Oh boy. Fiber Tablets. Yum Yum

 I kept meaning to get this entry up for several weeks.  Things kept stopping me.  I have started having more responsibilities around the house.  I am now a house husband.  My duties mainly involve watching the kids.  I have become very good at reading my six month old's moods.  Who says a man cannot do women things.  Let's hear it for the Masculinist movement.

 My other batch of M11/39s are now finished.  They came out very well.  I mixed up the dry brushing on the second set.  They look fine and probably appear to be a little more dusty.

I did the camo schemes in what I believe are historically accurate references.  One thing I did notice is that in all the m11/39 pictures I could find none of them had any platoon markings.  They were mostly naked.  It is also amusing that all the pictures are of abandoned or broken down tanks.  So I put recognition markers on the back of the turret but left the platoon symbols at home.  These tanks were fun to paint.

 Here are the completed vehicles for Warfare in the Age of Madness and Manoeuvre Group.  The Hemmt sat on my painting desk for far to long.  The Dew Raiders' vehicles are the Hemmt gun truck, the humvee and the FaV dune buggy thing.  The T54 tank in the background is a generic model.  The Hemmt and the FaV are QrF models.  The humvee is from Flytrap studios.  The owner is a really nice guy.  The T54 is a Peter Pig model. I was really impressed to get crew models with it.  The barrel came out of the bad completely straight and needed no re-positioning.  

The Hemtt is the heavy support and firepower of the Dew Lords.  Whenever the Dew Heralds get into a entanglement the gun truck is radioed in for help.  It carries several rifle teams with machine guns and Laws, a 240B machine gun team and a dismounted Mark 19 team.  Add a forward facing Mark 19, a .50 cal gunner and a rear facing M60.  This gun truck is heavily armed and poses quite a threat to anything but an armored vehicle.  

 All of the Mountain Dew boxes, ammo cans and MrE boxes are plasticard.  The fuel barrel is from Khurasan Miniatues.  The rusty plate steel is also plasticard.  I had to do ALOT of sanding to get this model functional.  All of the crew are Flames of War Vietnam M113 crew.  The same goes for the weapons.  The mark 19 crewman on the front is also Flames of War.  The mount and turret are all scratch built.  The Mark 19 was from the QrF FaV model.  I really like QRF's models.  Be prepared as they were very tricky to assemble.  It took some guess work and I had to look at lots of source photos.  The FaV had an assembly guide on Scale Creep Miniatures webpage.  I would not have gotten that together without it.

I am disappointed that my original idea for the Dew Lords was to have the Dew Heralds on dirt bikes and 4 wheel atvs.  The idea came from the novel 1632.  It is about an alien making a mistake on his course calculation and warping a small mining town in West Virginia to war torn Germany in the middle of the 30 years war.  I may have the name of the book wrong.  The two guys on foot are the scouts that dismount from the FaV.

 The FaV was originally supposed to be several guys on dirtbikes.  That idea died as there are not 15mm models of soldiers on dirtbikes.

 The humvee was originally imagined as two AtVs.  They dismounted as a rifle/Mg team.

 This is the more heavily armed support of the Dew Heralds.  The idea is that the FaV scouts ahead for a cache of Dew.  If they run into trouble they can radio the humvee to provide close support.  The humvee has a rifle/Mg team and a turret mounted .50 cal.  I had lots of fun putting all the Dew in the back of the humvee.  All of the stowage is from the original model.  It was originally intended to be a long range recon special forces vehicle.  The crewmen smoking a cigarette on the back is a Flames of War m113 crew member.  The 50 gunner is from Flytrap.  The first humvee I ordered was lost in the mail.  The owner sent a replacement and added a few random infantry men as an apology.

 The T54 may seem like an odd addition to a post apocalyptic North America.  I justified it by saying that World War III saw a gradual decrease of technology as the war drew into a stalemate.  Initially there was all the high tech weapons but attrition exhausted all of that.  Nations desperate for supplies started to pull older generation tanks out of moth balls.  In Iraq there is a dissident army that has a massive supply of older generation Soviet weapons.  Tons of BmPs and older tanks are sitting in a big field near the Iranian border.  I guess they are waiting for the right moment to invade Iran.  There is plenty of old Russian equipment laying around all over the world.  This particular tank was probably lost in the conflicts.  Some scavengers discovered it and got it working again.  The tank is pretty rusted out but it works.  I would probably limit the main gun ammo as that could be scarce.  Fuel is not an issue because there always seems to be fuel after the apocalypse.

 I have decided to set some painting goals for the end of the year.  My list included these WW2 Australians.  I am just about half way finished with them.

