This is Minuteman: Two-Three

 Since my wargaming hobby has taken a back(far back) seat to my simming hobby, I've gone from reading books about the Napoleonic wars etc. To listening to audio books on aerial warfare. I've digested many many books the last two and a half years, lots of WW2 fighter books, some WW1, some modern, some Vietnam, some extremely impressive flying, and bravery. But by far in just pure skill and technique no books have impressed me more than the audio books I've listened to about Vietnam Huey pilots, the insane control and dramatic stuff they've done. It's just pure extreme skill flying. 

So in the end I couldn't resist anymore and needed the Rubicon Huey. really far above my skill level to make. Took a long time, had to take a break to wait for more black to prime them. And I broke part of the rotor as I took it off the spur, I also lost one of the windows. And with the clear glass, painting the inside. Yeah far far more complex, than the tanks I'm also not very good at doing. 

I'm not that happy with the build, but I am quite happy with the paint job, had to buy a new high end airbrush as my cheap one broke after just 2 tank paintings. 

So here it is. 

Going in for landing

Since my infantry is 101st, so my Huey had to be too.

Laying on my belly, in the garden, blending wargaming terrain with the weeds.

And a video of the Huey, still no Vietnam in DCS, we have several more or less correct aircraft for it, and more will come the F4 is around the corner, with A1 Skyraider coming, so is the A7 and F8, and F100

So I made a cold war gone hot scenario, with a large Huey formation putting infantry in the ground for a large assault. 

Not Completely dead

So, I've been mostly gone, I haven't done any real painting for 11 months now, havn't done anything sine I did those 30YW figures.

My flight sim hobby and stress makes it hard to have the energy to sit down and do some proper work.

But I did get tempted by the Rubicon Vietnam range. I got a box of US Army and a Huey. 

Slowly working on the Huey and I've done a whole 4 US army figures, I used to be able to churn out 20-40 figures a week...


Anyway here are the figures. Hiding in terrain from warpaintfigures, my Army platoon with be 101st Airborne.

I tried to do a little squibble on their shoulder that kinda looks like the screaming eagle patch. but it's on the wrong side of the figures from the photo. 

Anyway I hope to have something more from the project soonish.

5 Marines walk into a bar.

 And the bartender says; we don't serve your kind here, and I say, hey, if I want to drink watered-down whisky and play with my miniatures you have no right to stop me. 


So I started playing around with the Huey in DCS, it's an evil machine that wants to murder you any time it has the chance. But it's a fun ship that really requires that you fly it all times.

Here I fly a Huey as we take out a Russian base.

And here I do my first landing on a firgate. 

Ah, but don't worry I'm not here to bore you with just video games videos. 

Since I flew the Huey a lot, I got into the Nam mood, even if the game doesn't really have any Vietnam assets. (you have some Vietnam era aircraft like Huey and MiG21) but you don't have Vietnam-era infantry, ground vehicles. So you can't do a hot LZ landing under fire from NVA etc. 

But a Huey is a Huey, so I pulled out some Nam stuff.

I painted 5 marines

This means my Marine force is 20 strong.

I only have 5 grunts left to paint, and maybe an M60, as well as a 60mm mortar team.

If I manage to paint the last 5 marines, I'm out and I need to order more to finish the platoon. So hopefully I'll feel like doing the last 9 man NVA Squad and its two HQ figures. I also have the figures to do 3 support options, a separate RPG team, a.30cal MMG and a nice big 12.7mm HMG.

NVA has more than doubled.

 So last time I did Nam, I did 7 NVA  soldiers. I was missing the machine gunners. So I stopped. I got them a long while ago. But I was busy with other stuff. But now I've taken them out again. 
I did the machine gunner and loader for the 1st squad and 4 from the next squad. Then I finished the last 5 for the second squad. While also building and doing a Sarissa house and making some bamboo terrain pieces. 

So now I have two full NVA squads. I'm gonna do some marines. and then do the platoon command for the NVA and hopefully by that time I have the last NVA figures in the post to finish the last squad and so the platoon. 

I didn't bother with any photoshop background on these, I learned it's a pain in the ass to try and edit the bamboo.

