Workbench: T35 Death machine

First, a moment of awesome.



See this? This is a Soviet T35. When they built the T28 an engineer came up and asked the designers if they had enough turrets. They curtly replied "Nyet" and sent him to the Gulag. Of course there wasn't enough turrets, IT NEEDED MORE TURRETS. Thus this 100 ton leviathan was born. It had paper thin armor and needed 11 people to operate, but hey, it had more guns than Navarone and was made of awesome. And get this, in later production runs they turned the awesome dial to 11 and installed FLAME THROWERS- Plural. One flame thrower wasn't enough for a tank this cool; they needed more.

It would come up to smaller tanks and go, "hey you there, with your 45 mm gun. Yah, that gun's cool- I had 2, I hear some of your friends have a flame thrower installed too. That's pretty sweet. But look at this... 2 flame throwers. Aw yah, this trash right here is special. I can even do 18 miles per hour and I'm taller than a house. Pretty sweet I know. I can even do wicked sweet back flips. You should check it out sometime." all while hanging out behind a soviet 7-11 sipping on a slurpy and nursing the injury he got in a shallow ditch 'because he wasn't ready dude-GOSH'.

Only 90% were lost in the only action they partook in during the stages leading up to the battle for Moscow to transmission failure alone... and shallow ditches.

But that last 10%- WERE EPIC.




And I digress. Board progress. I actually don't have a more recent photo. The boards are 50% flocked but I didn't photo it. Shame.

Now in technicolor

And for something different:
Nazi war footage of the fight for France.



I have to say it's fascinating and chilling all the same seeing the war from a different perspective and that, despite what our cinema would proclaim, lots of soldiers died, the enemy was competent and resilient, and John Wayne didn't single handedly defeat all of Germany.

Green!

Only had 30 minutes, so I strapped the little adviser on and got what I could done. Seizing time has gotten a bit easier I must admit now that I don't sleight even a scant 10 minutes that might come my way. His feet ended up green though.


Lessons I learned from "Days of Thunder":
Nothing brings about team work between enemies like hating the new guy.
Hardees and Mellow yellow sponsor all of Nascar.
You can always pass someone by going low.
When you see a wreck, speed up.
Rental cars should be used in destruction derbies because there are no consequences.

Master Blaster Rules UGUUuuuu

Approaching the end of this three. After this its painting and flocking.

Nevermind the mess.










Progress was made in part by the helpful observations of Master (to my Blaster). He was completely content to be carried around in the carrier, make observations, and generally drool on things.
It does however make it real hard to wash your hands.



I think my camera on my black berry is really hosing out. The quality of photos coming off of this thing has really dropped off as evident in these photos.

And for something different: The aftermath of Whitman's charge through Viller's Bocage and an assessment of the Tiger tank.

Drydex: It makes boards

The boards are still coming together. Though, I admit the cuts on the foam might not have been as precise as they could have been. They are almost more spackle now than foam.

Board board board board baby

Making progress on the boards. I've found that setting a small amount of time every day is easier to apportion than say, committing a full day to completion.
For one thing, my attention span is a lot easier to corral and with smaller goals its easier to be satisfied.












I'm actually really unimpressed with how the pits on the one end of the board came out. I'll make them a muddy quagmire in the end, but we'll see if it is any sort of recovery. The inspiration came from an episode of Band of Brothers, but they look more like abandoned quarries or something.

"I was a Combat Engineer. Isn’t that ridiculous? The two things I hate most in the world are combat and engineering.” Mel Brooks

More Boards!

You know what surprises me the most about being a father? It's not really hard. It's just time consuming and in many ways its an endurance test. I've really poured onto these new boards, 2'x4' modular, but it's a struggle to find the time and be a responsible father at the same time.

I mean, I certainly don't want Blake sniffing the fumes of the hot wire cutter.

But I digress, here are some progress shots.







For a mule he was remarkably friendly.

Weathering Examples

I can't stress enough about having a good photo reference.

It's the advice I usually don't take either and my poorer paint jobs usually result from it. So here are some of the best examples of "dirty tanks" from my own pic collection to serve as reference for myself or anyone else.

Workbench: Tanks-ahoy

My that's a lot of tanks.

FORESHADOWING?

I'm working out the specifics of painting them... but I think they are coming out acceptably so far. I'll accept any tank that shows improvement from the last.

In the above pics, all those are new except the last 3 in the conga line of death.

Workbench: Tommy Cookers

This is one of those odd situations where the photos don't do it justice, but the tanks came out fantastic aside from some glare from the battlefront decals.

I won't be using them again. They came off the sheet hard, broke frequently, and persistently glare beside it all.
My hands are good enough to paint a white square.


I particularly like the tank on the left. The crew packaged a baseball bat, among other things, to the stowage.

Workbench: Of amber waving grain

Just showing off some more terrain I made.






Check out the explosions in the back ground.

Workbench: Progress on the front

Made some progress. I'm seeing the boards to completion, but there are some serious lessons learned on these boards that will follow to the next iteration.

1. Without wood guards on the edges, getting the insulation foam cut at a perfect 90 degree angle is critically important. A few extra minutes spent on this cut pays off 10-20 fold later on. And even then, corrections later on are inferior.

