Tom- NZSAS Painted!

Tom is back, this time with a whole lot more painting done. Making up for the bright and garish colours of his first painting post by using the same technique to the more drab colours of the NZSAS. Although, I do notice that Tom has snuck in a few bright colours still, perhaps using a bright blue to counter the bright red of Alex's Insurgents? Over to Tom....

I have been busy and made some progress....... eventually.

With the Sangin narrative competition coming up soon (Call to Arms. You should enter, details are here- Ed) I have been spurred on to complete my NZSAS. So backing up Willie Apiata VC we have a team of NZSAS armed with a Minimi, a couple of M4s with M203 UGLs and a sniper all from the Empress miniatures range. The Empress figures took a bit of filing back and I missed a bit and once the base coats were on I needed to go back and do a bit more filing - boo hiss!

Then it was getting the painting complete. I painted them the same way I did Willie but unfortunately none of my work in progress shots came out.

I started with a Tamiya light grey undercoat to get a nice light finish. The base coat of the model was Vallejo Green Ochre, with Canvas for the pouches, Black for the weapons and Dark Flesh for the... flesh. I picked out my officer with a blue denim shirt - the SAS are notorious for varying uniforms - and this is a small homage to that tradition as the rest of the models really are quite standard. (And a lovely denim shirt it is. Known to his mates as Cowboy?- Ed)

I shaded the uniforms with heavily watered down Agrax Earthshade (citadel ink) and the skin with Serephin Sepia (citadel ink).
From the shades I took the uniforms back up to Green Ochre and then highlighted Dark Sand (Vallejo). The Canvas was taken back to Canvas and then highlighted with a mix of Dark Sand and Canvas. The skin went back to Dark Flesh from shade to Basic Skin Tone with a final highlight for chins, nose and under the eyes of Light Skin (all Vallejo).

The Camo is Chocolate Brown with a stripe of Brown Sand down the middle (both Vallejo).

The Sniper and Spotter are lovely models and I decided to blend the rifle in as well - a joy to paint these two.

Right now all I need to do is prepare for Call To Arms - building a list - 1000 points mmmmm........

Looking good there Tom! Is that a wee NZ fern I spy on one of the baseball caps? As to the army list for CTA, this whole NZSAS patrol I would think will work out around 1000- 9 Elite soldiers is your first 900 points, leaving you just a 100 points to kit them out. You might have to leave one or two of them at home, otherwise your poor NZSAS boys might not have any cool kit!

Tom- Victoria Crosses, The Way They Are Won

Tom is back, here to talk about how Willia Apiata won his VC, which was the defining start for his NZSAS force for Armies of Afghanistan.

The Action that saw Bill Henry Apiata win his Victoria Cross happened while his troop was on patrol in rural Afghanistan. The NZSAS had been using Dumvees (stripped down Humvees- Ed) for long range patrolling, at times up to 6 weeks being resupplied by helicopter. This allowed the troop on patrol to move further and faster than the local Taliban could keep tabs on and so they were able to make contact and establish relationships with villages and settlements without Taliban interference.

On this particular occasion the NZSAS were 2 weeks into a patrol and had successfully kept ahead of any Taliban. They were beginning to gather some vital intelligence for the ISAF forces when the evening saw them approach a remote hamlet. The Troop Commander led a couple of vehicles from the patrol and made contact with the local elders and set up a meeting for the next day. The men who went to the village had heard this may be a Taliban friendly village, but otherwise were received in a friendly enough manner.

While contact was being made the rest of the troop were organising the Lay Up Position (defensive position for the night- Ed) and preparing for the night. The place they decided to rest up in was on a rise and split the troop between the two sides of the small ridgeline. Apiata’s dumvee Almighty was closest to the village and a watercourse that provided a covered approach for any attackers.

The night came, guards were set and the troop settled in to get some much needed rest. The first thing anyone new about the attack was that Apiata’s Dumvee exploded. Immediately the realisation was that it had been struck by an RPG. Then all hell broke loose as small arms opened up from the cover of the watercourse. Apiata who had been asleep on the bonnet woke unharmed but several feet from where he went to sleep and assessed the situation. His driver was badly wounded and the other trooper was clambering out of the Dumvee. Taking cover and checking his injured comrade Apiata realised the wound was extremely serious and unless he was attended to quickly it would be fatal.

