Yet another basing method

I have tried a few different ways of doing my bases so I would like to show you the way I prefer at the moment.

This first part deals with the basic ground to which different types of  materials can be added depending on the type of terrain that is emulated, but it works fine uncovered for deserts and similar grounds

Unfortunately I don't have any pictures of bases showing the groundwork under the flock right now...

Quick Forged in Battle review

I’m working a bit on a MW 5th SS Panzergrenadier list so I’m currently struggling with painting planetree camo on Battlefronts excellent MW SS figures.

But since that range is somewhat limited (to only one panzergrenadier platoon blister in fact), I’ve been looking around for some alternatives and found FiBs SS range.

So here are some notes and photos of what they have to offer.

Highlight on lighting

Standard 60W Bulb

I’ve been blaming the lack of quality of my pictures on the lack of good lighting so I went ahead and got myself a Daylight Spotlight and did some comparisons.

Below are two unedited (except some cropping and scaling) pictures of the difference between a standard 60W bulb and the Spotlight.
The pictures were taken in macro mode against a white paper with just the ambient light of the room in addition to the lamp.

23W Daylight Spotlight

Not much difference except the quite strong blue tint with the later, I’ll see if I can compensate this somehow with my camera in the future.

But when photographing white objects there was a great difference, I managed to get a much  better contrast on my Aerosan objective then before even if the colors seem to be a bit off.

DL spotlight and some color adjustment

I also took some pictures of a painted infantry stand, but then the batteries of my camera emptied so I had to stop there.
Actually the battery level seems to affect the quality of my pictures so I’ll do some more tests with fresh batteries later.

I’ll also try to take some proper daylight pictures (i.e. outside) now that the sun has returned even here in Ultima Thule…

All mistakes are made painfully visible by the Macro and the Daylight Spotlight

More progress pictures.

A few more pictures of my army, sorry about the poor light, I’ve got some plans for a lightbox and some proper lighting though, but that means I have to retake all shots…

45mm AT-guns

76 K/02 guns

82mm mortar platoon

HMG Platoon 1

HMG Platoon 2

HQ with 20mm AT Rifles and snipers

Panzerfausts and Panzershreks

Pioneer platoon 1, the barbed wire still needs some paint…

Pioneer platoon 2

Some more riflemen

A Jalkaväki rifleman platoon.

Some busy nights in the basement…

…has resulted in a few more based platoons, and I even managed to bring the camera, but with low batteries the pictures turns out to dark, especially with my lousy lighting…

Of course they aren’t completely finished yet, there are some touch up still to do as well as marking the units and coating them and so on…

Well you should hopefully be able to see what the pictures are supposed to show.

A Schneider 105mm M1913 battery.

A closeup on the staff team

A jalkaväki SMG Scout platoon.

SMG platoon 1.

SMG platoon 2.

Back to basing…

I’ve haven’t yet finished a single base of my jalkaväki force since I couldn’t decide on how to make them look like they were moving through a pine or fir tree forest.

Finally I basically just mixed together all types of flock, static grass, turf and stuff I had collected and tried it out.

A few bases with my homemade coniferous forest floor litter.

 

I actually think it turned out quite well, but I think I need to increase the number of tree stumps and stones for the real thick foresty look.

Well I have probably a hundred of bases still to complete but I can try to make a rundown of the materials used later.

Some random updates

Sorry for the lack of updates, here’s a small summary of some of the thing I’ve managed to do lately.

First batch of pine trees

The pine forest is slowly growing, this is the first batch of six, the second batch of 10 is underway.
Some additional work on the bases will be done later.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Minicraft Ju-88A4 WIP

My air support is taking shape, I’ve even managed to try them out, they did well, accounting for 4 IS2s if I recall correctly. The are still lacking the Eastern Front yellow stripes and I need to get some 1/144 Finnish national insignia, the only source of these I’ve found is True North Miniatures, anyone have any other sources?

Flying bases WIP

To support my air support I did some basic flying bases, a 6mm plexiglas rod screwed and glued to a 50mm MDF disc, and then crowned with a small rare earth magnet.
They work fine and I’ll add some grass and stuff to them later. (As usual…)

Air Power

In the LW Finnish list there are two Air support options, both with the same stats, Ju87 Stukas or Ju88s. The first represents the Battle Squadron Kuhlmey and the latter the Finnish Lentolaivue 44.

The easiest and cheapest way to represent the Ju88s in FoW is buy buying 3 of the Minicraft 1/144 Kits quite recently released.

I got the kits for $9.20 a piece and the US retailer even marked up the parcel as a “gift” and at half the retail price without me even asking, probably saving me about $15 in taxes and other fees.

The kits are said to contain Finnish markings on some webpages but the kits I got only had Hungarian and German decals, so I need to order some Finnish “hakaristis” from True North Miniatures.

Other than that they are nice kits and I’ll show them when they are assembled and painted up and ready to bomb some Soviet tanks.

Minicraft 1/144 Ju-88

Legions East Winter Finns

As Early War approaches rapidly I’ve been looking at a Finnish EW list. The Barbarossa book won’t be here for quite a while and the Finns aren’t guaranteed to be in it, but sooner or later (probably later…) there will be some official list out there I hope.

Winter War, Reindeer patrol in Jäniskoski near Petsamo 20th Feb. 1940

As there probably won’t be any new BF Finns I’ve started to look at alternatives and as far as I know there is two manufacturers with this range, Resistant Roosters and Legions East. I’ve sampled both manufacturers “Summer Finns” but I wasn’t that impressed with any of them.

RRs range is in many cases more like 18mm than 15mm and have even more oversized heads and hands than BFs older, “large” range, and they are decked out in out in huge backpacks and other gear.  And their winter range is basically the same as there summer range but with even bigger winter head gear. The positive about the range though is that they are reasonably priced and that there are a lot of different (but stiff) poses.

LEs range was more promising but suffered from som scale issues, the feet were tiny and their arms often way to long, but there were some nice models along them, my guess is that the bad ones are among the  sculptors first miniatures and the nice one are the ones made later when the sculptor got the hang of limbs and stuff.

So, since the LE winter range is newer than the Summer range, and I actually manage to find a few pictures of them on the web, I ordered one of each pack to sample them.

So here follows a review of the packs available at their homepage.

Pine trees

As a Finnish infantry player you want to have as much woods as possible on the gaming table.

To ensure that there is an ample supply of trees I’ve started to make some pine trees.

I’ve decided on these since there are a lot of pine forests in Karelia and because they are quite easy to make.

Scottish pine forest in Karelia

The method i use is used by model railway builders and is quite simple.