Alex McE- Painting better Baddies- eventually!

Alex McE is back, this time with a whole lot of painted Insurgents. He has adopted a few bright colour schemes, a lovely deep red which he has used as the symbol for his band of fighters. Anyway, over to Alex....

Lesson: it takes a gentle reminder from Pooch and a quiet weekend for me to finally break radio silence. It’s not been a great few months in real world for me and a lot of things – notably my hobby time – haven’t been as productive as I would have liked.

That aside, this has taken too damn long! Without further ado – baddies!

Here’s my Warlord and his buddy with an RPG. Everyone knows RPG warheads are red right? (I have seen some in strange colours, so sure, why not red- Ed) The Warlord is rocking mirror shades, a red beret and an ANP uniform.

Next up are the support weapons. I totally dig the dude in the baseball cap with his RPG17. Football team emblem still to be done!

Then the grunts – these are the guys rocking good old fashioned assault rifles and who are just all style, all the time.

In the penultimate photo my favourites – the dudes in Type 99 Chinese Marine Camo. I’m super happy with these ones – more than any of the others and the guy in the bandana is just rocking his fashion choice. (It is just an odd looking colour palatte isn't it?- Ed)

Lastly, the one figure in this collection I really don’t like. But it’s okay, because if the nice people at Empress are going to sculpt you wearing a dorky tracksuit then I am pleased to oblige. Someone didn’t get the “best camouflage gear” memo:

In terms of the colour palettes – if anyone wants to know I’m happy to share. My crappy cellphone pics and pretend lightbox on top of the fridge don’t work that well when the ambient light in the house is as bad as it was on Sunday night

As far as the models go, they’re really nice. It’s an interesting combination of weapons and I love the little details – most are wearing webbing and they’re generally well posed. I’m not crazy on their faces but in this group of models, that’s not such an issue.

And now? I get stuck into the 17 conventional Taliban sitting on my painting table that are based and awaiting a day that isn’t freakishly cold and damp in my basement so I can prime them!

So the Insurgency is going well for you then Alex! I do love the brightness of the red, and how it contrasts with all the other more traditional dull military tones. That being said, the Chinese camo is just such an odd base colour, I can't quite get my head around it. And the tracksuit wearer, just screams Russian mafia from a Guy Ritchie film. At least you didn't give him a Pink Kappa tracksuit!

Alex McE- Painting the Betterer Looking Baddies

Alex is back, this time with some paint on some Insurgents- Watch out ISAF, the Red Beret comes for you!

Before starting on painting, I needed to strip the old paint off the Qud (Empress Insurgents- Ed).

How I strip paint

Two words: Simple Green. I get mine from Bunnings or Mitre 10 (Big hardware stores in NZ-Ed) and usually in 1 litre bottles. I usually give models a soak in Simple Green for 24 hours, sometimes up to 48, and then pull them out and give them a scrub with a stiff toothbrush. That gets a lot of paint off pretty easily. Then I'll grab a scalpel and very gently use the point to scrape paint out of any deep grooves. I also use the tip to scratch over large flat areas (not an issue here) and that sometimes lifts paint off in sheets! After that, I go back over with a second, drier brush. If the majority of the paint hasn't come off it goes back in the Simple Green for another 24 - 48 hours and repeat.

Once I'm happy with the clean, the models go in water for 24 hours. I have found that Simple Green sticks to models and can stop superglue setting properly and occasionally make primer not stick. Then I'll let them air dry and occasionally give it one last run over with a dry toothbrush. Rough is good at this point. Once that's done, they're pretty well good to go.

These Taliban insurgents have proven to be very hard to get clean although not as bad as some Privateer Press plastics I'm trying to clean at the mo. I think it's a result of the bad primer job. It’s just meant a touch more manual intervention that I would normally have liked.

Anyway, on to PAINTING!

Stage One

These are the first six Empress insurgents out of the paint stripper. I glued them onto the base before work this morning. They're mostly clean although the long weekend of soaking has stained some of the metal. It happens. Primer covers it fine.

Stage Two

Now with added cat! I tried to get him to pose in the photo but he knows when I'm trying to make him look silly. The basing I'm using is a bit of an experiment. If I really, really hate it, I can change it but I wanted some more texture than I usually get with just polyfilla (spackle for North American readers- Ed)

I still use GW black primer. I'm really fond of it and other than the priming disaster on these models it has not ever let me down. Although I have learned recently that there are better ways that I’ll elaborate on when I get to discussing my camo paint schemes.

Stage Three

And here we are with the first three done:

On the left, my Afghan Warlord in a US Woodland flak vest. He’s ex-ANP so rocking the grey coveralls and mirror shades. The chap next to him is enjoying US Woodland pants. The chap on the right is rolling with his LAW and some European Camo pants.

