3D Printed E100 part III

When I finally got the surface prepped to the point in the graph where satisfaction and impatience for the fun part intersect, I moved on to prime and paint my 3D Printed E100.

3D Printed E100 part II

Having discovered that Milliput is not the right tool for leveling fillament lines on 3D printed models, I moved on to Tamiya putty. This gap filler comes premixed in a metal tube. Its smell agrees with the vapor warnings on the packaging, so I used it outdoors. It has a much more fluid consistency, with enough viscosity to fill in small gaps.

Snowspeeder Part III: Cockpit Window Details

When I last left off I had just figured out that I should have painted the windows first, then masked over them to begin airbrushing the rest of the model. This last weekend I finally bit the bullet and pulled out my best paintbrush to do the cockpit windows on my Star Wars Legion Snowspeeder.

3D Printed E100 pt I

My brother in law just got himself a 3D printer and wanted to see what I could do with the prints. This is an exciting time for experimentation and exploration.

Snowspeeder part II: Squadron Markings

Having finished the pre-shading and base layer phases on my Snowspeeder, I moved on to adding squadron markings. In Empire, two distinct paint styles can be seen flying over the icy rebel trenches on Hoth. There are speeders with red insignia, and some with grey markings.

Snowspeeder part 1: pre shading

After a bit of a dry spell, I'm happy to report that I made it back to my painting bench!

A vigilant Facebook SW Legion community shared an amazing sale on the T47 Airspeeder, and the deal was too good to pass up. The model takes very little assembly which lets you focus on the painting portion. For this model I am trying my hand at the pre-shading technique

Churchill Tank 2

I have decided to paint all my Churchill tanks uniquely. This is not for any historic reasons except for the fact that there are a lot of variations in the paint on the original vehicles from this theater, especially if extended from Mediterranean into Southern Europe. Basically I am doing this so I get to try more fun paint schemes.

Churchill Tank 1

A year ago I received a set of three Churchill tanks for Flames of War. They are late war Churchill VIIs but I plan to take a few liberties to include them in the latter part of my mid war desert group.

Stall Warning

I'm afraid I'm stalling out on my painting again. I was so happy to be consistently creating after a bit of a down period, but life conspires to keep me from my brush, and I am less happy for it. Couple this with a few too many options and indecision kicks in when I do have the opportunity to paint and wastes precious time.

I do have some more updates to share that haven't been written up yet, so I will post more about my desert war British group. I had really hoped that I would be farther along with my Star Wars Legion minis by now, but have so far accomplished two test squads in about 5 months.

Crusader Tank Test Models

The Crusader tank is one of the most ubiquitous pieces of equipment used by the British army in the North Africa campaign in 1942-3. Its very modern appearance belies a rather mediocre performance, but despite eventually being replaced in service by the more reliable lend lease Sherman, it played a vital role in the war in the desert.

Guns in the Sand: OQF 25lb artillery in North Africa

Watching the horizon for dust plumes.

As teased in desert table photos, one of the projects gracing my workbench these days is a midwar British desert army. Since I hope to field this force in both North Africa and Southern Italy scenarios, I made my desert basing a little deeper in tone than purely sand. I also used a special blend of static grass I mixed to try and average Tunisia and Sicily.

I love the crew poses in these sets - they really bring the tiny scenes to life.

My interest in military modelling was helped along early on by a visit to an old dusty hobby shop across the street from my dad's school. When he took us in there as kids, there was a display case with a diorama of a British artillery piece with its crew entrenched in the western desert, loading like madmen. When I got home that day I hot-glued a bunch of rocks to make sandbags and put a little metal souvenir cannon from Ft. McHenry in it with some green army men. I really wanted to make my own artillery diorama. When I got back into Flames of War this past year, I jumped at the chance to paint up some OQF 25lb guns with their crews, and hopefully do that orignial diorama justice.

