Armies of Afghanistan- Dougies' Painted British

Dougie is back, with a further finished fireteam of British. While it may not have answered my call for different nationalities, they are too gorgeous not to post up!

Over to Dougie...

Second fireteam now complete so I’ve a handy little force to start with, same organisation and weapon mix as the first.

I’ve just ordered some of the latest Brits from Empress as well as the first pack of Dish Dash Talibs to have a crack at.

Later, Dougie

Proving that Dougie isn't just awesome at painting Multi-Cam, here is a Taliban from Eureka that he has painted.

I for one can't wait to see what he makes of our Taliban- don't forget to pick up your set from the Skirmish Sangin website!

Next post is something VERY different....

Pooch

Posts from the Sangin Community- More British in MTP, and Terrain!

Following on from Matt's British last week, I got sent some pictures from Pat of his British, with yet another way of painting MTP!

Pat painted them using Humbrol Enamels (he calls himself "old school"!) I am sure if you would like the Humbrol list (for the other enamel-painting types out there), Pat will be able to share.

A big thanks to Pat for sending the pictures through, he had this to say...

As you can see I've got two moving Fireteams & one kneeling team, although I've got more figures to paint up, plus all of Empress Brit 06 so the exact teams will change. I saw the new Empress Brit 08 & 09 at the SELWG show, really cool especially the female medic and the vallon mine sweeper- but they weren't available, real shame but will order them later along with some of the new Taliban (good Christmas present, they will beat socks!).

So there you have it, another way of painting MTP! I like the nice mix of colours that Pat has used- it certainly looks the business!

Pat also sent through some WIP shots of his next batch of British, showing off some very neat greenstuff work!

Along with his British, Pat also sent through some images of a piece of terrain he is working on...

I for one, love how this terrain looks. It is made from 5mm foam board and are mounted on 3mm White Foamed-PVC (MDF works as well). Pat went with a pan-middle eastern white stucco paintjob, which has come out really nicely. For me, it is all about the fruit stands, the tiling, the white walls, I like it right down to the three colours of doors. Apparently it is a work in progress but I think it looks darn good as it is, and with the internal details (furniture) Pat is talking about it will look even better!

This is all just reminding me that I need to make more terrain.....

So now that we have three different ways of painting British MTP, so where is the love for the other ISAF nations? Surely you can't ALL be playing British... right? We must be due some other ISAF nations, or even some more Taliban? Send us through what you have finished through to chris@skirmishsangin.com, things like AAR's, ORBATs, Scenarios, Painting, Terrain and we will share them with the whole community.

Pooch

Posts from the Sangin Community- British in MTP

We had been getting a few emails lately of things which people are working on. Keep them coming, it is always cool to see what people are working on for Skirmish Sangin!

Matt sent through some pictures of his Taliban a while back (we saw one at the weekend). Luckily for us, he has also sent through pictures of his British, along with a bit of how he did his take on MTP:

My aim was to give an impression of MTP, as fast as possible, and as easy to repeat as possible with my shakey hands and old eyeballs!

I did the painting on these in a day while wearing MTP trousers as a rough guide, then the next day was used to do the basing. So two days all up.

To start, I used a grey under coat, followed by a light green first coat liberally painted over all the cloth areas. I added some large dashes of light brown-always in horizontal lines where possible. Next up is thinner dark brown dashes near next to or through the light brown. Then with a khaki colour I put light dashed or splodges randomly here and there, hardly noticeable.

This was then followed by what I feel gives the multi-splodge/mtp impression- the palid flesh small dashes and dots often near where the other stripes are and the odd one randomly to kill any voids.

The rest of model (guns, boots, flesh and webbing) was worked on after this, once they were done the model was given a wash of GW's argrax earthshade mixed with games workshops medium so it flows nicer and avoids pooling.

I tried something a bit different on the guns too- they are painted a light tan colour then later dry brushed lightly with black to show where the spray has rubbed off, its becoming common now for troops out in the dirt to have coyote brown l85's

So there you have it, another way to paint MTP! The beret head comes from a Warlord Games WW2 kit (you can tell by his strong jaw!). I think Matt has done a great job on these, some great little detail touches there. Empress have just released a few new packs for their British, I for one will be picking them up to add to my forces!