The Sarissa house got some MIG earth tone wash/effects from my Tank painting stuff. I didn't want to lose the details eched into the MDF.

NVA mostly painted with AK US ww2 infantry set and AK US Vietnam set. with some Andrea colours for flesh etc.

The bamboo is the standard type you find on Ebay, painted and washed. the base is styrofoam on a board, painted, inked, and flocked. 

The roof is a dead teddy bear and the fur has been treated with watered-down glue and various inks and colours, roof is the main part I'm not happy with.

Opertation, don't use white.

 It seems a lot of people got a bit GNW fatigue, me included. I got tried of going out into -13 degrees to take pics. Also I got very few views on my post. none of my recent GNW post even got to 100 views. My last post that got above 100 was my Austrian SYW Cuirassiers. 

Anyway, I started work on my TYW project. But the unit is big 39 figures, I got a little over halfway, and I needed a break, I did TYW partly because I wanted to do it, and partly because my white set from Andrea is empty of the two most important shades, and the finances are still a bit iffy after Christmas. So I haven't taken the luxury to buy more as shipping is expensive from Andrea. So I need to do stuff that doesn't require a lot of white. Luckily I got plenty of those projects(just can't do my two main projects, Napoleonic and SYW as those requite large quantities of white. 

After painting 21 TYW infantry I jumped on to my Vietnam project that needs some love. I decided to do some NVA, believing I had all the figures I needed to get 2 squads done. And I do in theory, except I've "misplaced" my RPD gunners. So that was annoying as hell. So I've decided to finish the squads except for the gunners, that I have ordered replacements of. 

Anyway here is the first squad, minus the RPD gunner and his support gunner. 

These are of course Empress my main Nam figures, I will try the upcoming Rubicon stuff, as that looks promising. 

The bamboo was hell to edit around. 

The squad is mostly up to date for 1968, with green fatigues and AKs but a couple has a mix of the new green and older kaki, as well as SKS.

I'll continue with the next NVA squad, and hope to do more on the Marines, I got about a squad worth of more figures and a mortar team I hope to have the interest to do all that before I jump on something else. 

TV killed the radioman.

More work done on the Vietnam project. I'm a little under half done with the Marine platoon.
I'm missing 1 grunt to complete the first section, But I have now Section leader, quite a few grunts, 2 M60s, 2 M60 helpers, a blooper and Platoon commander with radioman.

The platoon commander is calling to HQ asking for better rations. The men are threatening mutiny.

First of 3 bloopers done.

 Ammo support gunner for M60.

I now mostly have regular grunts left for the platoon, in fact, except for the bloopers and a corpsman all the remaining guys in the platoon are just grunts.

Slightly less than half the platoon. 

Just some better photoes.

Just some better photos of the marines.

Back "in-country"

So I painted 4 more Vietnam figures. making the total 11, or roughly 1/4 done. I'll probably go for an understrength platoon with field setup instead of the official. I'll probably go for 2 sections of 12 men, with M60. And one with 10 without an M60, as well as Platoon headquarters etc. 

 Pictures are a little boring as the printer is out of toner. I tried to use a blue background to remove it in photoshop. But my skills are not up to par. And it didn't look good.

Besides the basic platoon. My support options will be an extra M60 team. 60mm mortar team and an M113. I think I have ordered enough from Empress to complete that goal.

Just a quick trip to NAM

As has happened before, sometimes you just see some figures you have to have.
This time it was Vietnam US Marines from Empress.
I ordered 12 just as a test taste, and they tasted good.

I ordered a Vietnam paint set from AK, that I really like too.
The first two got 6 or 7 shades for green, I think it looks very good, I tried to simplify the two others with just 4 layers but feel the contrasts became too big. The uniforms could be even lighter, But I feel they get very light OD if you continue to lighten it.  I'll definitely order more to complete the platoon Since they are on single bases, I can use both Chain of command Vietnam rules or bolt action Vietnam rules.

 The figures are very nice, 

Light up the tree line!

Whats up doc

So a few more nam figures, I did 4 yesterday, and realised I hadn't painted any black troops, so I felt kinda racist. This is one of the times I acualy get to paint black soldiers, I havn't painted any darkskined figures since my somalies long ago.