One of the best little features of the Battlefront kit is that the sprue comes with multiple barrels. You can build the guns as early or late 25 pounders (muzzle break available for late war) or as the now legendary 17/25 lb anti tank guns. (Like mixing peanut butter and chocolate, these 17lb guns really came into their own when mounted on Lend-Lease Sherman tank hulls).

You can see the small magnet under the gun mount

Of course I couldn't let the other gun barrels go to waste, so I added magnets to the gun carriages and glued some short sections of paper clip to the under side of each gun's breech.

With the first guns completed, I'll be updating periodically with the forces I continue to work on for this army, in the in between my updates for Star Wars Legion.

Palm Groves

Palms on a beach planet (Before single reactor shot).

This week I managed to finish the palm trees I began to base last time. I put two and three of the smaller palms to a base, but kept the tallest ones individually mounted. This will give me more flexibility with the scale.

Building Palm Tree Stands

 This week I base up some plastic coconut palm trees by Nolux for my sand table.

X-Wing Blue Squadron Repaint

With the debut of X-Wing 2.0, the time seems right to share my first repaint of the titular starfighter.

Lead Painter's League 11

Last year I entered the Lead Adventure Forum's Lead Painter's League painting challenge/contest. It was a grueling 10 week challenge of painting groups of at least 5 miniatures a week and photographing them in cool settings for an international competition.
Here I've compiled all my entries, with just a little bit of speechifying about each.
For those of you not on LAF, here are some of the key rules:
• Each entry is paired against another painter's work and voted on
• Winners of each round are determined by popular vote
• Scenery is allowed so long as it's not a photograph
• Each entry must be a Team (Same setting and the same side. ie Big game hunters can't team up with Lions)
• Bonus points are awarded for following the theme (when applicable)
• Bonus points are given to new (unpublished) models debuting on the challenge

Round 1: Consulting the scouts

My first entry was woodland Indians by Redoubt Miniatures. I have painted some of these in the past; the new ones are all carrying clubs. Attempting the first week photo reminded me that while painting a good mini is a difficult task, actually photographing it is just as challenging. I did not win my paring on this one.

Round 2: Nock, Draw, Loose, Repeat as needed.

For my second round I tried to wow using overwhelming numbers of classic GW Bretonnian archers.These are some of my favorite figures to paint, and  many of them were converted with bits from the newer Bretonnians. Real shame they removed these guys from the Fantasy line. There are actually about twice this many on the table for the pic, but difficulty with focusing on the whole mob left me with a smaller vignette. I also did won this round on a very slim margin of votes.

Round 3: Relieving the Militia

Round 3 was my big AWI entry. Almost every figure I own for this range is in the photo, though the focus is on the newly painted continental line relieving the waivering militia as their redoubt is being overrun. It was a lot of fun to stage this, and I really like the cinematic result. This entry did take its round with a 2/3 majority of votes.

Round 4: Up the Garden Path

Round 4 allowed me do debut my new British infantry for FoW in 15mm. Mine are uniformed for Mediterranean service, from about Tunisia through early Italian campaign. Of course now they'll likely serve in the desert as not. Shooting just a few 15's is quite difficult, as it turns out, but the scenery worked nice with the little ambush story here. This tied its round.

Round 5: Prize Crew

Prize Crew was not my best entry. Not only did I forego newly painted status to work on the ship instead, but the photo did not work out as well as I had liked. I did at least stick to the "ship's crew" bonus theme, and I am happy with my brig using a Playmobil hull (build log to come... probably with some fixes to the hurriedly finished rigging.) This entry did quite poorly in its round, not least because it was paired against a very well done dock scene.

Round 6: Imperial Counter Insurgency

There's a lot to talk about in this one. Those who read my foray into Star Wars Legion will have gotten a bit of this already. The rebel troopers in this picture are repaints of my very first miniatures. I used to buy these at Disneyland at the Star Tours giftshop when I was 10. They were about the only Star Wars toy I could get my hands on during the dark period of SW merch' between Jedi and Phantom Menace. The other figures were found as reprints in some Monopoly games I scored at thrift shops, as well as a few Micro Machines Action Fleet troopers. Look and Soontir Fel were both modifications of Monopoly figures. The three sets fit well together, and I'm very pleased to create what I had only hoped to 25 years ago. I scored a very solid tie (difference in only 3 votes) with another quite competent painter this round.