Got an idea for a scenario? Or want to share some pictures of what you have been working on? Maybe an AAR of a game you have had. Send them through to chris@skirmishsangin.com and we will share them with the whole community.

Pooch

Pooch - Crye Multcam

So, while Dougie has been showing off his awesome painting skills creating a mammoth painting guide, I have been tinkering away at stuff. I ran out of Greenstuff, which has somewhat stymied my progress on the Quad bike riders, but I have remedied that, so they are progressing again.

While I had no Greenstuff, to keep myself entertained I have finished up my first figure in Crye Camo for the Australians.

Crye Camo should look a little bit like this...

Thanks camopedia!

Which if you put on a SAS soldier looks something like this...

And this is how it looks on my test figure. Dougie and all his talk about eyes made me want to give them a try, not sure I am totally convinced, we will see if they are there on my next few auzzies! While these aren't the best pics,they should give you a bit of an idea about what I am looking at for my Auzzies....

The test figure is the Willia Apiata model from Empress' Kickstarter. Now, I know there are many of you who just threw their shoes at your computer monitor for me painting up a NZ icon as an Auzzie, but there is a story.

In my researching the Auzzies in Afghanistan, one of the books I read was The Crossroads by Mark Donaldson VC. It was a very good book, and one which I highly recommend you pick up and have a read of. As for his VC, the story goes like...

The actions for which Donaldson's VC were awarded took place on 2 September 2008. Patrolling with Afghan and US forces, they were ambushed by a well-prepared and larger Taliban force. The ambush began with sustained machine gun and rocket-propelled grenade fire, causing several casualties. Donaldson deliberately exposed himself to fire from the Taliban fighters in order to draw their attention away from the casualties, allowing them to be moved to cover. When the patrol attempted to withdraw, the number of casualties was such that the unwounded personnel (including Donaldson) had to make their way on foot, beside their vehicles, as the casualties filled the vehicles. As they set off, it was realised that an Afghan interpreter attached to the patrol was wounded, and had not been loaded into the vehicles. Donaldson immediately crossed the 80 metres or so of open ground between the convoy and the interpreter, under heavy fire, and then carried him back to the vehicles where Donaldson administered first aid. The patrol eventually broke free of the ambush after two hours.

When asked about the incident, Donaldson commented: "I'm a soldier, I'm trained to fight ... it's instinct and it's natural. I just saw him there, I went over and got him, that was it." The events were first reported by the Australian press on 12 December 2008 following a briefing by Major General Tim McOwan on 11 December. At this stage Donaldson was identified only as "Trooper F". Donaldson then became the first recipient of the Victoria Cross for Australia on 16 January 2009; he was presented with the medal by the Governor-General at a ceremony in Government House, Canberra.

The official citation was published in a special edition of the Commonwealth of Australia Gazette of 20 January 2009 and states (in part) that the award was made for " ... most conspicuous acts of gallantry in action in a circumstance of great peril in Afghanistan, as part of the Special Operations Task Group during Operations SLIPPER, Oruzgan Province, Afghanistan." Seven days after the medal presentation, Donaldson lent his VC and other medals to the Australian War Memorial in an official ceremony. The medals were placed on display at the end of February 2009.
(direct quote from the most accurate of sources, wikipedia)

So, as for why my SASR miniature looks the way he does, well, this is the real Mark....

Which should explain it all!

Thanks for reading, let me know what you think of the Crye! I have the rest of the SASR patrol half done, as well as the Quad Bikes. So next update will have better pics, promise!

Pooch

Dougie - Painting British Part 3- Multicam

I hope you are sitting down in a comfy chair, because Dougie's "How To" guide continues, this time tackling the MTP camo for his Paras. I'm sure everyone who is planning to paint any form of Multicam will find this useful, if only for the techniques he chooses!

Well here’s how I paint MultiCam. At each stage I’ve included front and back views of the figure.

These are the paints I have used...
VMC Medium Grey 987
VMC Buff 976
VMC English Uniform 921
VMC Golden Olive 857
VMC USA Uniform 922
VMC SS Cam Blk Brown 822
VMC Ivory 918
and finally Daler Rowney Acrylic Artists Ink Sepia 251.