So I did 4 more figures with black skin. So now I got 12 figures, 2 M60s, 1 M79, 1 Mossberg and 10 M16s.

The NAM man, the NAM!

 So I've wanted to do Nam for a long time, the problem was that trees/palm would be expencive and you need alot of it, but then i kinda acedentaly bought like 150 palms.

So the table will be coverd in grass mat, with rivers gonig throught it, a small village, some rice paddies and some forest stuff, and some palms along the water.

These are The assualt groups miniatures, I bought sevral diffrent packs, mixing heavy and light gear.

Then comes the eternal color choice, The uniforms are actualy kinda leaf green, when dry, but they are almost never dry and so look darker, so I went for the darker color, They also make it hard as the gear and webbing is the same color as the uniform.

 I liked painting these, relativly easy and quick, most of the time is spent on the green ofcourse, I use Black green, then dark elf green, then military green, with highlights of camoflage green, I think it works well give the dark wet uniform style. and it's a rich color that looks good.

The helmet cover is camoflage green, with beige brown and black draps.

The guns are black with panzer grey highlights on the plastic parts, and some gun metal highlights on parts of the metal, to show wear and tear on the aluminium.

 The rice paddies were expencive but look good.
It's fun looking at all the diffrent gear they have, especialy since I used to have most of it my self, I had a complete M56 webbing, with buttpack, ammo, etool, bayonet, flash light ect. spent like a year ordering stuff and putting it togeater, looked great, then it got stolen along with other militaria I had, And so I stopped collecting that. It was a shame I was kinda attached to my Vietnam gear.

The Nam man, the nam

Man talk about troubled project.
The figure it self is superb, perfect anatomy and great detail, BUT it's made of VERY VERY brittle resin, resin is fine for square buildings, but for a thin delicate M16 it sucks, when I tried to cut the M16 from it's spure it broke in 3, later it broke another part, when breaking it explodes and the parts vanish into my apartment and impossible to find again, the barrle tim and carry handle disapeard for good, the barrle was rebuildt with green stuff, I didn't have the skills to make a flash hinder, so it's just a little barrle. the carry handle was a totaly diffrent beast, I tried for 4 days to make it out of green stuff, couldnt get t thin and small enough, I then started to look for random things to make it out of, I tried to use some white metal flash for metal soldiers to make it, but it's didn't work, in the end, I had to use part of a paper clip, I globed green stuff on the top of the M16 and glued the paper clip part to the top, not perfect, but it was atleast thin enough, I also had to glue the M16 it self togeather with green stuff, so it ended up very fat and buldgy and most of the fine detail disapeard on it.

The figue is inspired by Chris, Charlie Sheen's charater in Platoon, the Bravo 6 company that makes them also have a Barnes, and Elisja ect.

I tried to make him as dirty and missrable as possible.

Why, would you make someting that has 100% chance of breaking

This is to vent some frustration.

I orderd a 50mm Vietnam war figure, the model is fantasic, the right gear, perfect look and anatomy, BUT it's made of resin plastic, resin plastic works great for sqare buildings.

IT WORKS REALLY REALLY BAD ON A THIN THIN M16!!!

Before I orderd it, and I saw it was resin, I said to my self, that m16 is gonna break before I look at it, but the figure was really nice so I orderd one.

I got it, and say the thin thin delicate M16, I had to cut it loose, I got a super sharp hobby knife and tried to get it out of the thing it was stuck to, what happend, broke in half not a chance that it would get off with out breaking, so I got out the green stuff, and started to glue it togeather, then it broke again, this time the tip of the barrles, which disapeard, so now I had to make a new barrles of green stuff, and I suck at modeling. Then a few days ago I saw that the damn carry handle was gone to, so now I have to make a carry handle of green stuff, and thats very very hard to get it thin enough and small enough and then get it onto the m16.

So my question is why would someone sell resin models when they know how delicate it is, I mean this is expencive models at over £10 a model, you would think you could make it in metal with it it beeing much more expencive, or soft plastic, ANYTHING BUT RESIN.

Why sell a product that got a 96% chance of breaking with in seconds of getting it to the customer. This isn't a bad cheap bad product, the modeler got REAL talent, lots of time has gone into making it. It's like designing a super car, and making it out of wax paper.