Kampfgruppe Emmenthaler

Hi all,
thought I'd take and post up some pictures of my completed late war SS Kampfgruppe Emmenthaler. This my first ever 20mm project (not counting the boyhood dabbling in Airfix)and I think it's turnned out quite well for a first attempt.

Having said that I've wanted to do some rapid fire wargaming in 20mm for years and to that end I have squirreled away various plastics kits and diecasts in 1/72 scale for some years. Getting my hands on a box of Valiant Germans finally got this project going (and kept it cheap). To keep costs down I decided to use as much of my hoard of kits as I could the result is something that resembles one of those horrible cheesy/power gamer armies that German players are always accused of. Loads of big cats and elite panzer grenadiers. To balance things out and prove I'm not some sort of uber gamer my next two Kampfgruppe are going to be based around a infantry battalion and a Volks grenadier regiment.

Anyway on to the photos all infantry are Valiant 1/72 plastic miniatures and the vehicles are from all over the place I'll try and give details if I can remember the source.

The whole Kampfgruppe laid out.

Kampfgruppe HQ led by Oberst Emmenthaler decide on their next move. The radio truck is a conversion of an old Esci Opel ambulance the car is a Ready to Roll resin. The table is scratch built.

Sdkfz222 from the Kampfgruppe HQ, an old Airfix model with a valiant crewman

SP 37mm AA attached to the HQ to give some cover from allied air power. Model is Haswega(?) with Valiant crewman.

The inevitable Panther tanks, these are re-painted diecasts off the front of a magazine about tanks sold in the UK last year.

Attached Tiger 1s from one of the SS heavy tank battalions. Again re-painted diecasts from a magazine. these came with the first issue and cost £1.99 each bargain!

Mobile fire support in the form of a Stuka zum fuss plus a spotter in a kubelwagen. Esci made the half track with rockets and Airfix the Kubel. Lack of research meant I stuck a crewman in the halftrack a few weeks latter I found out the crew retired a safe distance and fired the rockets remotely ...........

Panzer grenadier battalion HQ , the car is from the Ready to roll range

panzer grenadier company with truck. the Opel blitz is again a resin Ready to roll vehicle. I really like the ready to roll stuff cost wise they cost the same as plastic kits but there is none of the annoying sticking together to do.

The second Panzer grenadier company.

The third panzer grenadier company.

The Machine gun company and truck. the Ford truck is another Ready to roll offering.

Well that's the lot I really enjoyed this project and still have loads of Valiant Germans left so more Kampfgruppe are on the way.

Cheers Jon

Servants of the old ones.

Well I've finally finished my old school Slann army for WFB 3rd edition. Of course finished is a subjective term as there are still somethings I'd like to add as time and money allow. That aside the army is now 2000pts + and all painted so it's a gameable army.

Collecting an army that the models are all OOP for has been interesting. Slann models turn up on ebay quite alot but prices can get very silly (for example a load went on ebay tonight at around £8.00 a model). So collecting has been a case of watching ebay carefully and bidding carefully. In the end I've also looked around for suitable proxies when possible and picked up quite a few damaged miniatures of ebay that I've worked on to bring them up to scratch.

Anyway below are pictures of the whole force (for now)

Above the whole army displayed in all it's glory

The armies main character models, notice the pygmy shaman (a Gazpez Arts model) at the front hopefully the first member of a full ally contingent.

A slann mage on his litter mage priest is from Gazpez Arts, while his slaves are from The Assault Groups (TAG) Aztec range.

Lesser Slann mage an original citadel miniature

A conversion of a TAG eagle knight into a Slann eagle knight

A slann war leader again another original Citadel miniature.

Lizardmen subjects fighting for their Slann overlords. Original 1980s Citadel miniatures some converted to carry TAG Aztec spears and a converted standard bearer.

Human Slave troops from TAGs Aztec range led by a Citadel Slann slave master.

A Slann spawn band. Mostly various Citadel Slann miniatures with a couple of converted Grenadier miniatures frog folk. Extra shields from GW lizardmen and a converted musician using a broken blowpiper and a plastic beastman horn.

Troglodyte subject troops fighting for the Slann. These are early 80s pore-slotta Citadel miniatures.

Venom tribe Slann from the jungles of Lustria. Highly coloured and very poisonous. Again original citadel Slann both pre and post slotta.

Slann beast handler and cold one hounds. A very rare limited release model from Citadel. I may have to proxy some different coldone hounds though (maybe some 28mm raptors) as I can't get any more coldone hounds to match these two.

Slann scouts with blowpipes. the watery bases came about from having a model who had broken of his base at the ankles so I made look like he was standing in water and carried the theme across all the bases. Again these figures are all old Citadel.

