Narcissus' Flames of War

After visiting a local gaming group last week and getting to play a quick tank aces game I decided to take the plunge and start building a force for Flames of War. My plan is to build a small force using the 11th Armoured Division, Fife and Forfar Yeomanry. I have ordered some decals from Dom's Decals and have gotten started on assembling and painting my models.


I have a tendency to go a bit overboard with converting my models for 40k. I managed to restrain myself and just added some sandbags for stowage and some antennas. These shermans and fireflys are from the new Open War box set. They were a bit tricky to assemble well and I had to fill some gaps and use elastic bands to ensure the treads lined up straight.


I watched some youtube videos on doing colour modulation on tanks using an airbrush (basically creating light sources on each panel). The effect is not especially realistic, but can be pretty eye catching. I tried it on the base coat for this model. I have some ideas for how to do it better in the future. I used Vallejo Model Air German Grey, then Vallejo Russian Uniform WWII, and then mixed in some VMA Sand for the highlight. I am still undecided on whether I will do this with all of the armour or not. Thoughts?

@Narcissus looking great

I am slowly building up a LW German Tank kompanie to fight by Brother inlaws LW British Armoured Company.

got a few half tracks so far, and will add more to those in the new year. [Panzer IVH, Panthers, StuH 42's, Panzergrenadiers, 8-Rads]

I also have two Tiger's but they will be going into my LW Hungarian list for the Eastern Front.

I do like the sand bags on your tanks. All I will be doing is adding shrubs and tree branches to the armour so the Germans can hide from the Allied planes.

great start looking forward to seeing more as you get them.

Do you intend to base your vehicles?

Cheers
LGW

Cool! Complicated game, though.

LGW-No plans to base the tanks. Just an extra step. My goal here is to get a force on the table ASAP. No obsessing over paint jobs!

Arachas-In some ways very complicated, in some ways much less than 40k. I am enjoying it so far.

I finished painting my first 15mm Flames of War model. I painted the V1 flying bomb from the Open Fire box set.




I painted the bomb to be as close to the pictures I saw as I could. Usually I would mask the area where the two colours meet, but the pictures showed the mix of the top and bottom to be a bit patchy. The bomb was airbrushed with Vallejo Model Air Light Sea Blue on the bottom and German Green on the top.


I painted the ramp by airbrushing Vallejo Model Air Middlestone and the painted the camo patches with Vallejo Model Air Russian Green and then Tank Brown. I washed it with thinned Citadel Gryphonne Sepia, drybrushed some lighter bits, and did a little wear with a metal colour.

interesting mini.

not sure how would one use it in a game. I am not sure if I'll get the Open Fire Box set.

I should be doing my next FoW order end of this month. then the painting will start.

need to get the arty template as well...

any chance you could do a battle report? Once you get one under your belt. you could post it in my Den section

Cheers
LGW

I think it is just a terrain piece in a game. I guess you could use it as an objective as well. If I get a second one I will put it on some bases as an objective.

The open fire box is pretty good. Depends what you need though. The shermans are a bit tricky to assemble. The value is amazing. The other bits it comes with like tokens and things make it an excellent starter.

I've played two small tank aces games so far. They have been pretty fun. Once my force is more painted I'll do a battle report. Maybe a campaign report for our tank aces campaign.

Tank Aces?

how does that play? I'd love to play just Tank battles rather then having to buy alot of other extras.

LGW

LGW-Tank Aces is a mini campaign where you play games with only full tracked vehicles. Vehicles operate independently. It is a campaign where you play sequential games of 500, 700, and 900 points in an escalation format. You could also use the same format to play any game.

In Flames of War you can also elect to only/primarily use fully armoured models. That is what I am planning to do. My final company will likely have about 20 armoured vehicles and at most one platoon of infantry.

I have just about finished the first platoon. I just have to decide if I should add the black and white camouflage on the ends of the barrels. These are two Sherman Vs and two Firefly Vcs from the new Open Fire starter box.




Firefly 1


I have holes drilled for adding on the MG. I just haven't painted any yet.


Sherman. This pattern of markings is what I will use for the rest of the squadron (aside from attached platoons).