It’s an 8 stage process so here goes!

Stage 1 is to paint the whole uniform, body armour and webbing/load carrying equipment in VMC Medium Grey 987. Leave a small amount of black showing at the clothing joins.

Stage 2 is to highlight this colour with VMC Buff 976 as below.

Stage 3 is to lay on the first camo colour, VMC English Uniform 921 in a horizontal pattern, as below

Stage 4 we add VMC Golden Olive 857, again in a horizontal pattern as below

Stage 5 we add smaller areas of VMC USA Uniform 922, as below

Stage 6 we add flecks/swirls of VMC SS Cam Blk Brown 822, as below

Stage 7 is to add flecks/swirls of VMC Ivory 918, as below

Stage 8 is the last stage in my MultiCam method, we use Daler Rowney Acrylic Artists Ink Sepia 251 and a fine brush to line out and edge all joins and uniform seams, as below

It is a bit time comsuming but I’m quite pleased with the result. Next update we’ll be adding uniform detail, so that’s the buckles, Velcro areas and badges/insignia.

Later, Dougie

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!

Dougie- Research

Time to hear again from our entrant from the complete other side of the world, who has been doing some research

Well folks here’s my first update!

As I’ve mentioned I’m using Empress Miniatures Brits to represent my 3PARA fireteams and support, they’ll be wearing MultiCam, which can be a bit of a swine to paint, I’ve done it in 20mm so hopefully 28mm should be ok.

Whenever I paint camo the most important thing is to get the look of the scheme and the best references are a must. Luckily there’s an abundance of resources on the net and I also use a range of printed material. In the UK, “Soldier” magazine and “Combat and Survival” regularly have good reports with quality pictures (They have not quite made it to the colonies it seems!- Ed). The best reference is an actual piece of the uniform, and as a bonus you get a top or trousers to cut around the area in! (Not sure we should be encouraging people to game in full kit!)

The big benefit in having the actual camo is you can see the percentage of colour spread and also how its affected by the seam changes, this is important if your using Empress figs as the sculptor has got all the seams and pockets on the figures, camo pattern doesn’t cross seamlines!

So I’m fully researched up and waiting to start the figures, Next post will cover the figures I’ve selected and prepping them.

Later, Dougie

Pooch - a look at Australian Camo

Well, I might not have any miniatures but at least I can start having a look at some of the different camouflage schemes on offer to me. Though it does seem miniatures are on the way, Tom got his!

In terms of Australians in Afghanistan, there are three main camo schemes that come to mind for me.

We have the DPCU (Australian Disruptive Pattern Combat Uniform)

And the DPDU (Australian Disruptive Desert Uniform)

(Both camo images taken from here)

Then there is the later version, the Crye uniform

According to Camopedia, the story goes that....

In late 2010 it was announced that Australian personnel deploying to Afghanistan would all receive US-produced Multicam pattern camouflage uniforms, as it was determined this design had a higher performance rating than the DPCU. A variation of the pattern, developed specifically for Australian military personnel by Crye Industries and incorporating many of the "bunny" and "jellybean" features found in the standard DPCU (although reduced in size), will begin replacing commercial Multicam for troops deploying to Afghanistan in late 2012. The pattern also has a miniature Australian Military Forces (AMF) logo embedded into the design. The Australian Army website is referring to this design as Australian Multicam Pattern (AMP).

So what am I going to paint? Well a long while ago (a year) I got some of the Eureka SEAL miniatures, and painted them up as Australians SAS. On them, I used a mix of DPCU and DPDU. And to be honest, I was a bit underwhelmed. The miniatures are ok (not my favourites) but the camo pattern didn't inspire me - I couldn't make it look good!

The Australians from Empress are all wearing the latest Crye uniforms so it seems a shame to not have a crack at the camo!

To get started on trying the camo scheme, I will use a set of spare Empress Miniatures Delta miniatures to make these guys...

Which will give me a chance to square away how I am going to paint the Crye. My plan is to have a go at it over the weekend, and with any luck I should be able to show the process next week!

Pooch