I decided to get into a 28mm game.  Infinity has always been cool and the rules are very enjoyable.  I got a little carried away and bought a little to much.  I have the Ariadna army box with the dismounted Maverick girl and a lot of Nomad models.

 This is a few things for Warfare in the age of madness.  These models will also be generic and useful for any army.
I did not take any pictures of the Greek 6mm stuff I need to paint.  I have decided to do a DbA Spartan force.  It needs 10 spear units, a psiloi and a cavalry.  The good news is that I have psiloi and a suitable cavalry unit.  I did a tally and I have 18 stands of Greek infantry and maybe 3 stands of Greek cavalry to paint.

I am also not buying anything else until I get more stuff painted.  I may consider buying 3 2pdr guns for a WW2 desert scenario.  The fun thing is that I could buy loose 47mm Italian AT guns and use British crew.  The Australians used captured Italian equipment.  They even had several m11/39s.  I am really excited about painting that because they painted giant kangroos all over them.  That was to avoid fratricide.

If anyone knows a good source for Italian tank camouflage in the desert please leave a comment.

Yeah, I know, I see 'em; they're very big. Well, it was fun. I'm gonna go take a nap now and then I think I'm gonna call, uh, some hospitals.

I have been helping a lot with the poopers lately.  My painting projects have been suffering due to this.  I did start a 15mm WW2 desert project recently.  I found a set of rules that work very well for company level skirmishes.  It is called Manouvre Group.  Earlier this year I picked up a PdF copy of Operation Compass from Too Fat Lardies.  It is a scenario book that focuses on the early actions in North Africa.  The opponents are Italians and the various British allies.  There is quite a bit of action and fairness to be had.  I love the Italians in WW2.  So I decided to give in and paint up some Italian vehicles.  Here is the first batch of stuff.  I have another M11/39 batch on the way.  

 This is the M11/39 Italian tank.  It was already obsolete when it got to the desert.  Italian tankers still carried on and used it anyway.  The tank is an odd design.  The 37mm gun in fixed in the super structure of the hull.  It can only traverse 15 degrees to the right or left.  The turret has double machine guns.  The idea was that the turret could engage enemy infantry while the main gun blasted tanks.  It seems like a good idea because (in theory at least) the crew could fire both weapon systems at the same time.  The outcome was pretty bad.  The TC had to much to do.  He had to direct the tank, spot enemy tanks AND infantry and watch the command tank for flag signals.  These tanks had no radios.  The crew compartment was also very cramped.

To add to this dreary tank the hull plates were riveted together.  Every time a round hit the tank (and did not destroy it completely) the rivets would come undone and bounce around inside the tank.  It was a death trap.  As a tanker myself I felt very confident in the M1A1's ability to defeat any round thrown at it.  These tankers knew they were out gunned by the British.  They soldiered on with that knowledge.  This camo pattern is one of several patterns used by the Italians.  There is a recognition marker on the back of the turret of the Italian flag.  I refrained from putting other designations on the tank because all the photos I could find did not have many marking at all.

 This little guy is a L3/35 tankette.  It has twin machine guns.  This vehicle is even worse than the M11/39.  The L3/35 code stands for Light 3 ton / 1935.  It is a light 3 ton tank made in 1935.  You can imagine the M11/39 stands for Medium 11 ton tank made in 1939.  The M13/40 and M14/41 follows the same pattern.  The Italians were not that creative with their vehicle names.  None of them had nicknames.  Well, the 75mm Semovente tank destroyers had names.  Those vehicles had positive accounts from the Italians and even the Germans.  What is interesting about this little tankette is that men drove these into combat against Shermans and Grants.

 L3/35s and M11/39 in convoy formation.

 I gave into impulse and bought a few things for my Italian and Silicy campaign.  These unpainted tanks are Panther V Ds.  I am going to go into more detail with them later.  I made them very muddy.

I played my first game of DbA 3.0 this Saturday.  One guy was very interested in it.  He used to play it with his dad when he was a kid.  The game was between Ming Chinese and Athenian Greeks.  I converted my Irregular Wars troops over to DbA standards.  I got some of my other 6mm forces for Irregular Wars in the mail recently.  I was disappointed because the models were about half the size of the Baccus models.  The company is called Irregular for a reason.  I am tempted to return them.  They are just to small for me to use.  

The battle was a close.  My opponent rolled multiple ones for PiP initiative.  The dice gods were nice to me.  I rolled 4 sixes in a row!!  He could not clean up his lines after they had been disrupted by crossbow fire from the Ming.  My take away is that putting your troops in column can make them much more flexible for where you will battle.  Artillery is very strong when assaulted by cavalry.  I felt like we did something wrong there.  The game was a blast, and I look forward to playing again.  I have a Later Nomadic Mongol army that is currently being assembled for play.  They were racial enemies of the Ming.    

