Flames of War - Commission work - Terrain pieces part 2

Hi all again and I hope you are feeling awesome?

With the last commission work I also got a request on doing a couple of more small boards with woods and difficult terrain such as craters...

With the last remaining bits of what I had at home I am glad to present you a couple of these:

Flames of War - Commission Work - Dragonteeth

I hope you are all doing awesome ? Well I finally managed to get my hands on some balsawood, a dice 8 and miliput to finalize a request I had lately to do some dragonteeth.

With this in mind I strayed out to do my work... hope you like the results....

The Balsawood is the base in this case. With the Dice 8 (8 sided dice) I pushed the "teeth" into the miliput and slapped it flat on the top. Easy as that.

Enjoy the results:

Flames of War - Tutorial - Gun Emplacements - Step by Step

While still trying to save some money on an expensive hobby, I came across the Gun Emplacements made by Battlefront. That indeed is something you can easily do yourself.

From my perspective these handy "Dug In" Markers for Artillery or similar stuff makes sense and is easy to build yourself.

Just to give you a basic understanding... these things will cost you approx 15 Euros for a pair of two. What you normally get is two for the front and two for the back side of a large base. Oh come on... this is something we can easily do ourselves.

Let us start with the components I used here:

- Beermatt (Still loving this stuff), substitude with 1mm Balsawood if that is more handy for you
- Sand
- PVA Glue
- Filler

The advanced version will also use:
- Miliput

We also need:

- Scissors
- putty knive or similar

Easy I guess ....

So lets begin the process.

Step 1:
Take some filler and put it into a container for mixing. I used an old youghurt type of thing. But also a newspaper could do this job. Then add some PVA to get a smooth working wet mixture. Add the sand to it and mix it through. Why we are doing this ?
Quite easy.. we get a bit more texture for painting later on. If you feel that painting is a bit not your type of thing you could also add cheap acrylic colour to this mixture. This will be your base tone.. so be carefull that it is indeed dark enought.

Step 2:
Cut your beermatt. I placed a large base somethere in the middle to get some measurements. If you have e.g. a fitting form upfront from e.g. infantry dug in markers you can also use these for the wide side of life. This makes it easier for the measurement part. That also leaves you with a stripe left after cutting of approx 1-2 cm... depending on the beermatt size.

Step 3:
Cut the above mentioned stripe down to approx 1cm height.

Step 4:
Use your putty knive to take up your mixture and carefully place it around the self made base. If you are not that kinda tidy here it is NOT a problem

Step 4. Build up slowly. No extra glue needed !

Step 5:
Use your cut stripe to match to your large artillery base. Make sure it fits in there and that you have a bit spare space in the inner room left. That helps later on to get the base out again.

This is how it should look like after Step 5.

Step 6: 
Let the whole stuff dry.  If you try the advanced version you know use your miliput here to place some sandbags or glue some wood pieces on it... either you can substitute "wood" with beermatt left overs.

Step 7:
Use some cheap primer (black) and prime it. Afterwards basecoat colour it with a cheap brown colour. If you need to add details on the inner parts.... use a knive and do some slight cutting into the beermatt parts. This gives later on the impression of wood. Drybrush and paint as desired.

Step 8:
Enjoy your work !

Total costs:

Sand - nothing , I got it from the beach
Beermatt - nothing, Taken from my local pub
PVA Glue - Whole Bottle 3,99 Euro. So this will approx have used up 10 cent
Filler - Whole 900 gramm container for 3,99 in sales at Lidl Ireland .., used approx for 20 cents
Colour - I used white and brown and later on mixed the stuff ... so 3,99 Each for 100ml, approx 50 cent altogether

Invest for two:

0,80 Cents Euro

vs:

15 Euros on cheapest mailorder i could find.

Saves: 14,20 Euro

Flames of War - Painting Tutorial - Step by Step Winter Fins - FSO101 Finnish Command Group -

After all the time it is also time again to paint a couple of new things... I am always wondering why I am doing that so excessively while not playing .. well easy to say ... I am tooooo lazy to go ahead to travel the way down to Cork city and play at the Other Realms store there.....

So back to "normal" when...

What have I started... it is a finnish army usable for early , mid and latewar. Seemingly I also seem to favour more defensive formations instead of the tactical aggressive ones...

Lets start things first...

What to do...:

As a flavour of mine I normally base my miniatures last instead of others doing this step first.

