First Installment Done!

Well,

The first installment of our little paint challenge is complete, as you may remember I am doing US Airborne and this first group is all Artizan Design figures. I have to say that these figures were fun to paint, they have just enough detail and they just seem to paint up quickly. So here you go, first up is my HQunit.

Next up is the 10 man squad of veterans, once again all these figures are Artizan Design figures.

Here is a shot of the whole group, all 249 points worth in all their glory!

 So with the first installment done, time to think of the next batch, so here is what I will be painting for this next month.

So I will be painting two more airborne troops with BAR's (36 points), one airborne troop with SMG (16 points), a 60mm light mortar team (46 points), a 75mm Howitzer (60 points) and lastly a 57mm Anti-tank gun (90 points). The 75mm Howitzer and the 57mm Anti-tank gun are from Warlord, the rest are Artizan Designs. So stay tuned until next month on the paint challenge.

So besides my first installment, I have been very painting. I am working on a large Chaos commission over at SPS and in the last week I completed 21 Plague Marines, 10 Obliterators, 20 Chaos Cultists and  Agis Defense line. I also completed these seven stand of American Bazookas for my Flames of War American mid war army (Here you go Robert!)

So there you go, January is in the books and I would say I am off to a good start...

TK

Soft Kitty, Warm Kitty...

 No this blog post is not about The Big Bang Theory, but the new Plastic Soldier Company kit I picked up the other day, that's right, I bought the German Tiger I Tank kit.

As some readers know, I really really like the tanks by Plastic Soldier Company (PSC) and they have many great things going for them. First up, the are affordable (5 tanks for $30.00), secondly they are great looking models. Thirdly with each kit, you can usually make three or more variants depending on what your trying to do. Lastly they are affordable, yeah I know, I already said this, but I think this is a huge benefit!

The kit includes enough to build 4 Tiger I's for either early, mid or late production models. The kit includes nice instructions that show you how it all goes together and shows which pieces to use for each variant. Since I will be adding these to my Tunisian force for Mid war, I choose to build the first one as a mid production tank. The nice thing with this kit, is that the hatches on the turret as well as the hatches on the turret can all be modeled open and the kit comes with figures for you to have crew sticking out.

 It took about 10 minutes to assemble the first kit and it went together without any issues. So once I got it all together, I wanted to see how it stacked up against a Battlefront Tiger. So I busted out the only Tiger I had, which was an old Battlefront Tiger from back in the FoW 1st edition days. Here is how they look side by side, the Battlefront is on the left while the PSC is on the right

 

So after building the first model, I think that PSC has got another winner on their hands and I can see more of these tanks on my table soon. I look forward to getting some paint on this kitty real soon.

You may have noticed that this year I am keeping track of my win loss record with each game I play. My buddy Robert over at DrunkenSamurai did this last year and I thought I would take a crack at it. And as you can see, I am 3-0-1 in Flames of War which means that Flames of War is getting a lot of table time this year. Robert and I have gotten in 4 games thus far. We are also going to be doing a mini campaign re-fighting El Guettar, so I will need to keep track of the wins.

Oh and last thing, I will have my 250 points up on Feb 1st for the paint challenge so check back in a few days to see my first installment for Bolt Action...

TK

Tale of Three - It Begins!

Welcome folks to 2013 and to the newest Paint challenge that I have cooked up for a few buddies this year. Some of you may have remembered when myself and three other buddies did the "Tale of Four Lord of the Rings Players" back at the beginning of 2012. Well with a new year, comes a new challenge.

As I posted last year our little gaming group has been waiting for Bolt Action to come out, well it did last September and our group has loved playing it. So I cooked up another challenge to get three of us to paint up 3 new 1000 point armies for BA. So here is the gist of our little event:

We will be building up to 1000 points in about four months with 250 points each month. The challenge is to only do 250 points each month. You can do less than that but no more than 250 points each month. Now if you come up short points for each month, you can carry over the points to the next month. Example is you build 235 points this month, the following month you can add the extra 15 points to that month. So here is the schedule that each one of us will be following:

 Start Date: January 1st
 1st Installment Due: February 1st, 250pts
 2nd Installment Due: March 1st, 500pts
3rd Installment Due: April 1st, 750pts
 4th Installment Due: May 1st, 1000

 Our “Prize” for winning the challenge is twofold, first up we each get a new 1000 point army painted up for the game! Secondly we will celebrate by having a BBQ with a few adult beverages and throw down a game or two, a perfect prize for this challenge.

The challengers this year are:

Myself (Duh!) US Airborne
Jerry from Jerry's Big Picture doing Russians
Mike from Da Green Skins Doing US Infantry

So with the stage of players set and this being January 1st, I had to get started on my first installment. Now since the US army book is not out yet here in Phoenix, I will be starting with the US Airborne list in the main rulebook. So I dugout all my miniatures and started planning.

Artizan Designs and Bolt Action Figures awaiting paint!

 So first up would be the HQ. So I choose a 1st Lieutenant Veteran armed with a Thompson SMG at 90 pts. I then added two Veterans armed with Thompson's for another 26 pts, making the HQ unit 116 pts.

 Artizan Designs miniatures

This left me with 134pts to play with so I went with a 10man Veteran squad with the NCO armed with a Thompson for 133pts. I wanted a full 12man stick, but I was going over the 250 a month guideline we set.

10 man Airborne squad from Artizan Designs

So that gave me 249 points with one point to carry over to next month, man Veteran Airborne troops cost a lot!

 

So there you go, 13 figures for 249 points, not too bad to paint in one month. I shudder to think how many troops Jerry is going to have to paint since Russians get a free squad to start with! So stay tuned folks for more updates on how it is going and make sure to check out Jerry and Mikes blogs. Also Judson over at BoltAction.net has run an article on what we are doing, so make sure to check in there as well.

TK