Firefly 2. All of these models are from the new Open Fire set.



Flames of War can be a bit intimidating from a modelling perspective. As the forces are historical there is a "right way" to do things. It took me a lot of questions and research to figure out how to correctly apply decals for the squadron I am representing. I got a bit of criticism on the FoW forum for using the sandbags, as apparently they were used more by the Americans and not by the British.

Comments, constructive criticism, and suggestions are greatly appreciated. Thanks!

looking great, have you made up your Tank Ace yet?

So far I have glued up

4x Panzer IV H's
4x Panther G's
4x StuH 42
1x StuG III G

10x T-34/85's

still have a few things to glue up:
1x Panzer IV H
1x Panther G

looking forward to slapping on some paint and then having a game of Tank Aces. All of my Tanks are from The plastic Soldier Company.

Cheers
LGW

My tank ace will be a firefly. We will see which one looks best. I am trading for another set of british tanks from Open Fire to supplement these ones.

That is a lot of tanks you have to paint! Wish you lived a bit closer so I could help with that German camo! I really love the camouflage on the German tanks.

I am going to use my new air brush kit and silly putty to do the camo on the German tanks.



The Soviets are easy Russian green then dry brush with some Russian green and Russian uniform until desired effect is reached, slap on some ink for shading, decals and the russikies are done.

though I am painting up some German decoy tanks for them as well. [2x Panthers and 1x Tiger I E] should be loads of fun.

my brother in law and myself will do some Tank Ace games to get back into how the rules work. but eventually we'll play a full FoW game but with Armour ONLY no organics. Then after we do that for a bit we might get into some infantry platoons.

The Plastic Soldier Company has box sets of 130 troops for a very affordable price.

And they don't look to bad. My brother inlaw has made up some PSC Firefly and a BF firefly and they can be mixed together quite well. I do prefer the detail on the PSC compared to the BF resin hulls. plastic injected moulds are so much better.

I'll start painting once I get the last Panzer Iv and Panther glued together.

then I'll order some decals, and bases and I intend to base my tanks. the PSC tanks are VERY light and I forgot to add some counter weight to the hulls so basing is my only option now to protect them and make sure they don't get knocked off the table.

Cheers
LGW

For decals, I used Dom's Decals and he was great to deal with. Not sure if he has russian decals though.

Airbrush for camo is the way to go. You can freehand it too once you have good control if you want to soft edged look.

Narcissus wrote:

For decals, I used Dom's Decals and he was great to deal with. Not sure if he has russian decals though.

Airbrush for camo is the way to go. You can freehand it too once you have good control if you want to soft edged look.

the link doesn't work but I have seen Dom's Decals but never used them.

PSC does a range of decals that I'll have a look at as well to see which one I like best.

LGW

Thanks for all of the feedback everyone. I really appreciate it.

I've finished four more Sherman Vs from the Open Fire starter set. In total, I now have 6 shermans and 2 fireflys painted. I'm a bit surprised at how much I am enjoying painting these models. This is my first time painting 15mm models and I am finding that I am enjoying it so far.


The four finished Shermans.


I painted these largely the same as last time. The biggest difference is probably the addition of rust on the tracks stored on the sides of the tank.






I did these models with lots of tracks welded onto them as many pictures I have seen of British Shermans have this field modification.





Hope you enjoy them! Comments and constructive criticism are always appreciated. Up next: 2 M10cs.

looking good dude. Decals really make the mini...

ordering mine soon taking the 3rd SS Panzer Div Kursk [eg Totenkof]

and the Soviets will end up being a Guard Tankovy.

FoW is good and fun but I really am getting into the randomness that BGK is all about it looks great will have to put up a Battle report once we have a game.

When you get your FoW game post up the Battle report love to see how the lads do in their first encounter.

LGW

LGW-I'm a bit short of time to write big battle reports at the moment. I will write some brief reports in this thread though.

On Thursday evening the Tank Aces campaign began at my local store. There were 9 or 11 players, I'm not sure which. There was definitely a lot of action. The first week featured 500 point battles. I ran a list of 11th. Armoured Division with two fireflys and two shermans.

