Painting Flames of War Grant Platoon

I have been building my Mid-War forces so decided to add a Grant Platoon.

First time I have tried some aging. Used a foam piece with grey paint. Took most of the paint off then applied little amounts to high traffic areas to look like paint chips.

This is a close up to see the paint chips.

Painted: 5
Total for 2017: 359
Working on:  Heavy gear space ships, Palace Guards, Wood Elves, Hunter Orcs, and Fimbul.

Painting Lord of the Rings. (Cave Troll)

I tried to paint the Cave troll. I kind of add lib so it probably does not look like a Cave troll.

Basically a lot of highlighting a layering. I had to mix pink with brown for the light skin and I used Grey Green for the dark skin.

Painted: 1
Total for 2017: 354
Working on:  Grants tanks, Heavy gear space ships, Elves, Evil men, Hunter Orcs, and Fimbul.

Painting Lord of the Rings. (Giant Eagles)

Last week we went to FDB located in Gatineau, Quebec. In my opinion they have great prices. Usually the US dollar equivalent in Cdn dollars.

FDB

Anyway, they had a table of left over stuff for LOTR and some other LOTR stuff, so I ended up buying some Great Eagles. I will eventually need to buy the Beorn model and one more set of Eagles for my Radagast's Alliance war band.

Again there is a great 20 step tutorial on how to paint the Giant Eagles.

Tale of Painters

I find his tutorials extremely detail and very helpful for a beginner painter as he explains how to do pretty well everything.

Again I used a mix of Vallejo and Citadel.

Here are the eagles

This is Radagast's Alliance so far.

Painted: 2
Total for 2017: 353
Working on:  Cave troll, Grants tanks, Heavy gear space ships, Elves, Evil men, Hunter Orcs, and Fimbul.

Painting Lord of the Rings. (Goblins from Moria)

So as you know Mike and I have been on a Lord of the Rings painting spree. I have mostly painted goblins and Thorin's Company as this came in a box set.

Mike gave me some goblins from Moria to paint. Can't really beat that price, so I decided to keep on painting some Goblins. The goblins from Moria are very different than the Goblins in the Mountain, so I checked a couple of You-tubes and settled for this one.

Painting Goblins from Moria

I like to follow step by step approaches. Not much of a paint from a picture and guess the paints.

The biggest problem with painting Lord of the Rings is that all the how to files use Citadel paints. Kind of makes sense as Games Workshop sells these miniatures.

Anyway, I usually use a colour conversion chart in order to match the paints. If I can not get a match I just look up the citadel paint colour and mix my vallejo model color to as close as I can.

The paint I used for the Goblins are

Skin = Middlestone Vallejo 882
Armour = Dark Gunmetal from my Team Yankee collection. If you do not have then mix Gun metal Vallejo 862 with some black.
The undergarments are painted with Flat Red, Vallejo 957.

Once you have the model painted I used the Nuln Oil shade. This is basically a black shade. You paint the entire model with this shade. Kind of gives a dirty look.

The last step is to highlight. You highlight the highest point of each colour. The cheap way to highlight is to add white to the colours above.

Here is what it looks like

Again I just followed the You-tube link above. Not really hard.

Painted: 23
Total for 2017: 351
Working on:  Eagles, Cave troll, Grants tanks, Heavy gear space ships, Elves, Evil men, Hunter Orcs, and Fimbul.

Flames of War Firestorm BAGRATION Turn 3

Our next campaign turn is on 3 December. After turn 2 the victory points are 140 in favour of the Germans, So the Soviets need to start taking cities.

I am hoping to have at least 7 battles.

Here is the start state map.

As you can see the Germans have three towns that are surrounded. This could be bad or good depending on the die roll.

So the following map is the locations of the Units after exploitation and strategic moves.

The German commander needed to get some lucky dice rolls to ensure that they had more attacks then last turn. The first two attacks were won by the Soviets, followed by the next three for the Germans and the six and seventh Soviet and German respectively. So three attacks for the Soviets and 4 for the Germans.

This is where the attacks are located.

So I will need to know who is playing to set up the battles.

Painting Lord of the Rings. (Radaghast the Brown)

I have been painting a lot of Lord of the Rings miniatures lately. (Blame Mike) I have been trying some different painting techniques. Been looking at a lot of turtorials. One I found that I really like is from a site called tale of painters

taleofpainters.blogspot.ca

His tutorials are very detail and extremely well done.

I did not buy all the citadel paints as I have a lot of Vallejo. So I just looked at the colour and did some mixing.

I was trying to achieve something close to the Games Workshop picture.

This is an awesome picture so I do not think that I can fully achieve this. I have done a better job with the eyes. (basically had to use a lens on a lens to really get the details)

So this is what I was able to achieve using the 28 step approach of tales of painters blog.