The unit ahead of us is "FSO101" which is the "Finnish Command Group"
Colours used:

- Black Primer
- Vallejo Grey Green (866)
- Vallejo Sky Grey ( 989)
- Vallejo White ( 951)
- Vallejo Khaki Grey (880)
- Vallejo Flat Brown (984)
- Vallejo Deck Tan (986)
- Vallejo Rose Brown (803)
- Vallejo Beige Brown (875)
- Vallejo Light Brown (929)
- Vallejo US Field Drab (873)
- Vallejo Brown Violet (887)
- Vallejo Neutral Grey (992)
- Vallejo London Grey (836)
- Vallejo Brown Shade (200)


Step 1:
After opening the box I first clean up the models and sort them out. All new BF products come with holes in the bases to more easily conceal the bases the miniatures are cast with. Honestly.. I think this being a bit more annoying then helpful, but I guess this is a matter of taste. So clean up, cut off any excess from casting and head on to

Step 2:
I then glued all the miniatures onto tongue depressors... Why ? I do not like to put them on one small stick and not to touch them from there... instead I glue up to four of them on a tongue depressor and still do not touch them.

Step 3:
After glueing and the short time of drying of course... I primed them black... Still being a bit fascinated about that because I normally try to prime white or light grey... but ok black was available for me and I need to use up some of my stuff to get a bit more of a space at home... so use up black and sprayprime them black.

Step 4: 
Take your model and paint it nearly everythere with Vallejo Grey Green (866) as a basecoat. As this will be out darkest layer of the uniform please be so free in doing so. There is no real need to be tidy to the model at this point of time as every other colour will be painted above it. The only parts I left out here are the faces, hands, boots , metal helmets or hats and weapons.

Step 5:
After all the models are dry again and your brush is clean I used Vallejo London Grey (836) as first highlight of the models. Here I did a slight diversion as I will paint a couple of jackets more in a brown colour to get some diversity into the platoon and command. I also left out the trousers as you can see and only did the upper parts of the winter uniforms in this kinda style.

Step 6:
With this done take your models again and second highlight them with Vallejo Sky Grey ( 989). I still do this quite generously.

Step 7:
50:50 Mix of Vallejo Sky Grey ( 989) and Vallejo White ( 951) for edge highlighting.

Step 8:
By now our model already looks quite nice but still lacks the soul. As all the highlights might get a pain in the ass to repaint later I will now cover the flesh areas. So hands (as long as not being covered) and faces get Vallejo Rose Brown (803).

Step 9:
Use Vallejo Brown Shade (200) to get a better look at the eyes , mouth and other face details as well as for the flesh parts of the hands



Step 10:
Again Vallejo Rose Brown (803) to highlight the edges. If you like you can optional afterwards apply a 50:50 mix of Rose Brown with White for extreme edge highlighting. Due to all this colouring you will notice that eyes and mouth already are visible and this is quite enought for me for the face details. I do not need eyelashes etc... on a 15mm figure.

Step 11:
Vallejo Flat Brown (984) on all leather and all wood parts of the model. This means, rifle as well as belt, and straps.

Step 12:
Highlight belt and straps with Vallejo Khaki Grey (880).

Step 13:
Highlight using Vallejo Beige Brown (875) the rifle. Afterwards to edge highlighting with Vallejo Light Brown (929). This gives a good impression on light sources.

Step 14:
Vallejo Brown Violet (887) for any metal helmet being available as well as for every bag that is visible on the miniature

Step 15:
Highlight the bags with Vallejo US Field Drab (873). I used a drybrush technique here.

Step 16:
This is a bit of "I like" or "I dont like". If it is "I don´t like" then please use instead gun metal grey for the metal parts of the weapons... if not ... use neutral grey on the metal parts of the weapons.

Step 17:
Vallejo Brown Shade (200) for the metal helmets and on the just painted metal parts.



Step 18:
Edge highlight metal parts with 50:50 mixture of Vallejo London Grey (836) and Vallejo Sky Grey ( 989)

Step 19:
Colours for officers are sky blue and for any non officers red... so feel free to add a red or blue dot on the cap or furcap of any appropiate miniature.

Step 20:
I first base my miniature normally. This means apply filler which is mixed up with sand on a base and simply then stick your miniature into that and carefully remove any small wave of mixture from the miniature. You will get the surface as desired. After it is dry your mini will be very well placed in it and no extra glue is needed

Step 21:
Basecoat the filler flat brown. Set a few highlights if you have some special sort of area available.