My first skirmish was against a German list with a tank destroyer unit equipped with Pak-40s (can't remember what they were). My opponent had 7 of them! We played on a desert map. I lost the roll for first turn and promptly lost a sherman and a firefly to first turn fire. Tank aces has some funny deployment options. I managed to destroy three more with my remaining two tanks. Antitank 15 was a bit of overkill against front armour 2... My ace got one enemy destroyed and I was thoroughly defeated.

My second game was against a German list with a king tiger and 3 Panzer IVs (I believe they were trained). Our board was a bit thin on terrain with just three small buildings and a small wooded section. With so little terrain I was unable to get into the flank of the King Tiger and lost a Firefly early to the Panzers. I ended up destroying only one Panzer IV. A very bad loss.

Today I played a game against sultansean from this forum! He was in town briefly and brought a small box of tigers with him. We went down to the local store but discovered it was board games only on Friday evening. We went back to my place and played on the volcanic obsidian wasteland (also known as my black coffee table). We played 1,000 points in a very friendly game (we definitely took a few liberties). Sultansean had 7 confident trained tigers and I had 7 shermans, 2 fireflys and 2 M10cs. Our table was small but we had quite dense terrain. Half of our forces started in reserve. My forces got pushed back hard in the first few turns and I was seriously suffering until my M10s showed up on turn 4 and I managed to get models on both flanks. My M10s survived some close range shooting and managed to obliterate a few tigers, tilting the game dramatically in my favour. The last few turns saw me slowly picking off the remaining tigers. The game finished with the last tiger getting destroyed defending it's objective. I had 2 M10cs and 1 Sherman remaining. This was a really fun game. Maybe my favorite so far. The tigers were tough to crack and we had a lot of fun maneuvering around the board. The M10cs were definitely the MVPs with 5 tigers destroyed and no losses!

Sounds like you had loads of fun.

I have plenty of armour painted now not sure if I will get a chance to play Tank Aces now as I am gearing up for BGK.

But I may one day.

LGW

I've got some M10cs almost complete. I just need to paint the crews and add some dust and highlight the rubber parts of the tracks. These models were fun to paint and assemble.

The baby tanks look AMAZING! If I didn't knew I would swear they are the size of a Land Raider. WOW!!!! Museum pieces!

Thanks Mordheimer, I always appreciate your enthusiastic comments!

I finished painting two M10c Achilles. They have been pretty effective in games so far. The models went together easily and were fun to paint.







And a few black and white pictures to test the effect.





Comments and constructive criticism are appreciated. Thanks!

I converted a few Stuart M5A1s and a Stuart V into turretless Stuarts for my 11th. AD. I magnetized the machine guns and tank commanders to allow them to switch between turretless and turreted Stuarts. Thanks to everyone who helped me out and showed pictures of their models for inspiration!









There is a tutorial of how I did it up on my blog if anyone is interested.

Special thanks to R Mark Davies, silversniper, and Pyrrhic Victory (FoW and WWPD forums) who helped me out with questions and posted pictures of their models.

Just some quick updates. I've assembled 4 stuarts, 3 universal carriers, 4 shermans, and 2 fireflys. I've now basecoated them. Hopefully I can finish them up quickly.




Just a picture to show the colour modulation. I basecoated them in VMC Russian Uniform and then added shadows with VMA Olive Drab. I'll add some line highlights by brush after.

I wrote a short tutorial on painting ambush camouflage on my blog. Ambush Camouflage tutorial.

I put another one up on "corn chip" disc camouflage: http://rustandthecity.blogspot.ca/2013/03/tutorial-corn-chip-german-camouflage.html.



I have a few more on the way on painting 3 colour disruptive camouflage and some other ways of painting disc camouflage.

I need some help. I really want to paint some panthers in disc camouflage. I need your help to pick which design to go with on the final models.

The effect I am trying to achieve is similar to this:


Method A: Spraying through a template of hole punched circles.


Method B: Spraying three colour disruptive camouflage and then overspraying the yellow disruptive pattern through a stencil.


Opinions and thoughts would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!