WW2 in Miniature
One of the many many miniature wargaming / hobby projects I’ve got started on is a German late war Flames of War army. I freely admit I’m a WW2 geek so it seems logical that I’d have something from that era in my collection of games. I’m also a fan of the weird war 2 stuff and am therefore fighting hard to resist the lure of Secrets of the Third Reich stuff. Wolfenstein-style Nazi zombies? Heck yeah.
So anyway, here are my first ever Flames of War minis in tiny 15mm. The beginning of my Gepanzerte Panzergrenadierkompanie with an accompanying Tiger 1E tank. Fear the Tiger…
Never modelled at this scale before so it’ll be interesting to see how I need to adapt the painting style. Also I may have made a balls up in pre-fixing the infantry to their bases before the painting begins, and there could be some hard to reach bits. Still, I really wanted to get those bases sculpted up (out of filler, then glued sand) and I’d hate to wreck a paintjob with a dollop of basing goop!
Now to research some authentic colouring.
Max Von Deadlock's Miniature Madness 
I’ve noticed you use black undercoat now. I’m sure you used to be a white undercoat advocate. What prompted the change?
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I am still a white undercoat advocate. I just thought that on the 15mm stuff it would be easier and faster to work with. I tend to use black undercoat on vehicles and terrain also as I’ll be mostly airbrushing and/or drybrushing.
I like to paint thin, to avoid gloops/lumps obscuring detail, and I just need less base coats over white unsurprisingly. Also white undercoat tends to give a richer colour by all accounts. A grey primer undercoat can lead to a muddy/drab finish for example if you’re not careful.
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No Malifaux in Eclectic, but I did pick up a Royal Artillery Battery for FoW. Quite impressed with it; the metal bits are so-so quality, slightly “vague”, but the bases are awesome. The box said “terrain not included” or word to that effect, but they must just mean the static grass etc. Each of the 4 guns comes with a unique base, with the emplacement built up differently from sandbags and the like, with bits of kit and ammo boxes lying around. It also includes a command post set up in the ruined corner of a building, with a little bike parked up next to it. Its really nicely done.
Of course with each gun having crew, plus command figures and spotters, my pile of unpainted teeny tiny men just got even larger. I might try black undercoat, I’m sure that should be faster.
The command post does raise some problems with ordering – theres a little guy sitting in the nook of the building pointing at some maps on the wall who will be tough to paint if glued into the base, and parts of the base will be hard to paint with the figures in place, so it will have to be a case of painting the figs and the walls first, then gluing the figs in and fixing up the ground around their feet, then painting the ground.
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I found the five man squad I did was actually pretty simple to paint – allaying fears that I’d shot myself in the foot by pre-basing and gluing them. Using a thorough spray undercoat means they’re 100% covered and then any areas which a brush can’t reach are not visible to the eye or are in shadow. Justification for my laziness perhaps, but works OK for fast tabletop painting!
That said, I may still come unstuck on some of them.
I just ordered some 7.5cm artillery pieces myself so I look forward to seeing how they compare sculpt wise and hope they’re done as nicely as the British stuff.
I look forward to seeing your FoW stuff. They’re surprisingly fun, and quick, to paint.
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I finally bit the bullet and sorted out the Rifle Company I bought, finding out the special troops (PIATs, snipers, mortars etc) and sorting out the regular bases so that each has 5 different figs on – I probably made it more difficult for myself by trying to make some “action” bases where the troops are obviously aiming and firing, and some more relaxed looking “advancing” bases.
They are just stuck on with blutak at the moment, actually basing them is going to be another big job. I’m mulling over whether to base them first as you did. Based on your experiences, a thread on the FoW forums, and some test brushing, I think it is probably fine to base them up first, and will almost certainly be a lot quicker.
I’m tempted to try a black and white undercoat trick – undercoat well in black, then give them a light spray of white from above – kind of pre-highlighting them. Remains to be seen whether it works, but its worth a try. I’ll prob test it out on one base first…
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The only painful bit of the basing was flattening out all the flash so they would sit flush. I started by filing them but found it quicker to use a sharp hobby knife and carve them flat.
Then it was fairly quick to superglue them to the plastic (I forgot to score the plastic first which I probably should have done). Then I mixed a relatively thin polyfilla and daubed/maneuvered it around so that it covered the entire base (except edges) and the surface tension of it pulled it up against the metal.
Once that was dry I used PVA painted on and then sand sprinkled as normal. I found that the PVA soaked quite quickly into the Polyfilla so I probably shouldn’t have thinned it, but it came out ok once dry and sprayed black.
Quite quick to do in batches – allowing some drying time obviously (I left the Poyfilla to harden overnight)
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Yeah most of mine have big lumps of flash on the bottom.
I probably should have bought them a platoon at a time; having a whole company (18 large bases + 15 small) to do is quite daunting. I don’t want to do them in dribs and drabs because I want things to look consistant – I want to do them all in one hit if possible.
Once I get going it will be fine, but getting over that initial hill of effort might take me a few days. Need to convince myself it will be fun!
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As I recall from Fortress Europe I only need two platoons to make a company, and apparently Late War Germans were something of a hodge-podge in terms of uniform so I don’t have to worry too much about consistency. In fact, I’ve deliberately mixed up the helmet colours and trousers for that reason on the one squad I’ve done so far.
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