Post by sephirob on Jan 26, 2010 7:09:09 GMT -5
Though I've only recently gotten into AE-WWII, I've loved Wolfenstein since the original days of Wolf 3D on PC, and am a big WWII fan (Kelly's Heroes is one of my favorite movies of all time, for example), and have been doing tabletop games since I was 11. AE-WWII and SotR (Ok, and Company of Heroes... ok and Flames of War) are my favorite things around right now, and I've jumped right in. I'm trying to corrupt others in my group into playing these weird war games, but for the time being, all I can do is scheme and paint.
Hey, I warned you in the header this was rambly. I have the bad habit of doing posts on forums at ungodly hours of the day, so it happens.
Now, to the minis.
Here are my initial experiments that I tried to painting up with the November painting contest here on the forum. Was great motivation. Kind of a nice marker point for where I've been with these, too. My first WWII minis ever. As such, made some dumb mistakes. Tried to make their coats look reversible, with grey lining and rolled sleeves and olive drab as the main color... but the end result is just fail. Also tried doing camo on a non-covered helmet, which looked quite silly... anyway, here they are:
Re-examing my paint scheme and color, I decided to go for a repaint on these two unfortunate Wehrmachts. The olive drab didn't say German enough for me, especially when I expect to see it a lot on allied armies (when they appear), and as such really didn't want the green to be my main color, or even prominent. Besides, Germany stopped using the greenish grey color for their uniforms by 1943 I think. Seeing as AE-WWII is in 1946, I figured I'd go with the grey uniforms that were prevalent in 1945 and conceivably would have been thereafter had things dragged on. Better historically
I also uniformly colored their packs and gear, and also changed the silly camo helmets (I was too eager to try Dot44 camo...) to field grey too, and added the german national crest as a detail and unifying detail at that which I intend to put on every german helmet i paint, hehe. I also punched up the highlight and shadow depth to the grey. The olive was rather flat.
So on the whole, I feel it's a big improvement, and they clearly say "Germans" when you see them. These are in final form and are clear coated, etc. No more repainting for these!
Next up is my converted Projekt 40X Schwer Gepanzerter Soldat (SGS), or the Panzersoldat for short. He's an experiment made from a plastic GW marine, but the head, backpack, and weapon are metal Pig Iron bits. I think of his gun as an MP46, a new model of the weapon made specifically to be used in conjunction with the armor. The Fallshirmjager got their own specifically made weapons, after all, the awesome FG42, so it's not too far-fetched. The whole thing was one of the most fun miniatures I've put together and painted.
I did everything free hand, though I wish I had looked for waterslides for the Balkencruz on the left pad and the "3" on the right. Those were tricky. >,< I've since scrounged some waterslides out of old WWII tank kits lying around my house, and will probably use them on the rest of the Panzersoldats. I'm getting two squads of two men ready to go, and a character or two also in power armor to go with them.
Painting a good looking, convincing camo is a pain. I redid this guy's camo twice, started off by trying real German tank camo patterns since I wanted him to look like my tanks and vehicles will, but tank patterning just didn't work at all. Looked too much like blobs of smears and mistakes... So I went with a reed pattern I have seen done on SotR German Drop Troops, only I modified it to be more simple and spaced because I wanted the desert yellow base tone to come through more.
Did a lot of research on how to paint him to help give him a more realistic air. Really fun. learned a lot, which is not something you can say for every mini you paint!
And now for group shots. Thankfully they all go together pretty well.
I know there isn't anything in the rules about power armor for germans, so these are just for fun at the moment. Hopefully there will be something about heavy personal armor added someday?
Well, I can hope.
I've written up some background on the SGS troopers, and origin of the armor, and some commanders who will be in my detachment who developed it, and so forth all woven in. When I finish the short story I'll stick that in here too. Probably post some of my rule ideas about the heavy personal armor as well in that section of the forum sometime soon too.