2. I've heard of it before, but Spray paint and foam should never mingle. Foam sometimes dissolves like coming into contact with the acid blood from Aliens. The roads on the large boards did just this and required extra work.

3. Proper surface preparation and cleanliness is also critical. I skimped on this to some degree and many times flotsam from one board or project would complicate the stage of another.

4. A clear well ordered design stage pays dividends. These boards are following a 16" lowest common denominator (being either 16x32 or 16x16), and while I like the room it gives over 12" and it's not big as 24", in retrospect I wish I went 24".

5. Always test. I like in this I made a slight compromise and did various effects on different sections to see their outcome, and then retrofitted where possible to the others.

Using outdoor paint/primer to give the broad colors.



Spray paint to speed up the details of the rest.



Bringing in some color variation and neutralizing the contrast.



Flocking... Really starting to resemble the color tones of the old ASL boards.




ACTION SHOTS!

Workbench: On the flip side

And on the other side of manic...

When optioned to field terrain boards for a local tourney, I could of took in the more than adequate Warhammer Fantasy boards and decorated them with bocage. Or, I could obsess and take on a project to build some purpose built ones.

Which one did I choose? I chose the obvious one. I chose to refine my art, try some new techniques, and charge into a new set of boards using what I learned from my less than spectacular Battletech board.

Some progress on the 4 test mules:








They're completely modular and interchangeable for numerous permutations. I'll work out the rest of the gaping tonight and maybe even have them painted and flocked. We'll see.

Random trivia: Did you know that Gilligan's Island was modeled after the 7 deadly sins? As confirmed by the show's creator (through various acts of collaboration during production), the professor was pride, Mary Ann envy, Ginger lust, Mr. Howell greed, Mrs. Howell sloth, and the Skipper is Anger/Gluttony.
Who keeps them on the island? Satan himself and the last of the crew; Gilligan.
Think about it.
The corollary didn't seem completely intentional in early preproduction however, but once the comparison was made, they finalized the cast and ran with it as sort of an in joke.

Workbench: Dog ate it

I was going to post up a pic by pic progression of painting some churchills, but alas the Tamiya Olive Drab paint I have turned... gloss. To be fair, it's an old paint.

I now have a shiny Churchill VII that I need to do something with.

So instead, lets have a kickass music video from Talvisota.



Random Trivia: Did you know that the movie Biodome started out as the third film in the Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure franchise? Much of the references to this are littered through out the movie and are nearly unchanged from the original script where Bill and Ted end up in a not so heinous future.

ACROSS THE WIRE AND INTO THE BREACH!

Not much painting, but did get some games in over the weekend.

This particular photo is of a game with Yankyaeger. He's a pro and generally schools me. This match was no exception. It reminded me of the times I'd generally sweep the board in Battletech and Magic. Only now I'm on the recieving end.

He kept a whittling amount of machine gun fire down that alley by the buildings that kept nearly everyone pinned (hence the red markers). I contested the objective (a winning point) for about a turn before being repulsed and never really recovering.

This was the only win of the game (of 3 games) against another fellow whose name evades me for now. I had the option of making a night assault since it was a British thing to do and I took it. After sending a diversionary force to the right to tie up and anchor the right flank, I sent the engineers, led by McCormick himself, into the left flank to breach the wire and assault the bunkers.

The right flank was incredibly successful in tieing up reserve assets from the Germans. I played aggressive on that flank (and the platoon eventually broke morale and ran) and it paid in droves. It argueably won the game by forcing a disproportionate distrubition of German firepower.

However some of the troops had trouble crossing the wire on the left and would have been whittled to nothing by machine gun nest fire had it not been for the night and heavy supporting fire by way of smoke from a 4.2" mortar battery. They proceeded to make the last pivotal battle on the hill as dawn crept over the horizon and a German pioneer platoon began a desperate assault that quite nearly took the hill and put victory in doubt. Bloodied and below half strength, they repulsed the huns in wave after wave.

All in all, I was pretty excited to get a decisive victory for once. Though some credit goes to Yankyaeger since he was giving some incite on how to use the rules to best effect.

Workbench: A taste of things to come.

Turns out I did have a bag piper miniature. He was sulking around in the commandos bits. I wonder if it was a mistake as I have a hard time thinking of an elite spec ops team stealthing their way into enemy territory under the wailing of bag pipe music.

But then again, this seems in line with any Scottish person I've met. They'd probably kick their ass too despite being heard a mile away.

And to the left is a new commander ('McCormick'). Since the last one perished leading an infantry charge into a tightly controlled group of buildings (and, with his death, actually secured the battle and saved the lives of two other platoons marching through a stream bed against MG42 fire), I figure a new commander was in order.
This ultimate bad ass is complete with a 1911 and his ultimate bad ass friends to protect him (shooting thompson guy and waving to attack rifle dude). The meta story I suppose is that he's part of the crew that was assaulting the creek.

Perhaps this also will look more appropriate since the last assault was led by a model that was essentially a staff team.



And the other project.

Queue Isengard music.