'Green' Army Men

I don't know why, but I seem to have been caught by a bug of painting up models left over from truly ancient projects.

The last time I touched any US models for Flames of War was 2013. In fact, for those in the UK reading this, a measure of how long I've had these models sitting around is that the vehicles were bought from the bring and buy at Sheffield Triples, last held in 2017.

My US Army force for Flames of War was always my back up army, for when Germans aren't appropriate.

Given that main opponents when we used to play a lot were Matt and his 1 for 1 recreation of the entire US military, and Pete's 'quantity is quality' Soviet armour, the need for me to field my Americans was always somewhat reduced.

This meant that my US Armoured Company was a bit underdeveloped, containing only bog standard Sherman tanks, a platoon golf zippy little Stuarts, a cobbled together Recce platoon and, later on, some Engineers to provide at least a little infantry support.

Therefore, after playing the game for a while, I identified two main problems, the first of which being that I couldn't hold objectives with tanks.

This caused me, at some point, to pick up a platoon of Armoured Riflemen to add a bit of saying power to the army.

I suspect I was intending to pick up some Plastic Soldier Company halftracks, which were very much all the rage before Battlefront went plastic, to put them in, and I may still do this if we ever play Flames of War again.

In the intervening years I have toyed with selling them on several times, but since Flames of War changed edition, there doesn't seem to be that much of a market for the old metal miniatures and so, as they weren't taking up too much space, I've kept hold of them.

I think I've decided to paint them now because I wanted to make a dent into my backlog and, as with the 6mm ACW miniatures, smaller scales are a good way to do this quickly.

However, after undercoating them with a green spray paint, and looking back at the miniatures I'd done previously, I was reminded of just how many different shades of green and brown I used on these guys.

I was also reminded of the most likely why I didn't bother painting them a decade ago.

In short, they were a faff.

They've come out quite dark because I'm matching them to my previous paint job which involved being drenched in Agrax Earthshade, which was very much my 'thing' at the time.

The other major problem my US Armoured Company had was that being equipped only with Shermans packing 75mm guns, I really had no answer to heavy armour beyond trying to swarm them.

The obviously response was to pick up some Romulan Laser Destroyers...erm, M10 Tank Destroyers, and when I spotted these in a bring and buy, I scooped them up, despite the fact that they needed a little TLC.

I gave them new barrels from my plastic sprues and used some tank commanders and infantry cut in half to crew them. The Greyhound's MG rail/ring was fashioned from the rim of a plastic shield, and he also got an infantryman as crew. Finally, I got round the lack of driver for the Jeep by having its crew stood beside it making a call.

I'm not sure if this is a game legal set up, at least it isn't in any of my army books, but at least they're painted.

All in all, they're perfectly fine tabletop quality. Will they ever get used? We'll see. However, I have achieved the goal of taking a chunk out of the backlog.

Acquired: -82
Painted: 121
Lead Mountain: 449

Thin Blue Line

No, I wasn't expecting this either.

I've returned to a project I haven't touched for almost exactly eight years and finished off almost the last few unpainted 6mm American Civil War miniatures for my Union army.

Almost a decade ago our little gaming group got very briefly grabbed by 6mm gaming following attending the Joy of Six show in Sheffield.

We opted to dip our toes in by painting up American Civil War forces, with two of us building Union forces and two doing Confederate armies, using Bacchus Miniatures as our supplier.

At the time we played through a brief Vicksburg campaign using Black Powder rules, in which, despite starting well, Matt and I got out manoeuvred and defeated.

The campaign can be read about here and here.

I suspect that's why it's been eight years since I did anything with them.

However, I was lacking a bit of motivation yesterday and had some time on my hands, so I went with something that seemed easy.

6mm miniatures, especially in the regular uniform blue of the Union army, are incredibly easy to do.

The trick is to remember that the aren't meant to be looked at up close and so there's not much call for more than dabbing paint on in the appropriate places.

With the miniatures and bases I had left I've put together two regiments and two stands of skirmishers. The skirmishers have a couple more models on each base than the ones I've done previously and so will be good for representing regiments that have been deployed as pickets as opposed to the skirmishers put out in front of a regiment.

I still have five strips of infantry, with no command, that I'm not sure what to do with, but it was a nice change of pace and removes a healthy chunk from my backlog - I originally counted each strip as a single miniature when I started on Lead Mountain, and so this bunch qualifies at 16 miniatures.

Acquired: -84
Painted: 75
Lead Mountain: 498

Sic Semper Tyrannis

I know I said I was going to start working on some vehicles for my Astral Claws, but two things got in the way.

Firstly, I don't currently have any Space Marine vehicles to build and paint, which, as I'm sure you'll admit, is an issue.

Secondly, I had such a good time kitbashing my Ork Skorcha, I decided to continue on this theme by using the only Marine miniatures that I currently have unpainted: the Space Hulk Terminators. And the only Terminator armoured miniature that I had plans to add to my army was Lugft Huron, the Tyrant of Badab himself.

You may be wondering why I've decided to kitbash my warlord rather than search out the rather excellent out of print resin miniature that was produced by Forge World.

Well, my reasons are threefold: I wanted my version of Huron to scale well with the Space Hulk Terminators; I wanted a model that could conceivably work as a more generic captain as well; I currently using both of my kidneys.

However, the Forge World mini is firmly based on, what I believe to be, the only official piece of art of Huron as the Tyrant of Badab. Therefore I turned to this image for inspiration.

The key features were the Heavy Flamer and Lightning Claw, the back banner and Iron Halo, a loin cloth and the raise lions on his shoulder pads.

In terms of painting, I'd need to increase the amount of blue I used on the armour compared to rest of the Terminators, and make sure that there was plenty of gold to help him stand out from the crowd.

When it came to building the model, I was able to equip him correctly, although technically the weapons are in the wrong hands and the Heavy Flamer is the wrong pattern.

The Lightning Claw was constructed by adding Mk VI claw blades to the Power Fist, whilst the Iron Halo was trimmed from a Blood Angels helmet (the accessories on his belt also came from the same upgrade sprue). The loincloth is a trimmed bit of flag. A small Bretonnian shield was added to his shoulder to hide the small gap created by posing his arm a bit more widely spread.

The only thing I couldn't replicate were the ornate shoulder pads, but I can live with that.

When it came to painting I used the same simple methods as I have with all of my Astral Claws, although I did have to wrestle with the dregs of a can of Army Painter Gun Metal Primer, which I absolutely do not recommend. I've had it for years and it's been a really problematic paint in terms of thickness and coverage - I'd just run out of my more reliable Colour Forge spray.

I used more blue on the weapon arms as shown in the illustration and set about adding a bit of bling. Basically, anything that I'd painted bone on the other Terminators became gold along with the helmet and the Iron Halo. The idea was to evoke the illustration on a model that doesn't have the same amount of trim.

Transfers were added, but the Maelstrom Warders symbol on his knee was freehanded as I was out of transfers that size.

All in all I'm really pleased with how he's turned out. He scales appropriately with my army and has enough to clearly mark him out as a HQ choice.

However, by being my own conversion it means that he doesn't have to be Huron in the next campaign event if someone else has the official model.

In game I'll be using the profile for the Chaos Lord in Terminator Armour with a Combi Weapon and Exalted Weapon. Although there is a Huron Blackheart profile, I can't really use that as he's not in Terminator Armour and therefore can't join the Tyrant's Shield (his bodyguard unit) in game.

I'm now well on my way towards 1500 points, which seems likely to be the next benchmark in the campaign.

Acquired: -84
Painted: 59
Lead Mountain: 514