And lastly, here's the first character who goes with the Panzersoldaten, the power armored SS officer, radio equipped to communicate with his kampfgruppe, and carrying a scoped MP46. I had in mind for this guy the kind of black armored look prevalent in the newest Wolfenstein, hopefully with the end result of a characterful Nazi adversary that not even Mr. Blazkowicz would like to meet in the field.
Hey, I warned you in the header this was rambly. I have the bad habit of doing posts on forums at ungodly hours of the day, so it happens.
Now, to the minis.
Here are my initial experiments that I tried to painting up with the November painting contest here on the forum. Was great motivation. Kind of a nice marker point for where I've been with these, too. My first WWII minis ever. As such, made some dumb mistakes. Tried to make their coats look reversible, with grey lining and rolled sleeves and olive drab as the main color... but the end result is just fail. Also tried doing camo on a non-covered helmet, which looked quite silly... anyway, here they are:
Re-examing my paint scheme and color, I decided to go for a repaint on these two unfortunate Wehrmachts. The olive drab didn't say German enough for me, especially when I expect to see it a lot on allied armies (when they appear), and as such really didn't want the green to be my main color, or even prominent. Besides, Germany stopped using the greenish grey color for their uniforms by 1943 I think. Seeing as AE-WWII is in 1946, I figured I'd go with the grey uniforms that were prevalent in 1945 and conceivably would have been thereafter had things dragged on. Better historically
I also uniformly colored their packs and gear, and also changed the silly camo helmets (I was too eager to try Dot44 camo...) to field grey too, and added the german national crest as a detail and unifying detail at that which I intend to put on every german helmet i paint, hehe. I also punched up the highlight and shadow depth to the grey. The olive was rather flat.
So on the whole, I feel it's a big improvement, and they clearly say "Germans" when you see them. These are in final form and are clear coated, etc. No more repainting for these!
Next up is my converted Projekt 40X Schwer Gepanzerter Soldat (SGS), or the Panzersoldat for short. He's an experiment made from a plastic GW marine, but the head, backpack, and weapon are metal Pig Iron bits. I think of his gun as an MP46, a new model of the weapon made specifically to be used in conjunction with the armor. The Fallshirmjager got their own specifically made weapons, after all, the awesome FG42, so it's not too far-fetched. The whole thing was one of the most fun miniatures I've put together and painted.
I did everything free hand, though I wish I had looked for waterslides for the Balkencruz on the left pad and the "3" on the right. Those were tricky. >,< I've since scrounged some waterslides out of old WWII tank kits lying around my house, and will probably use them on the rest of the Panzersoldats. I'm getting two squads of two men ready to go, and a character or two also in power armor to go with them.
Painting a good looking, convincing camo is a pain. I redid this guy's camo twice, started off by trying real German tank camo patterns since I wanted him to look like my tanks and vehicles will, but tank patterning just didn't work at all. Looked too much like blobs of smears and mistakes... So I went with a reed pattern I have seen done on SotR German Drop Troops, only I modified it to be more simple and spaced because I wanted the desert yellow base tone to come through more.
Did a lot of research on how to paint him to help give him a more realistic air. Really fun. learned a lot, which is not something you can say for every mini you paint!
And now for group shots. Thankfully they all go together pretty well.
I know there isn't anything in the rules about power armor for germans, so these are just for fun at the moment. Hopefully there will be something about heavy personal armor added someday?
Well, I can hope.
I've written up some background on the SGS troopers, and origin of the armor, and some commanders who will be in my detachment who developed it, and so forth all woven in. When I finish the short story I'll stick that in here too. Probably post some of my rule ideas about the heavy personal armor as well in that section of the forum sometime soon too.
And lastly, here's the first character who goes with the Panzersoldaten, the power armored SS officer, radio equipped to communicate with his kampfgruppe, and carrying a scoped MP46. I had in mind for this guy the kind of black armored look prevalent in the newest Wolfenstein, hopefully with the end result of a characterful Nazi adversary that not even Mr. Blazkowicz would like to meet in the field.