First look at Flashpoint Miniatures Vietnamese Villagers blister

May just as well post a quick snapshot of the content of the other of Flashpoint’s blister with Vietnamese civilians. Another varied mix of figures and with only one repeat from farmers blisters. At first glance it is actually a bit hard to see what poses are included in this blister. Two of the miniatures seem to be ‘ladies of the night’, perhaps a bit suspect subject for a ‘village’. A trio of mothers carrying kids on their backs strikes me as a more suitable choice, as do the generic peasants and the elderly gentleman with a cane. The repeat from farmers set, a mini that I’m already habitually calling ‘the village idiot’ is also appreciated; guess my village will have two of them. Finally, the most innovative sculpt of them all – the cyclist.

Minis are relatively clean and will require minimal cleanup before painting.  I’ll get back to you with the end result as soon as they’re done, maybe even this weekend.

Flashpoint Miniatures Vietnamese Farmers

To be frank, in my personal opinion 2015 has so far been a real SOB. Between serious illness in immediate family, shedload of work and me personally catching a rather nasty flu variant, wargaming was the last thing on my mind over last couple of weeks. Still, somehow I did manage to find time to finish this handful of Vietnamese farmers I’ve previewed in december. With paint on, they’re much nicer than initial impression would indicate.

Content of the blister is both thematic and useful from games perspective. Here’s how they turned out.

First look at Flashpoint Miniatures Vietnamese Farmers blister

Flashpoint Miniatures has two blisters of civilians in their range – Villagers and Farmers. Both packs seemed interesting, so I grabbed both of them at the time I’ve placed my order. Now that both U.S. and Local VC minis are painted, it’s time to paint some VC locals.

First up, the blister called Vietnamese Farmers – a very nice and useful set indeed. It consists of eleven minis in very useful poses as well as two-wheel wheelbarrow, a buffalo and a little piglet. Sculpts are simple, but clean. I am quite pleased with this set, it will be very useful for ‘Charlie Don’t Surf’ ruleset I intend to use in my games and which uses civilians as an inherent part of scenarios.

And yet another distraction

Oh, while I’m already here, I may just as well admit that some time during November was committed to another distraction in 1/72 scale – a late StuG III from Revell. This one was literally made in spare time between jungle plates and work with the huts. One of these days it will hopefully make an appearance in a Bolt Action game, once I get that project of the ground.

 

Jungle Terrain–Vietnam huts from Timecast Models

I'm one of those wargamers who really don't like working with terrain. I love painting minis, but terrain has always been the 'necessary evil' part of this hobby. It is therefore a bit ironic that at the moment there are no minis on my work table. Instead I'm knee-deep in two terrain projects for Vietnam and have revived what I'd like to call a 'sleeper' project that is also terrain-centric (more about it later this month!).

Anyway... the first of those Vietnam projects is obviously the jungle terrain bit. It chugs along at rather slow pace and I must say that the old platitude 'practice makes perfect' isn't entirely off the mark. The other terrain segment for Vietnam consists of huts - after all, no table will be complete without some hutches to defend, storm or burn.

When it comes to Vietnam buildings, there is some choice on the market, but I didn't find the selection overwhelming. JR Miniatures has some pretty cool-looking, but rather expensive huts on stilts. Flashpoint Miniatures sells a set of rather miserably looking straw huts. Also, Battlefront sold a set of two very basic, prepainted huts during their brief engagement in Vietnam, but they seem pretty hard to find now that the company lost interest in that particular conflict. And finally, there is stuff from good old trusty Timecast Models, my go-to place as soon as I need anything that includes words 'resin' and 'building'.

Now, the peculiar thing with Timecast for me is that they always seem to have enough stuff in their range to make a good start, but not enough to provide real variety. Their 15mm Vietnam buildings range is great and to my knowledge the most extensive in this scale on the market - hutches, shacks and town/colonial buildings. Still, there is just a couple of each type of building, leaving you craving for more!

All right, that's enough of introduction to the fascinating topic of resin buildings in 15 mm for Vietnam conflict; let's move on to what I've actually finished so far.  The logical starting point were the hutches... of course. Timecast sells two sets of two buildings of that type - straw hutches and clay hutches. All buildings are of similar size and layout and are made of brownish resin-like stuff with some heft - they will certainly stay in place once you put them on the table. Unfortunately, the material also seems prone to chipping while in transit. Also, they're one piece models - there is room for miniatures inside, but the roofs are not removable.

My paint job is pretty basic; not a fan of terrain making, remember? First off I washed the kits in warm, soapy water and let them dry overnight. Next, I primed them with cheap primer for plastics from one of local DIY shops, which turned out to be pretty bad idea - the paint run and pooled, making general mess. After another emergency scrubbing session in cold water (apparently, warm water makes acrylic paints harden), I gave priming another shot, this time with Vallejo's grey acrylic primer. The result was much more satisfactory.