Apiata’s dumvee was alight and being the only source of light became a bullet magnet for the Taliban. Incoming fire was relentless. As the rest of the troop (half of the patrol was still on the other side of the rise and not in a supporting position) started to return fire the decision was made and Apiata hoisted his comrade onto his back and the three of them made the 70m run up hill to the medic and the safety of the rest of the troop. There was no dodging or weaving – it was a flat out run under heavy enemy fire (serpentine is just for the movies kids -Ed). They made it and the medic got to work. Apiata got his hands on a GPMG and joined the return fire. By this time the .50s were up and running and the rest of the patrol was in position, and they lit up the sky. Accounts tell of the enemy fire dropping off quickly as they withdrew taking dead and wounded with them.

The medic worked miracles and saved the injured man. Help was still at least 3 hours away and the injuries were serious. The advanced training of the medic saved soldiers lives that night.

In the morning there was little left of the smouldering Dumvee. The potential for a disaster was there – but the men of the NZSAS were cool under fire, straight thinking and aggressive. The action lasted a little over 30 minutes and in that time the world gained a reluctant hero, Bill Henry Apiata VC.

And here is Tom's version of Willie, all painted up

Looking great Tom! Now we just need Almighty to turn up right? I know that the next thing on your painting table is going to be cool as, I look forward to seeing it!

Tom- Painting - A Journeymans Guide

Tom is back, this time with a look at increasing his Painting-Fu! We have let him away with painting a fantasy figure, but only because his next article will be using what he learned to paint up his NZSAS!

In my last article I said I was going on to tell you all about Willie won his VC. Well I got distracted, so I am going to write an article about something I never ever thought I would write about - painting.

I am at best a Journeyman painter. I can paint a reasonable table top standard but I will never win - or have never won best painted. This probably wont change in the near future, but I hope I now have some extra tools in my toolbox after spending a weekend in a painting Masterclass. For those of you around the world who have access to master painters you may have already done this sort of stuff - but down here in NZ we tend not to have this sort of event happening. Yes we have amazing and talented painters, yes people share their painting - but actual professional painters teaching technique and theory, well I haven’t ever had that opportunity before.

Over the weekend we have had a US painter Meg Maples (look at her blog for what she does here) take a two day Masterclass. If you have had a wee look you will realise that Meg is mainly a fantasy/SciFi figure painter, so she didn’t show me how to do MARPAT (but Craig does here-Ed), but she did show me how to get the effect I am after.

Two full on days of theory, technique, tips and ideas. Meg was very focused on how to use different techniques to paint to get effects that you want (rather than telling you what to paint and with what colour). One of the biggest revelations for me was using colour opposites and colour theory. An example of this being - rather than shading a light brown with a darker brown, you can use greens or blues or purples or red shades depending on the lighting effect you are after and the warmth of the brown you started with. Complimentary colours are opposites but they work very well in shading and highlighting giving quite stunning depth to a figure.

We started with a figure supplied for the class to experiment. We cleaned it up and came to my first surprise for the class - undercoating.

I thought undercoating was the easy bit - but I found out I had been over undercoating all these years. I usually undercoat with a black spray (or I used to) and I would make sure every little crevice was covered. This has tended to wash out the detail in my models and I have had lots of problems with chipping. We learnt a light covering sprayed across a model actually (a spackling) creates a small uneven surface for paint to adhere to when it is applied. It took a while to get my head around this - and if you want to read more there is an article on Megʼs Blog.

Below is the cleaned up model and then the undercoated model.

Once undercoating was done it was on to base coating. The idea was to base coat with a medium shade (no surprises there) and from that we would shade down two colours and highlight up two colours. This is normally where I would get my inks and washes out, wash the whole thing to death and put some line highlights in - and the wonder how the good painters got such a graduated shade and highlight effect on their models. Meg taught us the two brush blending technique, and coupled with the colour theory things started to come together. The expert painters out the will already know what two brush blending is - but for the rest of us plebs .....erm .......journeymen here is a quick guide.

The secret to shading with two brush blending is using a good paint that doesn’t dry out to quickly and saliva. You kept one brush moist in our mouth and the other in our hand with the paint you wish to apply. Then you chose recesses to shade and put a dot of paint in that recess. Using the moist brush from your mouth and the saliva on that brush as a medium you sweep across the surface you want to pick up colour and then drag the paint from the dot you have already applied across the surface. Et Voila! Some shade blended into your base. On her jacket I shaded twice - once with a darker brown and once with a dark green.

Then the highlighting - using the same two brush blending technique but this time choosing the ridges to highlight and dragging the paint along that ridge from a dot of paint. I tend to put the dot where I want the deepest shade or brightest highlight. It is a simple technique to do but a complex one to master - and several layers will be involved, although it is easy to correct. If your paint is coming out chalky or highlights are too bright a glaze can often smooth it out for you. By glaze I mean a really watered down medium colour of the surface you are working on - not a special pot of “glaze.”

