My gaming club is currently preparing for a participation game at the annual german wargaming convention Tactica in Hamburg next year. We are going to present a Great War gaming table depicting the so called Kaiserschlacht in 1918. We preparing a 28mm gaming table showing a trench which is manned by the Ulster Division and attacked by the 6th bavarian Sturmregiment. 

I decided to paint miniatures and vignettes for this project. Therefore I am working on color schemes and dirt, blood and mud on the models which is not an easy thing to paint. 

However I think I can still add more dirt, as you can see. 6 of the models are cleen, because they were the first models to paint. The next 6 models look far more dirty. I must admit that I forgot to paint dirt on the helmets....

To be continued...

Emezek vannak az új magyar Stukamak. These are my new hungarian Stukas. The Ju 87 D Models again come from armaments in miniature. This was my second attempt to paint aircraft so I made a lot of mistakes and now I know much more about how to airbrush 1:100 models.

First of all I will paint the parts separately in the future. Moreover I need to think about a way to add a handle for painting the model. I tried to mask the light blue bottom of the Stukas with liquid mask. This worked well, but to get ridd off the mask was a pain in the arse. Therefore I will use liquid mask only less complicated surfaces than the bottom of a Stuka with bombs attached.

The chosen color scheme is a kind of free style since I have no evidence of a aircraft which was spraygunned like the hungarian tanks were. It seems that a german style with edges was used for camoflage with hungarian markings.

However I wanted to have a similar look for the hungarian tanks I will paint in the near future. To be honest I am not that accurate when it comes to aircraft since in Flames of war they are mere counters. The Aircraft rules are not very attractive to me so I found a way to use them as objectives instead. Since the carrier is not retractable they can stand on the table just as they are.

I am quite happy with the bases for the aircraft since the are built from the scratch. A little hole in each Stuka and a piece of steel wire in the top of the acryl rod is a quite simple construction. I have chosen different heights and angles and I like the way the models are positioned.

The look of a game is very important for me. I never liked printed or plastic markers on the gaming table since they destroy the illusion of a miniature battle field. Therefore I prefer modelled markers. 

The idea is not new and was shown before, some of the markers in the web look much better than mine, but I am happy with my Fallschirmjäger markers. I did markers for "Gone to ground", "Pinned down", "Moved at the double", "Bailed out" and one tree for prepared positions for tanks and big guns in concealing terrain.

Since these are always used in game, they should get more attention by the players. My next set of gaming markers will have smaller bases in order to cover less space either in the miniature box and on the table.

Now I am very close to have a finished army, although this blog has a different name. The Fallschirmjägerpioniere will only be followed by one complete platoon and maybe another 6 flamethrower teams. For sure there is one single option more which could be added after I model a light mortar team which is the mountain gun platoon. The values were changed in North Africa so the Fallschirmjäger artillery is now an option worth painting.

However I am very pleased with the performance of the heavy mortars. Adding another light mortar team, bearing in mind that the HQ has an option for light mortar teams too, this should be enough.

Currently I was interested in having flamethrowers in the game since my club colleges often field tanks. The anti tank rating of pioneers sound very attractive, too. If I put an opel blitz truck from the various trucks I have on the table, I have a pioneer support truck, too.

In order to differenciate between my infantry platoons I decided to paint olive jump smocks. All other platoons have Luftwaffe splinter camo painted on. It came out very nice. Koch came with this blister too. In our club heroes are not very popular since the rules are somewhat exaggerated. van der Heydte for example, the lord of the living dead, is really ridiculous. Therefore I manned his team as a command team with 3 miniatures. He has the Luftwaffe Schiffchen hat and a splinter camo jump smock. Some of the models have rank insignia of Leutnant and Oberjäger, Koch himself the Oberstleutnant rank.

I have chosen an Glider assault platoon blister for my pioneers and painted some additional teams manned out of my Bitz box. Since Glider assault teams have MG42 teams, too I added one. If I don´t need them they can be treated as mere infantry teams. Usually we agree in the club to allow such minor proxy gaming.

Doing the photos it came into my mind that the drop canister is not needed for a glider assault team. However the platoon could now be fielded as an airborne pioneer platoon, too.