Category Archives: Historical Gaming

From the Painting Desk #6 – Bolt Action T-34/85, Citadel Spirit Hosts (Ghosts)

by

4

A couple of weeks ago, I bought a bunch of Bolt Action kits from Warlord. After checking out the T-34s, I noticed that the kit wasn’t especially complex, and so perfectly suitable to start and actually finish as well, since I’ve got a habit of ..not finishing everything I start. When my DeadZone stuff arrived this week and I found that they missed the additional rulebooks and a few other things, I had a bit of a rage for a bit, and then decided to start assembling the tanks to get my mind off it. I thought I took some photos, but this is where I’m up to at this point:

A trio of Warlord Games T-34/85

Basically, all assembled excepting the final assembly of the two halves of the hull, and the turret will just pop on. I’d have magnetised it, but I didn’t think of that until after I’d assembled the two turret halves, so…

The tanks have been sprayed with PSC Russian Armour, airbrushes with a 50:50 mix of VMA Russian Green and Camo Light Green, followed by a 70:30 mix. My airbrush skills are awful still, or maybe its the cheap POS airbrush I have. Either way, the results are far from impressive. Once that was done, a 50:50 mix of VMC Russian Uniform and Army Painter Camo Green for a final-ish highlight. Next will be some sandy/buff colours for weathering. Tracks got a coat of Vallejo Panzer Aces Track Primer with a drybrush of VMA steel over the top.

I still need to hit the whole thing with PSC weathering spray and have a play with weathering powders and the like. Add some decals and then finish them. Hopefully next update!

The other thing I’ve been doing today was opened up a care package from a mate. Quite a lot of loot in there, along with something I totally was not expecting – ghosts!

Citadel Spirit Host Ghosts on Back to Base-ix bases.

The ghosts were mounted three each to several goblin green-painted 40mm square bases. I pried them off immediately, and after a bit of faffing about, decided to mount them on some Back to Base-ix resin “ruins” bases I bought years ago. I felt they raised the Marine figures up too high from the “ground” and so never used them for the original intent, but they work perfectly with these undead. The weight of the resin also stops some of the more lop-sided members of the gang from toppling over.

Ghosts – Sprayed and freshly washed

After mounting them, I took them outside the hit them with some Rustoleum Heirloom White. You can’t really see it here, but it’s a slightly off-white with a slight touch of coffee brown to it. Better for projects like this than pure white. I mixed up a suitably-ethereal coloured paint wash using a mix of Citadel’s Lahmian Medium and Gauss Blaster Green. Stupid names, yes, but the paint being fit for purpose is all I care about.

ooOOooo ooOOo O OOo

They’re outside now. I was going to start on the bases right after I did this, but decided to seal them with gloss varnish, since it was a bright warm sunny day – so wanted to take full advantage of that. That stuff dries much much faster in the sun. This way I can work on them tonight, and maybe even finish them off. It’ll just be the bases and some touch-up work – then a coat of matt. Also hoping to have those T-34s finished tomorrow, or perhaps the following day…

…then I can get back to the grind of my other half-finished projects. Gondor, ahoy!

Review – DUST Airfield Accessory Pack – Quonset Huts

by

1

I’ve looked at these in the past, when I got some of these models as part of one of the DUST campaign sets – Operation Icarus. Basically, I liked the models so much that I bought a standalone set as well. While playing a game of KoW recently against Marouda, I decided to open and assemble the set while I waited for her to make her agonisingly slow move. This is the result.

DUST – Airfield Accessory Pack – Quonset Huts

While they’re sized for DUST to take up a terrain square each, they can easily be butted up against one another for more realistic, longer huts.

They come stacked up in the box.

Unlike the ones that come with Operation Icarus, these ones do not come assembled.

End-Walls

They do come separated from the sprue though, and pretty nicely clean – making assembly a doddle.

Slide the two walls in and you’re assembled!

With a bit of plastic cement, I went from opening the box to having them all assembled inside 10 minutes.

 

Just after taking the last shots, I went outside with a rattle can of Rust-Oleum spray in Nutmeg and had them all base coated. When the weather fines up for a little while at a time I can spray again (like, when I’m not at work!) I’ll give them a second light coat. Then I’ll spray on a bit of olive green and such. What I’m getting at is that they’re as easy to paint up as they are to assemble. And if I weren’t so anal-retentive at times they’d already be “good enough”. (Gotta do the window frames and such before I can call them “finished”, you see!)

As an inexpensive box of easily-assembled and easily painted terrain, I can’t recommend them highly enough. I’ll show them again once they’re 100% finished, which is more down to the current winter weather here in Melbourne making spraying difficult and proper photography a depressing proposition. I’ll (probably) get around to using them for DUST at some stage, but I like them because they’re flexible enough to be used anywhere in games set from WWII right up to modern times and beyond. Since my vision of that 41st Millenium that’s so popular encompasses architecture beyond the current aesthetic of incredibly gaudy pieces, or Eagle Turrets with Penis Cannons, I’m very happy to include terrain pieces like these on my personal 40k battlefields as well.

Recommended!