Round 7: Boots on the Ground.

Boots on the Ground was a real challenge to color correct. I created a special gradient background for this photo blending from a sand color up to a blue sky to simulate rotor washway the hovering Blackhawk. Unfortunately I hadn't included a white Swatch into the photo so the white balance was way off and difficult to work with. The figures are from the game Skirmish Sangin's Maalinti Rangers expansion and the helicopter is a modified Testor's 1:60 die cast kit.

Round 8: African Anti-imperialists

African Anti-imperialists was far and away the best received of my entries. It certainly photographed well, with vibrant colors and good focus on the figures. I had a blast painting these men, and hope they see use in game soon. The men come from the Perry Brothers Madhists set. I even received positive feedback from one of the painters I look up to the most, and that is worth more than winning.

Round 9: Dunadein

Round 9 was from a set of Citadel LotR figures I picked up way back when I worked at Games Workshop, which feels like half a lifetime ago. These are the beautifully sculpted rangers of the north that came in the Guardians of the Shire pack along with Glorfindel the Elf. I tried to maintain the subtle mismatched earthtones of Strider from the film series (Always loved his worn look). In the end I was paired against one of the best painters in the league so I lost by a landslide.

Round 10: Ladies do not play "Soldier"

I went out with a whimper, not a bang with my final entry. My painting of the Continental Marines and the children was a bit hurried, and the photography really let me down. I hope to post better pictures of the camp followers and civilians to the blog soon.

Despite some regrets on a few rounds, and a longing to have shown myself better, this was not your normal competition where you get to preen a single figure for months on end to show your best work. This was not a sprint. It was a marathon. It may not sound like 50 figures (minimum...) over 10 weeks was that much, but it really takes some stamina to see it through. In the end I'm satisfied that I was able to give an entry each week and to complete the challenge (not all entrants make it all of the way).

It took me a while to recover from this challenge and is a large part of why Weasel Minis went quiet for a while.

Desert Table: Cheap Terrain How-To

It totally matches the patio!

Last time I introduced my new sand terrain table. Today I'll show you how I did it, and discuss how I plan to expand on this.

Desert Table

One of the projects I have been working on of late has been a sand/desert terrain table. A recent lucky find of several sheets of 4ft x 8ft MDF boards being discarded as a part of a local home remodel in my neighborhood tipped me over the edge and into action. As was with the case of the portable game table, this table would need to scale between 15mm and 28 (and now 32 mm!) figures. Thankfully desert is not difficult to do this with. This is a classic style table, with glued sand painted with several layers of paint.
So these pics are of a nearly complete table; there are still a few more things I want to polish off before I consider this table Done. As it stands, I have two 3ft by 4ft sections of table surface, enough terrain to cover 1/4 of it. The matching terrain pieces are some hills, a 15mm scale desert dwelling, and some amorphous blob pieces for area terrain or at least adding some variety to an endless sea of sand.

This terrain will primarily serve as the sands of North Africa for my Flames of War 7th Armoured Division. I have nearly completed a small house at this scale that can serve as cover and objective, and have a second one cut from styrofoam.

While I get my build tutorial in order, please enjoy the pics of the (really close to being done) table.
(So of course with a new terrain set, I had to try out some of my favorite figures on it...)

This house will probably get one more highlight drybrush to bring it a little closer to white.

Perry Brothers Madhists

Rangers and Delta from Skirmish Sangin's Maalinti Rangers set

15mm Shermans in 7th Armoured service.

Looking for droids in all the wrong places.

Raid on Scarif

Star Wars Legion: First Squads

I really love these sculpts!

Since Fantasy Flight Games' announcement last August, I had eagerly awaited the release of their new system set in my favorite fandom: Star Wars Legion.