One of the things I wanted to emphasize is Meg’s philosophy. She accepted and understood how people painted and the fact we all do things differently. Doing something a different way did not mean it was wrong, in fact it was celebrated. Showing us new ways and explaining why and how has really opened my eyes. I won’t be throwing any inks/washes or paints away, but I will look at the paints I buy from now on and there will be changes to some of my old ways. I have loved climbing out of my same old way of doing things and I am keen to get painting my NZSAS.

Dorothy... Done! Shading and highlighting done on the flesh, bodice, basket and stocking. I even managed eyes and lips :)

And now for the NZSAS, first up Mr Apiata :

Tom

Tom- Research Part One

Being new to the research of recent military history I have discovered some interesting stories and amazing people in the hunt for information on the NZSAS in Afghanistan.

The NZSAS has a fifty-year history as a Regiment with roots stemming earlier in WWII It has built, over that time, a reputation for being able to do the tough jobs under the toughest conditions. From the beginnings of the Special Forces from New Zealand (the LRDG or Long Range Desert Group) where a bunch of kiwis soldiers joined others from the Commonwealth (or The Empire as it was in those days) to reconnoitre deep behind enemy lines in search of vital intel, the Kiwis have forged this reputation in the hard sweat and blood of the men who went into these tough places, faced their fears and came through serving with the pride of the country behind them.

The NZSAS deployments to Afghanistan were no different. In the beginning the Kiwis went to the Afghan theatre with what they carried. The original missions saw the men make foot patrols lasting days in the mountains of the Afghan Highlands. Specialists in mountain operations, and learning from early mistakes, they excelled in being able to avoid being compromised. The issues they faced were mainly transport and operational deployment. With no capability to insert under their own steam they relied on their allies to fly them in and out. A state which the fiercely independent NZSAS felt uncomfortable with.

Soon the War turned from digging out the Taliban from the mountain holdouts to a more wide ranging infiltration and the Leaders of the NZSAS in Afghanistan had to beg, steal and borrow equipment just the way 2NZEF had had to in North Africa in WWII.

With Humvees from the US, shipped to theatre by the Canadians, the troops of the squadron had 10 days to fit them out and create Dumvees (desert converted with particular emphasis on long range patrolling). Finally the Kiwis were ready for action. Desperation being the mother of invention the troopers had created a template copied by other Special Forces for Long Range Recon vehicles.

Lessons learnt from our Aussie mates the patrols required outriders. The use of trail bikes for scouting enabled the patrols to extend even further and faster and allowed the men on patrol to keep ahead and evade the enemy. Unfortunately the NZ army had no bikes in Afghanistan at the time, being resourceful and cunning the troops found some unused Austrian KTN bikes that the German SF had. A deal was struck and the outriders were under way.

(And the Auzzies used them too, as evidenced by this picture!- Ed)

The Patrols travelled for weeks at a time supplying intelligence and striking deep against the enemy. For their actions and work in this period (2002) the 1 NZSAS Group received the USNPUC (United States Navy Presidential Unit Citation). The next deployment where Cpl Apiata was to receive the VC had a lot to live up too. More on that next time.

My Empress Kickstarter models have arrived and I have the model resembling Willie Apiata VC (Not that you are rubbing it in- Ed). The next step will be to create a representation of the patrol involved in that action with at least one Dumvee (I’m looking very jealously at yours Adam) and a couple of outriders (Eureka do some great models). I am lucky in that we have a two day painting seminar coming up in a couple of weeks – so I am aiming to learn some great tips and skills to paint the NZSAS.

Armies of Afghanistan- Tom (NZSAS)

Who am I?
Hi I’m Tom and I am a Wargames Magpie (Buys all the shiny toys with no plans to ever use them-Ed). I have models and rules gathering at alarming rates (according to my wife at least). I have ecclectic interests in genres and when Skirmish Sangin was introduced to me I found yet another outlet for my need to collect cool models.
I enjoy many aspects of our hobby in particular I love creating terrain, although I am running out of storage space in my garage/gaming room- yes the cars are already parked outside! (and have been for as long as I have known you- Ed)

What army am I playing?
I decided to back the Empress Kickstarter last year and have picked up the New Zealand SAS model. So I await its arrival with great anticipation. This has inspired me to create a Kiwi SAS force as inspired by Willie Apiata VC.

Doesn't he look glad to see you?

The next step is to research what happened in the action that had the VC awarded.

What am I getting with my starting funds?
I am going to get the Empress SAS models with a mix of weapons but I particularly like the sniper figure.

Tom