Work in Progress: Flames of War Heavy Tanks

While my terrain design project has certainly distracted me, I’ve still been making some slow but steady progress on more Flames of War. Like the Panzer III these are models that I love the look of, but wouldn’t spend the time and money to build a whole new army around – I’m just doing these for fun, and to look cool in my display case. I have a bunch of different vehicles in the pipeline already, but these two are the farthest along:

This is actually the first of a platoon of four Tiger Is, a project I had planned to have done in November for a Tanksgiving event that sadly didn’t materialize. This is the furthest along of the bunch – dullcote and weathering are the only two major steps remaining. The model itself is from Plastic Soldier Company, and while I’ve been quite impressed with the other sets of theirs I’ve tried, the Tiger box is probably my favorite yet. Fantastic in terms of finish, detail and ease of assembly, with lots of options too. The only change I made was to shorten the pegs holding the outer roadwheel components to make the tracks “stick out” more. This looks more correct to me, but when I did a bit of research during the build I saw pictures of Tigers with quite a bit of variation on how far the tracks stuck out (possibly some were still using the narrower tracks used during long-distance transport?) so as far as I can tell neither answer is wrong. Now I just need to get the other three caught up to this one…

This is a more traditional resin and metal miniature – Battlefront’s IS-2 obr. 1944. I love the look of a lot of the Russian heavy tanks and assault guns – hulking slabs of steel with truly massive guns. This one is almost as far along as the Tiger, despite being started more recently. I’m going to be adding some of the prominent white recognition stripes on the turret seen on Soviet vehicles right near the end of the war and the Battle of Berlin in particular.

And in Epic news, I recommend you take a look at some of Troublemaker Games latest work on their second Indiegogo campaign – they’re adding a bunch of stuff that helps fill in some of the gaps left behind in the Epic range. It’s running for a few more days and I’m trying to avoid being tempted into pledging more – there’s more that I want but paying in Pounds isn’t helping my wallet.

Thanks for reading!

-Chris

Afrika Korps Panzer III

You know when I said no more tiny Germans?

I lied.

But c’mon, tanks don’t count. Tanks are always cool! And certainly easier to paint than 15mm infantry (sorry, PBI).

Looking at our giant wall of Flames of War blisterpacks, I realized that there are tons of cool tanks and vehicles that I would love to collect and paint, but that I would never build a whole army featuring. So why not just collect the ones I like? This Panzer III is the first I’ve finished of my new “tiny tank museum”. The small scale means that it’s cheaper, quicker to paint and easier to store than collecting armor models in a more traditional “display” scale like 1/72 or 1/35, and since I don’t need to worry about painting up tank after tank to build a workable army I can take the time to add more detail than I normally would for FoW models. Take a look…

I say Flames of War but strictly speaking this model is from Plastic Soldier Company. All the PSC products I’ve tried have been excellent quality and fantastically priced, and I’d recommend them to anyone playing FoW.

I’ve tried out a couple techniques that either are new to me or that I haven’t used on a model like this – in particular the sponge-applied chipped paint and the use of a solvent-based pigment sealer (by MIG Productions). I’m quite pleased with both. The sealer does a much better job maintaining the color of the weathering pigments compared to my old method using Dullcote and will be my go-to solution in the future.

The exhaust manifolds were painted with two Vallejo Panzer Aces colors – Light and Dark Rust. While most Panzer Aces colors are too dark to use with models as small as 15mm, these two (along with a few others like Canvas) are great for all sorts of things in almost any scale.

I already have some more one-off Flames of War tanks awaiting paint, and have an extensive list in my head of more that I’d like to add. Forcing myself to wait until I have more done…wait, I just finished one! So that must mean I should buy another new one, right?

Right?

Thanks for reading!

-Chris

3D Stuff: New Turret Renders

Here we have a brief overview of some of the new parts I’ve been working on. These turrets are designed to work with the hull from the Cruiser Light Tank from Dark Realm Miniatures (the hulls used in the render image are just mockups I slapped together). I may do a custom hull of my own later, but for now I’ve just done the turrets to represent the vehicles in the Epic Imperial Guard range I’d like to use.

Some of these will hopefully be suitable for casting – the artillery pieces for example are designed with the gun/rockets as separate pieces. Some I may just need to use the 3D-printed turrets directly (I have no idea how to cast the AA turret). Fortunately for many of these I would only need three to complete a unit so hopefully the per-unit cost will be relatively low.

On a related note, I’ve received the first prototype from Shapeways for my Main Battle Tank design! It’s pretty cool to see something that only existed digitally transformed in all its tiny tank glory. Unfortunately the model suffered from some technical issues on the printer’s side so the company is reprinting the design for me – hopefully once the new one arrives I’ll have some pictures for you. In the meantime, having this printed example has shown me a lot about how my designs translate to real objects and I’m already at work on an updated model. Some of the detail needs to be a bit bulkier in order to look ‘correct’ on a 6mm-scale miniature.

Thanks for reading!

-Chris

Flames of War Gallery: 7th Armoured

Today I was at work installing a new display case at the store, and I thought that I should take the time to shoot some new photos of my Flames of War collection while I was moving everything to its new home. So here’s my British 7th Armoured tank company for Late War. It’s been a little while since I finished these (and the last time I had them out for a game was almost as long ago!) so looking back, there’s a few things I would change if I were to do it all again. But I’m still proud to put them down on the table, and I won’t be reworking the army too much anytime soon – unless Battlefront sees fit to grace us with some new models (c’mon Comets….)