Scheduling has been very difficult in the last couple of weeks, putting my battle reports well behind schedule. Between fall sports, band activities, and real-life concerns like work, there has not been much time for group activities, though that is hopefully changing back after the end of October.
In the meantime, I have been hard at work expanding my sets, adding reinforcements to both Legion and Bolt Action. For Legion, the recently released Imperial Riot Control Squad and the Rebel Sleeper Cells have been assembled and primed, ready for paint. For Bolt Action, I added extensive reinforcements in the form of the German Afrika Korps Starter Set, and the British 8th Start Set. Both add multiple artillery and armor units to each faction, along with 3 units of infantry. Unfortunately, this was a fairly massive assembly process – lots of tiny pieces and plastic glues, and a bit of super glue for the metal pieces. Several days in, and the units were assembled before being primed for eventual paint.
For the painting, I opted to start with several of the vehicles – a pair of Bren universal carriers, a Panzer III German tank, and the original armored cars. I started with a basic Wraithbone primer (Citadel), with an airbrush of Sand Yellow (Army Painter). That made the coloring rather bright, so I toned it down and darkened the models with a wash of Agrax Earthshade (Citadel). In the middle, I used some Black Templar and Black Legion (Citadel) to paint some of the details and tank tracks and applied several of the included waterslide decals (very old school). One difficulty I ran into was a lack of a common and simple reference for the decals – despite their inclusion, there is no simple way to identify where to place and which ones to use. I think I was able to sort it out, it is at least decent for my own purposes even if they are not completely authentic. I did find that the decals were rather finicky to apply (they are very tiny), but once I had a process it was not really difficult. Applying them before the wash step was helpful, to help blend and soften the bright colors.
On the side, I have also been working on a design for basing the vehicles. I am not a fan of the loose vehicle on the board – it makes sense, but the organizer in me wants a base and template. So I designed a simple series of ovals, scaled after the 1×2 infantry base in several sizes – 2×4, 3×6, and 4×8, each with a fire arc indicator built in. This will help to make them consistent across the board, while not adding too much to the field. I also created a set of 2×6 bases, for use with some terrain items I am working on (more on those eventually).
To each of the bases, I have glued a layer of field gravel (Army Painter), which I can then paint and wash to bring in the desert theme. Those are still drying currently, so are still a work in progress. Between those bases, and some final details on the vehicles, they are just about complete and will be ready for the next battle report.
