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Its been a long day here. Spent most of the day with 10 other people attempting to learn how to airbrush better. All of us had one main model to work on (it came as part of the class). I think there were five we could pick from (all from GW); Dark Elf Dragon w/rider, Manticore, Chimera, Demon Prince and something I don't remember. Anyway it was a good day I think I have picked up more control of the airbrush, learned how to make use of really quick masks and I really managed to reduce the number of clogs. I used a variety of paints today and didn't have problems with any of them; Vallejo Model Color, Vallejo Model Air (awesome!), Reaper Master Series and Reaper HDs. They all came through like champs for me today. So here are a few pictures. Post of these are to the point of needing regular paint brush work rather than airbrush work. The Nurgle Demon Prince will end up in my oldest son's Demon Army Got started on the Cougar MRAPs for my modern USMC.

This was my first game of Force on Force. Nick Johnson had the night off and brought his miniatures and boards to teach us the game. This is his standard convention scenario and features 2 squads of British Paratroopers against a horde of Taliban. Their mission objective is to find the cache of weapons rumored to be in a building in the back corner of the board. Nick and Lee Schultz built the boards up from a wood frame with half inch Styrofoam on top as the base. Trees and buildings (Gamecraft Miniatures) are separate pieces but everything else is built directly on the boards. Its a good looking setup and has survived traveling pretty well at this point. Its been used for six games at Genghis Con XXXIII (in Denver last February) and traveled around for about another 15 games at this point. In this game Ray and John ran the British Paras and J (John's son) and I ran the Taliban forces. I'll let the pictures tell most of the story but a quick synopsis had the Taliban taking out the British GPMG team on turn 1 and then fighting a delaying action for the rest of the game. The Taliban sniper team died on turn 1 without causing a casualty to the advancing Paras. From there on it was just stubborn resistance (and some really good die rolling) to slow the British advance. In there somewhere a Taliban news crew managed to show up and promptly caught the attention of a fire team that spent two or three turns taking them down. A fortunate placement of an IED cut off one of the British avenues of advance forcing them to split up. It came down to the last turns as two British fire teams converged on the weapons cache. One team lost two members trying charge the building. The other team managed to get in the building but couldn't wipe out the remaining Taliban. This was a great game and well played by both sides. I picked up the win for the Taliban this time as the British Paras ended up with 2 KIA and 2 seriously wounded and did not control the objective. I took a lot of pictures and here are some of the better ones. At the start of the game British in the LZ and a Taliban sniper team on the roof. A wider view of the initial positions Taliban occupy a building on the right flank and open up on the British GPMG team British fire teams taking cover in the irrigation ditch British fire team takes on a Taliban flank attack head on, and takes a casualty while doing it. Paras finish off the Taliban right flank. Advancing Paras discover more Taliban Paras continue the advance on the right Taliban in the Para's rear tie up the second squad and occupy the landing zone Paras take out the Taliban taking cover in the second irrigation ditch A Para fire team, with casualties of its own, defends against the Taliban attacking from behind Para squad closing in on the hidden weapons cache Paras take a group of Taliban on top of the building under fire and take down the entire unit. Things are looking up but time is short. The Taliban news team goes down. No video is getting out about this action. (Taliban lose 5 victory points for the news team not surviving). Para fire teams converge for the final assault. Another angle on the Taliban holding the building The British point of view as another unit of Taliban suddenly appear to block the way. That's a bunch of AKs! British contest but do not hold the objective. Two Para casualties, one KIA, one serious. Nick has AARs as well as modeling info on his blog at: http://littlenickysgameroom.blogspot.com (I have tried getting this URL in here about 5 times, blogger doesn't like it very much for some reason).

Well, the shields finally started to look less like a bunch of primary colored boards. I think there is only one that I'm going to repaint. The blue and white checkered one is just not precise enough and my angles are wrong on it. I'll try again and see if I can't get a better pattern going. The basic designs are pretty well outlined at this point. What you are seeing is the beginnings of the design without much attempt to shade and highlight yet. Highlighting and shading may wait until I have them on their horses. I know I'm handling them to much and I'm losing some paint and that will mean the touch ups will just take longer. A few pictures to show the progress:
And this one is going to get repainted. I'll try it again and try to be a bit more precise. I should have changed brushes but I got stubborn.

These are Gripping Beast 28mm Normans that I'm painting on commission. Something I don't do all that often, but I have always wanted to try my hand at these. Okay, these guys don't look like much right at the moment. In fact these aren't even the Normans I wanted to start with. I left the box of regular troops at home one night and these were all I had to paint. They are painted up to a basic level at the moment, touch ups and details will come after I mount them on the horses. I have base coated the shields in solid colors at this point and I'll start free handing the shield faces before I mount them on the horses. I'll do the horses after this and then get everything assembled and completed. So these guys aren't really much to look at right now. Plus the lighting was bad and they are really hard to take pictures of when they are sort of lying flat.