Technically speaking, my first introduction to the world of miniatures painting and gaming was the old West End Games Star Wars figures from the mid 1990s. I used to eagerly pick up a pack from Disneyland on my yearly trip there (the only place I knew how to find them), and paint them up as best a 10 year old could using Testor's enamels and plastic modelling brushes. (They were made of real lead, too as I recall).

For comparison to the new figures. Painted by Adult Ben, in the style that Kid Ben aspired to.

It was during a period of renewed interest that the announcement for Legion dropped. I had just completed some repaints and new figures from the WEG line for the Lead Painter's League. (Two of these figures had been from my original set back in 1991, and the remainder were acquired through thrift shop finds of the old Monopoly games that used these figures as tokens but I digress).

Though I will always love the original models, I was immediately in love with the new sculpts. Waiting unitl the following April reminded me of the weeks leading up to Christmas as a kid, and I hung on every announcement hoping to hear they were finally releasing the game. (In anticipation fo the game I built the Bandai offering for the AT-ST in a very close scale. Look for a post on this in the near future!) Despite the interminable wait, I found myself a bit undecided when I actually had them in-hand, especially when it came to basing scheme and what the Rebels would wear. (It was never up for debate that I'd do my Imperials in their screen uniforms).

At time of posting it is still before Labor Day, so this paint scheme is OK. Also note that while painting white is difficult, photographing it is much more challenging!

I will probably go into more detail on the basing tests, but I had originally aimed for a Scarif set. However, I was unhappy with my test bases, and found myself adopting a similar base to the one I tried on some Warhammer 40K Tau . (Tutorial here) In Star Wars context, it plays out to be the temple ruins on Yavin IV. (Since head canon does matter to me, it makes sense to set my games here since we know from Ep V's opening scrawl that at some point the rebels were forced out of this base)

For the Rebel troops, I wanted to something based on the Original Trilogy or Rogue One. The first squad takes its inspiration from the Battle of Endor, but from the cutting room floor. There had been some rebel troopers acting as crew aboard the Millennium Falcon, that did not make it to the final cut of the film. They were basically in the same uniforms as the strike team that went down to take out the shield generator, but without the sprayed camouflage. I feel the uniforms here get the general look of the rebels, while remaining a little more flexible as to their theatre of operation. Of course I'll probably do a squad in the Endor greens.

Thanks for reading; I will have more updates to share soon, including some tutorials and terrain building.

Miniature Tourism at Bunker Hill

I could have cropped the display case out, but how often are you photobombed by a Brown Bess? We need to embrace these moments.

For those patient readers who still bear with me, I would like to share a bit of modelling tourism. I recently had the opportunity to travel for work which found me in the wonderfully historic town of Boston. Much of what I visited was not only up my alley, but was in fact my whole alley.

One of the must-see spots for any American History fan is the memorial on top of Breed's Hill. I impulsively climbed the stairs inside the obelisk only to be harried by an encroaching high school class the whole 294 sweaty steps up. On my return to ground level, a park ranger directed me to a converted library across the street where there were some exhibits about the famous battle. They warned me that it was largely in miniature.

The exhibit was something to behold! The main attraction was about a 10ft x 20ft interactive diorama of the entire battle done with 15mm figures on a huge scenic topographical map. An audio program played while dynamic lighting showed the progression of the battle and simulated the flashes of battalion fire.

I really liked the work they did on the redoubt, and was proud that the didn't present a sanitized version of the battle, but had casualties covering the ground between the two sides.

 The lines of redcoats advancing across the terrain was just incredible. While the diorama depicted events while the colonists' ammunition was still holding out, you got the overwhelming sense of an inevitable British victory as the Regulars came wave after wave.

There were also some smaller dioramas done in other scales to show both a more human view inside the redoubt...

...as well as a broader view of Boston Harbor and Charlestown during the engagement.

Well, I'm feeling inspired to get back into my Revolution figures!