Wednesday, December 21, 2011

Crash Project: American Armored Rifle Company



Hours away from finishing my SS Panzerkompanie, we found out that two out of the three Allied players we believed were going to play the Market Garden campaign have pulled out. This leaves us 4 German players and one Allied player for the campaign starting this Friday. So, I thought I'd go nuts and try to build and paint a 1000 point Armored Rifle Company in time for the campaign and switch sides.... yowsah.

In the last two days I've made more progress than I would have guessed. I've built all 11 half tracks I need, as well as 4 Shermans. I've also put together the HQ and the first platoon in full, leaving only second platoon to complete assembly. I used Battlefront's relatively new rubble plastic bases to help speed up assembly- they are a lifesaver.

The test paint job above has almost no highlighting on the figures other than black lining. I think it looks fine for the battlefield, and it's relatively quick. Here's the recipe:

1- Glue the figures into the base with enough super glue to get pushed up and fill the gaps/spill over a bit. Finely ground shale was sprinkled over all the super glue areas

2- Stand was primed with Vallejo Black Primer shot from my airbrush

3- Entire base was drybrushed with VMC London Grey
4- Medium drybrush with VMC Medium Sea Grey
5- Patches were heavily drybrushed with VMC Flat Brown
6- Brown patches medium drybrush VMC Beige Brown
7- Entire base lightly drybrushed with VMC Iraqi Sand
8- Pants and webbing painted US Dark Green
9- Jackets and anklets painted VMC Khaki
10- Boots painted VMC Flat Brown
11- Flesh painted VMC Light Brown and drybrushed with VMC Flat Flesh
12- Helmet, shell, and bazooka painted VMC Brown Violet
13- 2d Armored Div patch painted with VMC Deep Yellow, Flat Red, and Dark Blue. Khaki used to trim it up into a rough triangle shape.
14- Separate brick wall and loose bricks on the base painted VMC Cavalry Brown and glued into base.
15- Bricks and wall washed with Vallejo Pale Grey Wash.
16- Base edges painted VMC Beige Brown

It sounds like a lot, and maybe it is, but that's about as simple as I can make it other than the patch madness. What can I say, I'm not going to let Khairul get away with those eagles without a fight! ;)

It'll be a miracle if I get this done in time, but I'll go down fighting....

9 comments:

  1. If the campaign had started a bit later, the British Punjabi Regiment would have come in for support. But they are deployed somewhere in the Straights of Malacca right now.

    I also noticed that in FOW a lot of them player want to play the Germans. I guess it is the only army that can play with everyone and they were in all the theaters of war. You cannot have a British army fighting the Americans or Russians against British etc.

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  2. 1000 points in 4 days...i'm rooting for u dude :)

    You can do it!!!!

    Those are above tabletop standard to me. And the patches..what can i say :D
    Lets hope we start a trend here. Good development for the hobby community methinks ;)

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  3. hey wait a sec, market garden is this friday?..I wonder if yip is able to paint his army on time, or he could be one of the guys that pulled out..

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  4. The only people regularly communicating with me and Khairul regarding campaign participation are two of my staff here and Alvin. I'm assuming the worst and getting ready accordingly- we don't want to cancel this again after we had similar problems last time

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  5. Looking good Jeff, unfortunately I've gone with the Germans as well. Only just got my hands on the Earth & Steel supplement. How's the British side of things?

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  6. Your base looks wicked cool!!! Did you create it yourself or was there a plastic model of a wall for the base?

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  7. Other than the crushed shale, the base is 100% Battlefront plastic :)

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  8. knowing you, I'm confident that you could pull this off..good luck dude, see you on friday..

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  9. Good luck dude ... do i feel guilty? a bit ... ok, a lot. But hey, you're gonna get an entire new FOW army up

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