Bull Slann cold one riders, hard hitting Slann cavalry. These guys are all Citadel the unit leader is a very old pre-slotta early Slann.

Well that's it for now, I have plans for a few extras. A pygmy ally contingent, some Slann priests, a war alter and a baggage train (which are a feature of 3rd edition armies) and perhaps a unit of jungle braves.

Cheers Jon

Beards and Beer

Well the undead are almost finished so yesterday I made a start on the Christmas present a new Dwarf army from Mantic for WFB 3rd edition.

I bought a Dwarf Army set and a the Mantic dwarf heroes set which gave me enough stuff for a 2000pt army.

http://www.manticgames.com/Shop-Home/Dwarfs/Dwarf-Army-Set/Product/Dwarf-Army-Set-85-Figures.html

Normally this would cost £64.00 (which isn't a bad price for a 200pts army anyway) but a bit of wheeling dealing on e-bay I got both for just under £50.00.

I've stuck most of the army together and tried out a sample paint scheme (bottom two pictures) which I think came out well and will be using across the whole army.

Looking around on the net it seems Mantic dwarves are getting very mixed reviews. Personally I like the style as it's more in keeping with the old imperial dwarf look of 3rd edition WFB. The newer GW dwarfs don't really do it for me with the whole belly and feet look. Having said that some of the sculpting is very soft on the Mantic dwarves especially along the side son the models where the two halves of the moulds presumably meet.

One model in particular in the set I didn't like was the cannon. The barrel looked a bit rubbish really small and not very imposing. So I fished around in my bits box and came up with a spare GW great cannon barrel. I scraped of the imperial carvings and glued the barrel to the Mantic gun carriage then added some details in green stuff to cover up some joins, gaps and knife damage. the results can be seen in the top four pictures.

Overall I think the Mantic dwarves are great and the army deal is excellent value for money. My only disappointments where the artillery and there could have been one command sprue in the set to give all three main infantry units a command. As it is I used my bits box to scrape a third command group together, more of which later.

Now I've just got to paint 90+ dwarves...........

Cheers Jon

German Infantry

Having finished my first Rapid Fire battle group (the obligatory SS panzergrenadiers and big cats). I have now started on the next battle group based around a bog standard German late war infantry battalion.

These models were finished a couple of weeks ago and are about half the battalions infantry component. I still have 16 more infantry, 2 machine guns, a 81mm mortar and a couple of guns from the regimental support companies to paint up.

These guys are valiant 1/72 miniatures a mix of the classic Germans and Germans in Normandy box sets. I want to use plenty of zeltbahns on these guys and paint them in Heer splinter pattern. I found a great painting guide here

http://www.elhiemfigures.com/files/splinter.pdf

I think the camo has gone quite well all though it seems to show up less in the photos than when your holding the models in hand.

Cheers Jon

Night of the Living Dead

Hi all,

well I've been forced by the Doctor to take some time off work to allow my back to heal properly, the pain has subsided to manageable level but boredom has set in big time. So the last couple of days I thought I'd try some painting and see if the back could cope with sitting in one position for a long time (it can't). What I found is I could do small amounts (about half an hour at a time) before I had to get up and move around or do something else for a while to stop my back stiffening up.

So for the last couple of days I've done some painting in short bursts and managed to add a couple more units to my growing undead horde and stop my brain turning to mush watching day time telly all day.

The top pictures are zombies built from the Mantic Zombie set. I was a little disappointed when I first got them. As there are only a couple of bodies and legs available I thought they'd end up looking to regimented. However with careful choices of heads and arms plus body positions you can build quite a lot of different zombies with just a few parts. I also used some spare arms and hands from the Mantic ghouls set for extra choice and a few spare bits from the Mantic skeletons set to build the command group. Mantic now make a zombie command group but it really isn't hard to make your own.

Painting wise I tried to keep the colours close to the rest of my undead army (IE black,red,brown and bone) but I varied the skin tones so they could be told apart from my ghouls, who are also covered in blood and wearing filthy rags . Being zombies I felt it was perfectly acceptable to go over the top with the Hollywood style blood effects which I think have worked out okay.

The bottom pictures are some ghosts for my spirit host. Basically I used some old pre slotta undead citadel minis from bits box that I've had for decades. I thought about buying some miniatures but figured ghosts could look like anything so just saved myself some money and used what I had lying about. These have to be the simplest paint job ever. Paint miniature totally grey, green ink wash all over and heavy dry brush of white paint simple but pretty effective I think.

Next up are some skeleton archers.

Cheers Jon