care of most the shading:

• Gun:
• Black Portion:  AP Dark Tone (selectively in recessed areas)
• Brown Portion:  AP Strong Wash
• Body/elsewhere:  AP Strong Wash
• First application all over but trying to avoid pooling in raised areas (which was only somewhat successful)
• Second application in select areas such as recessed or shadowed areas.

*Note to self, the brown portion of the gun using Green Ochre as a base was a nightmare to highlight up to Faded Khaki.  It just seemed like whatever I did it still ended up just looking like the base color and I eventually gave up.