The three currently on the block are all wearing items in British Desert DPM and the challenge at this point is finding some complementary block colours for their other clothing items. The next ones I’ll be having a go at the very detailed British DPM.

The photos aren’t great – my average phone camera isn’t great – but once I’ve got the next three finished, I’ll get someone with a decent photos of all six, including some closeups and a list of colours and instructions.

Army composition
Don't ask me about force composition yet. I haven't the foggiest. I'm likely to wind up painting a lot of stuff to make up the many options that *could* be used. At this stage that's looking like a dozen Foreign Fighters, 17 Taliban infantry including light support weapons and, if Pooch* gets his way, some Taliban motorbikes and a couple of heavier support weapons. Will all that get done? Who knows?

*he is a bad man (That is not true, Pooch is a wonderful person who should be listened to at all times, especially in terms of buying and modelling more figures to play more games of Sangin- Ed).

We've already cooked up one random side project from this…

Alex

Alex McE- More Betterer Looking Baddies, Or a Manifesto on Flash Harry Combat Pants

Continuing our theme of Camo schemes, Alex McE, aka "The Bad Guy" comes back with a bit of a look at what camo works for Insurgents

So, blog post the second. This one is going to be a bit of an introduction into the thought processes that go on in my slightly demented head.

Camo Patterns

As I said in my introduction last time, I'm all about things that look cool! To counterbalance the block colours and limited palette that will characterise my Taliban, I'm going to go a bit nuts with camo patterns on the Foreign Fighters. Now I want to be relatively (really?- Ed) sensible with the camouflage patterns I’m going to do and fit in with the time period and region- there will be no SS oak leaf camo, I'm not insane! (debatable-Ed) so I'm going to have my first crack at these four:

That's US Woodland (still in use all over the world), British Desert DPM (let us assume "acquired" locally), British DPM (only recently being replaced in the British Army and also common outside the British army) and Central European Pattern. I think they'll all work and provide me with a bit of a challenge to replicate these in 28mm. If I can get the hang of those, then I might just have a crack at these:

That’s US UCM, MARPAT Desert and MARPAT Woodland.

In order to keep a degree of consistency among the soldiers, they’ll all be wearing deep red headdresses where they have them. There is one chap with a baseball cap and I’m open to suggestions as to which team’s logo I should attempt on the front of it! (Detroit Redwings. I don't see why the Taliban can't love hockey...-Ed The red is a bit of an indulgence but it will give these guys some real stand out character in amongst the more plain Taliban.

Now lastly, I'm going to do one or two models in something totally daft because, well, it's me and that's how I roll. The first candidate for this is Chinese Type-99 Oceanic Camo:

Inappropriate? Absolutely, but it will look amazing if I can get it right. The base colour is going to be the challenging one I suspect.

Next time,
Painting!

Armies of Afghanistan- Alex McE (Qud)

Who are you?
I’m also Alex! I’m probably the relative newcomer to Sangin here and I find myself working with Colin, Craig and Pooch as their proofreader. Most of this work seems to be deleting unnecessary punctuation and hunting out the devils in the details! Modern warfare is a relatively new experience for me, other than some 6mm, and I find Sangin a nice balance between detail and relaxed and enjoyable play.

What army you are playing?
Asking me to be involved in this project was always going to involve some kind of fairly insane scheme and I had set my heart on some Italians. I really love playing Italians (Doctors say it is terminal- Ed). Sadly, the only manufacturer of modern Italians isn’t likely to be able to produce any until early next year! So I went for a new plan. I’ve had a dozen Empress Insurgents that I picked up last year to play as Iranian Qud for a scenario that I was proofing as a possible entry for Despatches 1. That’ all I’ll say on that score! (I think we might put it up on the blog here, but Alex has to paint some Qud first- Ed)

I primed them but thanks to the humidity or temperature in my basement over the winter the primer cracked badly on almost every flat surface. Here they are at time of writing:



One of my chief goals in picking an army is that it has to be thematically interesting. I don’t care if it’s any good but it has to sound cool and it has to look cool. So I’m going to be using a list that the lads are working on at the moment for Al-Qaeda. The Insurgents will be Foreign Fighters brought in by a local al-Qaeda leader to stiffen the combat ability and resolve of his $10 Taliban troops. Visually I’m looking forward to breaking out every kind of camo I can muster the skill to paint and I’m hoping to be able to share my experiences translating some of the more outlandish schemes I can find for these Foreign Fighters.

What are you getting with your starting funds?
I’ll be picking up some of the lovely Empress Taliban to provide me with the core of the force as well as a sweet, sweet model to be my al-Qaeda leader.