Category Archives: General

Flames of War M4 Sherman Tank Platoons (Battlefront Miniatures) (June-it ’18)

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These ten M4 Sherman models are some of Battlefront’s early product – resin shermans with metal guns. I picked up these two platoons secondhand, and so they lack turret MGs (if these early models even had those). I picked these up as two sets of 5 tanks for £15.00 each back in 2012 – they were old and long OOP even then.

And that’s where this story ended. Or took a rather long intermission until very recently. While I was looking for something else, and had Marouda helping me look through the boxes and tubs of figures in storage, I spied the two sets of Shermans, and then decided to pull them from the shelf, and also grabbed out all the plastic Open Fire! Shermans as well (sadly, they’re the dodgy ones from the first edition of OF!) Thanks to Just Needs Varnish, and his endless stream of cool looking 15mm stuff, I decided it was time to get a few little tanks painted up.

They’re really nothing special. I got two versions of OD spray made up at the local paint store (I’ll need to get a Brown Violet match made as well, but I need to get the Vallejo paint first!). I used the darker as the base, then the lighter as a zenithal shade. I used the Battlefront decals (they’re fucking awful to use – they take forever to lift off the sheet, they’re thin and crinkle and tear easily) as I couldn’t get the PSC ones. I can out of Allied Stars and so found a larger-scale sheet of them from Warlord, and used the smallest ones. I’ll have to buy a bunch more of the Warlord ones, as they were great decals to use.

The ten Shermans have been painted in a rather generic style. I’ve gone for all-Allied Stars to save the ringed stars for later units. I figure I can use the turrets with top-stars on them as Platoon leaders as needed. Not that I’ve played Flames of War in many, many years now. Not since 1st edition, in fact. While I can recognise a lot of WWII armour in it’s basic forms, I don’t know them well enough to know where exactly to place all of the optional markings, or which of the many variants that these Shermans are.

Battlefront Shermans imitate the start of a typical round of World of Tanks.

What will I do with these? Well, I have a few different 15mm armies worth of figures and armour to build and play with one day. There’s obviously Flames of War out there, and plenty of other WW2 rulesets besides for that scale. At one stage I hoped to play Bolt Action with a bunch of 15mm models, using cm for inches, but it never happened. I have a DAK army that’s been in storage for well over a decade now that could probably be a project for both “Finishing Units” months as well as, obviously, Neglected Models. The problem for me is painting 15mm troops. Because as cool as they can look when complete, I find them painfully boring to paint.

I painted the turret ring area to visually represent destroyed/burned tanks.

I’ve been considering picking up that TANKS! game by GF9 as a bit of a light game. It would certainly give me an outlet to use some of these tanks with, not to mention potentially giving me some motivation to paint some additional 15mm armour. I suppose there’s also the Bolt Action side-game, Tank War.

Assembly April ’18: Community Round-Up

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Ann’s Instant Chaos Army

April’s hobby challenge seems to been reasonably successful, with quite a few models combining into existence.

Ann from Ann’s Immaterium has put together a whole lot of stuff – I see Daemonettes, Chaos Hounds, Raptors (or maybe Warp Talons?), Possessed, as well as some Plague Marines and of course Big Daddy himself, a Great Unclean One.

Roberker, Juggerbot and friends.

Mark Morin completed Roberker and Juggerbot, who aren’t a musical duo like Simon & Garfunkel or Hall & Oates, but a pair of death-dealing combat droids. …who only moonlight in the music industry.

The Bureaucultist.

Interrogator Klien Inson

Countess Mandelholtz, of the Mandelholtz House of Imperial Finance.

Kitbasher and converter extraordinaire, Krautscientist from Khorne’s Eternal Hunt has created a trio of Inq28 models for his Ordo Scriptorum retinue. First up was “The Bureaucultist“, followed by Interrogator Klien Inson, and then Countess Mandelholtz.

Here it touches down on a lake of coffee and icing sugar.

Steinberg, of the associated Shed Space put together and also painted a rather cool and impressive looking Steam Wars MDF model of a US Navy Steam Wars Skyship.

Barik Farblast. Ready to blast. Or do some Tromboning.

Faust from Doubledowndice assembled and painted (painting stuff as well is completely fine!) a custom-kitbashed version of that Classic Bloodbowl Dwarf player, Barik Farblast. I initually thought it was a new Forge World model of that character since I’ve not kept up to date on all of the new Bloodbowl stuff, so, you know – great job there!

Wild at Heart: A David Lynch Film starring Gor Half-horn.

Wudugast of Convert or Die put together this pretty amazing rendition of Gor Half-Horn, the newly-released Forgeworld Necromunda Beastman Bounty Hunter. I think in many ways Wudugast’s model is superior to the official Forgeworld model and is a model I’m very likely to rip off draw inspiration from in the near future.

My own limited output was (sorta) shown in yesterday’s post, though I don’t have any group shots.

Did I miss your assembled models for this month? If so, please leave a note in the comments and I’ll add them in. Even if I’ve seen them on your blog, I can’t remember stuff like that by the time I do these round-ups!

And now, back onto getting those Neglected Models of May done!

Renegade Armiger Warglaive.

We now have a late addition from Krautscientist (posted after I went to bed last night but after I scheduled the auto-post for this round-up). A Renegade Armiger Warglaive for and of the World Eaters.

Arthrand Nightblade, Wood Elf Sergeant

The Imperfect Modeller created this fantasy diorama for April’s challenge. Arthrand Nightblade, Wood Elf Sergeant. Since there was no link to the April Challenge post, I missed it until today as I’ve been scrolling through posts from the past few weeks that I may have missed while having foot and knee issues and missing stuff. It’s a lovely and evocative piece that works really well with the Wood Elf, so it’s a shame it missed the initial posting – but better late than never!