Step 22:
Glue any other needed material for base decoration now on it.

Step 23:
Generously paint some Vallejo Deck Tan on some of the areas you want later to be more snow fields on the base.

Step 24:
Use PVA to cover the whole base.

Step 25:
Use snow flock effect on the base. Repeat Step 25 till snow part is as covering as you desire.

Finish

So tell me how you paint your winter fins :) Looking forward to your suggestions !:)

Flames of War - Tutorial - Lets make some buildings Part 1

In one of the forums I am part of I got the question if I could not do some sort of easy tutorial on building a building, house or something similar.

As staying neutral at this stage I want to do some scratch building with you on doing this. Lets start for the beginners and doing it .... NOW....


Materials needed:

Thick cardboard (I used grey cardboard approx 2mm thick)... makes it not easily to destroy and still flexible enought for our purpose

A ruler (really essential here) and...

a hobby knife.....

and a bit of glue which I will need in Part 2


So lets start

Step 1 :
Define your measurements... for our purpose and game technics it makes sense to at least get two stands of infantry into it... so lets put them together and cut a scare around them (makes it approx 65mm by 50mm)

Great stuff... bear in mind... we will need this approx 3 times (one is the bottom.. two are for the roof parts)

Step 2:
After this step build your walls around this. As I like the Battlefront webpage "Flames of War" quite much you can also find a definition there how high a building should be a minimum by refering to the Stalingrad Appartmentblock tutorial.. if you do not know it by hand.... its 30mm high.

As you can see on my picture I left out a couple of blocks... why you might ask ? I always hate it to fill my already small space available to me with a full 65x50x30 plus roof building. So I was thinking on interconnecting parts. This also leaves me to some easy to make variations later on and a much easier casting then it comes to reproduction. We need all parts two times.

As you can see I also already did cut out the windows with my hobby knife... the measurements for this I got from the based miniatures themself:

Windows are 10mm by 10mm
A door is 10mm by 15mm in my measurement.. Do not cut away your excess cardboard now. We will need it later on.


Step 3:
Continue with your roof tile.. we want the roof to be taken away so that we can place some miniatures inside of it. We do not later on want to move the complete house.

So we need the roof triangle as well.I decided on the smaller 50mm side being the right one to place my roof on. So cut out this tile as well two times . My highest point here is 20mm..... that makes it 50 by 20mm and we will have a small angle.

Step 4:

We also need a chimney... so lets also cut this out. Now we come to a place...you need your chimney being more exposed ? Then cut it out two times... in our tutorial we will be pleased with one time. Chimney is 60mm on its highest point and 25mm on on its widest part. Do yourself the favour and work with helping lines to get the upper part in a better shape then mine :)))



By now we should have:
3 Parts 60 by 50mm
1 chimney 60 by 25mm
2 parts of long side walls approx 64mm by 30mm
2 parts of short side walls approx 54 by 30mm
2 roof triangles 50 by 20mm



See you in the next part.

Flames of War - Tutorial - Entrechment Marker

Also finished the painting job on the Entrechment Marker... easy way to build it up with some putty , balsa wood , toothpicks and the usual colours and flock...

Flames of War - Tutorial - Rebuilding things from Battlefront Webpage (Minefields)

Also finished a couple of more minefields by now as shown here:

Minefields

Flames of War - Tutorial - Selfmade fences the tricky way (mikado)

With some more time I finished a couple of more of my

Fences (the tricky ones)

Love the outcome ! :)

Flames of War - Tutorial - Building things from the Battlefront Homepage - Barbwire -

Browsing the Battefront Homepage you will find the Modeling section and some things on "How to do..."... Christmas brought some Balsa Wood to me and so I started redoing the tutorials from their webpage.

The Barbwire:

As I am also building a 78. Sturm Division Unit I am in need of some trenches and stuff like that. The barbwire stuff from the BF webpage looked easy and I also would rate it as being easy.

Materials used:
Balsa Wood
match sticks
Superglue
Miliput
Filler
Wire


Step 1:
Scale for this one is 20cm by 5cm. This is also the exact sizing BF gives on their webpage.After cutting your Balsa Wood into shape you can take some of your match sticks and cut them to approx size of a standing model. You will need three parts of your cut match stick for one "metal holder". So superglue them together (first as a cross and then do a support strand as the third one). This done you can either choose to do only one row of barbwire in the middle or two from the outside. As sticking to BF plans this one will focus on only one row in the middle.