 The Greek setup.  The fields did not affect movement.

The Ming setup.  My Ming forces eventually won.  I got luck due to the Greeks low PiP dicing and strategic application of ranged fire.  It disrupted his battle line enough that the fight was even instead of my blades being overlapped. It was a very close game and I am sure my friend will do better next time.

And be sure to thank Sir Loin for keeping me up all night. Yeah, I do that. Hey, I thought that oysters had shells?

I have some new goodies that I have been working on over the last few weeks.  I have a nice variety this time.  

The first thing on the list today is Warfare in the Age of Madness.  I have started the warband that I am really excited about.  This team is an inside joke between a friend and I that goes back at least 20 years.  I will explain the joke on a later day.  This warband is called the Dew Lords or Dew Scavengers if someone wants to be condescending.  The only focus of these men is to roam the countryside looking for cans of Mountain Dew.  The warband is entirely mobile.  I only have a portion of it.  The last vehicle had some mail issues and has to be resent to me.

 Here is the gun truck built around a HeMMT.  I looked up actual photos and based my design on something used in deployment zones.  I want to add some detail inside.

This dune buggy is one of the teams that scout ahead for Dew stashes and radio in to the convoy for support.  It is very heavily armed but lightly armored.  The HeMMT and the FaV (Fast Attack Vehicle) are from Quick Reaction Force miniatures.  They are a UK based company and have a large variety of vehicles I could not find elsewhere.  My only complaint is that the HeMMT took forever to clean all the flash and excess resin.  The FaV was easier on flash but it took me forever to build it.  I had to go to Scale Creep Miniatures and look up the photo of the instructions.  Even with that it was still challenging.  I would like QrF to put assembly instructions in the bag the FaV comes in.

This is the command stand and the medic stand.  I gave the leader of the Dew Lords an auto shotgun.  The leader is based around my friend.  I modeled myself in the back call the column to a halt while the leader reaches for the radio man's handset.  This force has very good and developed coms.

The last Warfare pic is the mk19 team and an objective marker.  I am happy that this mk19 team is my first successful soldering job.  I have struggles with trying to solder in the past.  I did the mk19 stand with no mistakes!  The stand still needs a gunner.  The objective is a pallet in the road laden down with mountain dew boxes and loose cans.  The other objective will also have mountain dew on it (each competing warband has two objectives on the table for a total of four objectives). 

 Irregular Wars!!  I love this game.  It has so much variety.  I have a load of Ming Chinese to show off.  The first stand is a trained cavalry company.  Ming soldiers wore rawhide armor lacquered red or black.

 Here are some grenadiers with smoking grenades.  There is a spearman covering them in case they get rushed by suicidal Japanese.

 This is the General company based inside a trained cavalry stand.  The yellow triangular flags with the symbol is the official flag of the Ming Dynasty.  The striped flag symbolizes the extent of the control of the Ming..  Yellow stands for center and red, black, white and blue are the cardinal directions.  I am guessing Yellow is the Ming Dynasty and the four colors say it's control covers every direction as far as the eye can see.  The Yellow Dragon flag is a bit of a stretch.  It appears during the Qing Dynasty in the 18th or 19th century.  I included it to make the general's stand pop on the table.
My knowledge about the flags may be wrong.  If someone catches a mistake please let me know.  Chinese heraldry and flags are a hobby of mine.

 Here is the Ming force painting progress.

 I have decided to start my Hostile Realms High Elf army.  These stands are the skirmishing archer elves and their commander.  I based them on 40mm by 80mm plasticard stands.  The smaller circular base is the section's commander.

 This stand is the hero stand.  He has a small escort, a banner and several musicians.  High Elves like to be noticed.  They are haughty after all.

This stand is a High Elf Cavalry unit.  I need to add another row of eight warriors.  They are the Knights of the rising moons.  Every 100 years the twin moons overlap each other.  This is a sacred event for the High Elves as they worship the goddess "The Lady of the Full Moon".
I do not have names for all of these sacred events.  The High Elves are really into all things lunar.


I have been getting over what I think is food poisoning.  It is miserable and I would not wish it on an enemy.  I hope to get some more painting in soon.

I have a Irregular miniatures order arriving in the mail any day.  I will then be able to start a European Age of Discovery army for Irregular wars.  My painting and modeling schedule is as follows:
Ming Chinese - Painting and some modeling
Survivalist warband - modeling and painting
The Dew Lords - modeling and painting
DbMM Greeks - Painting the remaining models

Once I finish all of this I will have a lot of back log finished.  My long term goal is to complete my DbMM 2/5 Later Hoplite Greek force.