Hope you like.

Painted: 1
Total for 2017: 328
Working on:  Goblins, Cave troll, 5 Grants tanks, some Heavy gear space ships.

Painting Lord of the Rings. (Terrain from Escape from Goblin Town)

We have been playing a lot of Lord of the Rings lately. So I promised to paints some Goblin town terrain. Basically wood platforms with lots of bones.

Close up of throne

Seen from the side

Close up of platform from the top.

Close up of ladder and two story platform

This is one of the six entrances.

A view of most of the platform.

Painted: 10
Total for 2017: 327
Working on:  Goblins, Cave troll, 5 Grants tanks, some Heavy gear space ships.

Flames of War Firestorm BAGRATION Battle report

At the club we have been playing Firestorm BAGRATION. This is the Soviet offensive on the Eastern front fought between  22 June and 19 August 1944.

This campaign can be played with 6 turns or 4. The club decided to play the 4 turn campaign. The following map is the start state of the operation. 

The first turn of the campaign saw 2 wins for the Germans and 4 for the Soviets. This was the map after the first turn.

As can be seen the Soviets have made some gains. The stage for turn 2 was set. The generals rolled off and this gave the first 2 attacks to the Germans and the next 5 to the Soviets. It was decided to only play the first 5 games as some players had gone to Fall In. So this gave only three attacks for the Soviets.

This was the plan

Remember that battles 6 and 7 did not happen.

So the out comes of the battles were the following.

Battle 1 saw Bernard (Germany) attack Duncan (Soviet). This was a hard fight and both sides fought to a draw. The German's had a Tiger firestorm and the Soviets had a T-34/85 Firestorm. Here are some pictures of the battle.

The next photo is the terrain.

The soviets have a defensive position bottom left in the village.

Germans advance slowly from top of map.

Soviet have a blocking position.

End of battle with a draw.

Battle 2 was the second game for Serge and the first for John. This was a German attack in a swamp. The German's had and aircraft as Firestorm troop and the Soviets had and Arty. John had designed a Fortified platoon but was not allowed to use as this was not in a City, so I lent him my IS-02 Company. My intent was to wait for the IS-02 to show up and use my Panzers  IVs to flank the IS-02s and Kill them with either my Panthers or the Panzer IVs. 

The photo above is the only photo I have of the battle. I managed to flank the IS-02s as can be seen bottom left, but the KVs took out my Panther and the Panzer IVs managed to hit the IS-02, but they managed to make most of their saves. So in the end this was a Stunning Soviet Victory.

Battle 3 was Kevin (Soviet) attacking Jeff (German). For some reason Kevin did not bring his two Firestorm troops. Jeff had a Panzer IV Firestorm. Kevin decided to bring a mostly T34 list. So this was a lot of tanks. Jeff managed to kill many tanks, but in the end I ended up being a Stunning Soviet Victory.

Here are some photos

Battle 4 was Serge (Soviet) attacking Nick (German). I had two T3/85 Firestorm troops and Nick had an Arty Firestorm troop. I decided to bring my IS-02 list unfortunately Nick did not have a lot that could kill this list. Nick brought in Marders from reserve and managed to shoot the IS-02 in the side armour with no effect, just to have his Marders destroyed the next turn. He sprung his ambush, but also had marginal success not managing to kill a T34/85 troop. The objective was taken on turn 7 and was a Stunning Soviet victory.

Here are some pictures. This is the German defensive position. The objectives are top left.

The soviets make slow progress. Bottom left. Six IS-02s and Three KV 1Es moving from right to left.

As can be seen from the next picture, the IS-02 and KVs are close to the first objective and the T34/85 to left are close to another objective.

The next picture show that the MG platoon on the centre objective have been destroyed and the T34/85s have taken the second objective.

The Germans made a valiant effort to push the T34s from the objective but with no success.

The last battle was battle 5 and had Jay (Soviet) attacking Chris (German). This was a very long battle and the game was called after four hours with a Soviet tactical victory.

Here are some pictures.

So not a very good night for the German side. The Germans fail to win both their fights and the Soviets won all three.

So this is what the map looks after turn 2 attacks. It looks grim for the Germans as the Soviets have surrounded three cities and three zones. The good news is that there will be seven battles next turn and four have gone to the Germans. So hopefully they will be able to resupply their troops before losing these important cities.

After turn 2 the victory points are 140 in favour of the Germans.

My next post will show the turn three battles.

Hope you are enjoying the campaign.

Serge

Painting Lord of the Rings. (Terrain from Escape from Goblin Town)

I started painting the terrain pieces. There is the entire goblin platform and the throne.

The first piece I painted was the throne.

I used a lot of highlighting for the stone and wall.

Painted: 1
Total for 2017: 317
Working on:  Continue with the terrain from the hobbit escape from goblin town box set