Step 2: 
Superglue your selfmade metal poles to the balsa wood. As I did it ... you can put in some variation on the wideness of your metal poles.

Step 3: 
Take your miliput or similar epoxy to build some nice textures around (e.g. craters).

Step 4: 
Use filler to give the balsa board some more texture.



Step 5:
Paint and flock as desired

Step 6: 
Take your wire and a thin pen. Spin the wire around the pen and you get your barbwire rolls. Cut down as desired. Paint them as you like and as it fits to your scenery. and glue them to the board.


Step 7:
Enjoy your work

Flames of War - Tutorial - How to build a Sturmboot German Wehrmacht (Assault boats)

Thanks to Gary of "Garys Command Post" which I was browsing and asked him about some sort of template or similar to what he has done.

For the sizing of these Assault Boats I highly recommend comparing to a midsize FoW base. This will make the boat a bit bigger than it would have been , but it suits best to what you want to do. I normally also recommend putting the shorter side of the medium base in direction of "travel" :)

So what materials do we need ?

- The plan
- Cardstock
- PVA Glue
- Filler
- Colours

Step 1:
Use the template onto your cardstock and trace around with a pencil. Then do it again with the flaps "F" to get an idea there to fold later on.

Step 2:
Cut out

Step 3:
Trace a second "bottom" of the boat slighty smaller then the first one as you can hide the folding flaps with that.

Step 4:
Glue everything together

Step 5:
Use the filler to clean out any gaps which you might have from glueing

Step 6:
Prime and paint as desired



Template (Curtesy of Gary):

The finished piece (Curtesy of Gary again):

Flames of War - Tutorial - Oil drums from sprues

As you can see there are a lot of things you can do with your belowed sprues.

Step 1:
Lets take the sprues again... you see the small round ends at the corners and in the middle ? Yes ! We will use these now.

Step 2:
After cutting them out (which I doubt everyone will get as well done as that they will be straight). Take two of these and glue them on top of each other.

Step 3:
Do this with the others as well.. one sprue makes approx 4.5 Oil tons.

Nice objective marker.... in case you are sensitive to extreme realism.. put a wound bandage soaked in PVA above them to hide the worst...

Prime and paint... and enjoy...

Flames of War - Tutorial - Using "Sprues" for walls and sandbag emplacements

Hi all,

after reading through warheads.ie I got the question on a short tutorial on how to use sprues to their best advantage...

so here we go:

Step 1:
Take the sprue of your liking. This one I am using is from a US halftrack.

Step 2:
Cut down approx 1mm thin parts of the sprue

Step 3:
Take your base and glue with plastic glue the bottom row on it

Step 4:
Use really much of your plastic glue on the upper part and start laying on top the next row

Step5:
Repeat step 4 as often as desired. Wait till dryed , prime and paint it.

Flames of War - Tutorial - Building things from the Battlefront Homepage - Minefields -

Browsing the Battefront Homepage you will find the Modeling section and some things on "How to do..."... Christmas brought some Balsa Wood to me and so I started redoing the tutorials from their webpage.

The Minefield:

As I am also building a 78. Sturm Division Unit I am in need of some trenches and stuff like that. The minefield from the BF webpage looked easy and I also would rate it as being easy.

Materials used:
Balsa Wood
Toothpicks/Partysticks
Superglue
Miliput
Filler
Wire


Step 1:
Scale for this one is 20cm by 5cm. This is also the exact sizing BF gives on their webpage. As Balsa Wood is a light and easy to work with wood you can take the Toothpicks/Partysticks as they are and simply press them into the four corners of the balsa piece. I also put one extra in the middle for the signpost. Afterwards I took a Miniature and cut the "posts" down to approx neck high of the miniature.

Step 2:
Mix the miliput or any other epoxy you are using and define the parts of the mines and a possible crater of an exploded one. The mines you will do with a bigger and a smaller piece which you roll into ball shape and first press the bigger, than the smaller one on top of the bigger one. The crater is a larger piece there you simply make a ring and then push down the size. If you have, like me, this cutter knife you can scratch in some lines into the miliput so you get a bit more texture to your crater.

Step 3:
After this is done you can either start painting and flocking or like me use some filler for more texture on the board.

Step 4:
After drying... apply some colour and flock to it.


Step 5:
Connect your wire around the outlining poles. And ready you are. As I am using a 120x120cm gaming table it suits for me to do six of these to get a whole table covered. Easy to do and doesnt take much of a time