All straw sections (two hutches and the roofs on the other two) were based with GW Steel Legion Drab and then drybrushed in two steps with GW Tallarn Sand and Karak Stone. A short side note - GW:s current paint system strikes me as ridiculously overworked and unnecessarily complicated, but I'm pleased with the paints from 'base' and 'layer' ranges. Good coverage, flat finish, hopefully they won't dry out 15 minutes after I popped opened the jar lids.

I deliberated a bit over the choice of color for the mud huts. From pictures available on the net one draws must draw the conclusion that they were mostly either brown (natural color) or white-washed. In the end I choose to base the walls in light grey and then give them a heavy drybrush Vallejo Off White. Once that was done, I took care of bare wood parts (always a bit of a problem for me) and that was it. They seem to look the part and personally I'm quite pleased with them.

Jungle Terrain–the saga continues

I was a little taken aback as I’ve just looked up the publication date of my post about that very first jungle terrain piece – May 2013, where the heck does the time go? In any case, when I was finally finished with first batches of opposing forces for my Vietnam project, there was no more excuses; it was time for jungle ‘mass production’. And now, with 10+ pieces under my belt, I thought it would be nice to post some additional thoughts about that part of the project.

So first things first… I think I will need somewhere between 25 and 40 pieces of terrain to be able to cover playing area available to me (a square 1.5 x 1.5 meters). Since I really dislike making terrain (simply not my cup of tea), trying to make all of them at once would with all probability end up with me walking away. Fully aware of it, I decided to split the job into more manageable batches of 5-6 pieces at a time.

The process for each batch became obvious for me while working with the test piece. First, painting and texturing of the bases. As already described, a mix of rough gravel, sand, cat litter and dried herbs give me the rough texture  I imagine is suitable for jungle pieces. It is spread onto a thick coat of brown paint and sealed with another once dry. Next a bit of drybrushing with lighter tone of base coat colour and we’re ready to proceed to step two.

By the way, ‘imagine’ is the operative word for this project, because I am most certainly not trying to re-create realistic Vietnam bush here.

Next, it’s time for hot glue gun, plastic palms and whole bunch of different plastic aquarium plants. Couple of words about plastic plants – in my opinion the bigger variation, the better. My personal collection (mainly from Chinese E-bay shops, although IKEA was also helpful) consists by now of 10+ different plants and grasses and I wouldn’t hesitate to get even more of that stuff. Another thing one quickly realizes and needs to accept – most plastic plans are ‘too big’ for 15mm. Leafs are too long, too wide and too thick. So forget about realism if you’re going plastic plants route with that scale.

Last but not least… it is quite tempting to just squeeze in as much stuff on those bases as possible. That’s what I did with that test piece and it sure looks nice; it is also a bad idea, for two reasons. First and foremost, remember that you will need to have place for your miniatures somewhere on these pieces. Second, there really is no need for ‘thick vegetation’ unless you want some impassable terrain pieces; the visual impact of the jungle is created quite handily by multitude of bases and variety of plants.

Once the plants are glued onto bases, the final step consists of cleanup/flocking. Why cleanup you ask? Well, because these hot glue blobs look bloody awful and need to be hidden somehow. Sponge flock works fine for that purpose, but my personal favourite is brown fine turf. I have several bags of that stuff (made by Woodland Scenics/Noch) and by pure coincidence their earth brown flock is almost the same colour as the paint I use for the bases. So all I need to do to hide those hot glue blobs is to paint them with diluted white glue and then sprinkle turf powder over the ‘wet spot’.

Flocking is done to my personal taste with help of a bunch of railroad modelling stuff – mainly Noch sponge flock and bush clump foliage as well as ‘normal’ foliage from Woodland Scenics. That last one is however anything but ‘normal’, at least not for me. It comes in form of thin sheets of flock stuck to a very thin web-like net and can be cut and teased into different shapes. Pretty useful stuff , both for ground-work as well as for tree foliage!

I’ve already said it before and am repeating it now – when it comes to groundwork materials such as flock, turf, clump foliage and similar, the railroad modelling stuff is the best and most cost effective. When compared with companies like Noch, Faller, Bush and Woodland scenics, prices demanded by most popular ‘wargaming terrain’ companies are simply ridiculous. Here in Sweden, the internet-based companies that sell whatever terrain modelling stuff your heart desire (except for decent palm trees) that I’d recommend based on personal experience are Modelljärnvägsspecialisten, Eurohobby and MJ Hobby.

C4 Open 2014 - Part IV

OK, this is the last batch of pictures from this year’s local modelling exhibition. Next post will be wargames-related, I promise.