The Big Tank Project Continues

The Kursk project continued this week with camouflage painting. I had a look through my references for German armor at Kursk and discovered that recent thinking and photo analysis shows that most tanks and assault guns fighting at Kursk were painted dark yellow with an overspray of olive green.



Here is the current state of the project. Base paint schemes, tires, tracks and mufflers have been completed. In the back row, you can see there are four very different Tigers. The plane yellow and yellow/green Tiger are fine for Kursk scenarios. I also painted one for Normandy with a three-color scheme, and the final one with the red-brown paint scheme is intended for Polish or Baltic fighting in '44.



I have two StuG III Gs still down in the basement getting repainted. My first take on their paint jobs was awful.


Next up is a coat of gloss varnish, then decals, weathering washes and powders, and a final matt coat to finish them off.


'Til next time.

First Airbrush Project...Kursk!

Well there's no use in having a new airbrush setup if I don't go ahead and start an insane project with it.

A couple of years ago I collected German and Russian 15mm armies for a large Kursk scenario (July, 1943). I got a good portion of the way through the Russian forces, but stalled out on the Germans as my attention waned. I had brush-painted the majority of the armor force to the point of getting the base dark yellow color shaded and high-lighted. Honestly, it was a messy finish that I was never really happy with. The whole project went into the cupboard.

So now it's time to resurrect this beast and do a proper job on the paint schemes.

Everything started with a base coat of can-sprayed Tamiya dark yellow.

Each piece then got a heavy wash of floor wax and black paint. After that was dry, everything received a highlight dry brush of lightened yellow. As you can see, the base coat, which would then have received camouflage paint, was pretty rough. This is where the project stopped a couple of years ago.

However, now with the airbrush, the project is back on the table, and the base coats are now smoother...and I'm really looking forward to starting into the camouflage paint schemes.

These are all the German armor pieces I'm working on right now. Base coats with preliminary shading have been redone, and it's time to move on to the camo.

This assortment of 15mm pieces come from several manufacturers. Anything with a Pz III chassis is from Quality Castings, except for the StuG III Fs, which are the very nice models from Skytrex. The Pz IV Gs, along with all the tank destroyers, SdKfz 251s and Opel trucks are from Battlefront. The Tigers are the excellent models from Peter Pig...incredible, four different Tigers...so nice. Finally, the Kfz 10 and PaK 40s are, I think, from Quality Castings.

Next up, I start into the camouflage painting, weathering and detail painting. Time to see what this airbrush can really do.

'Til next time.

In The Beginning...

Hello Cyberspace.

Never thought I'd do a blog, but several guys associated with my game club have started up blogs, so I thought I'd jump in.

I'm pretty passionate about my miniatures gaming hobby, and I'm always looking for info on what other miniatures enthusiasts are up to. Hopefully, you are like-minded and will find interesting material here.

Starting a blog after being involved in miniatures gaming for 20 years feels a little weird. I could just go straight to what's on my workbench today, but I think it would be better to do a light survey of stuff I've worked on over the past few years (or decades...I suppose).

I've been a game designer since 1985, and fell into miniatures gaming as a result of that career choice. I designed my first set of miniature game rules back in 1990 with Silent Death, which was a set of space fighter rules inspired by Star Wars and set in my Spacemaster game universe.

I have plenty of painted miniatures for SD, but no pics of my own stuff...so here is a pic of someone else's figs.

Back then I was playing a lot of Advanced Squad Leader as well. I got into DASL, which was a micro armor version of the game. 6mm is a pretty small scale, but that just means you can collect a lot more of it! Here are some of my micro armor pieces, painted between 1989 and 2006.

Sherman V and Priest.

T34/85.

Ram Kangaroo with Infantry.

25 Pounder Battery.

Around 1999, I was contacted by my old friend from FASA, Jordan Weisman (who was responsible for games like BattleTech, Mech Warrior, Earth Dawn, Crimson Skies, etc.). He had an idea for a new miniatures-based game that would do away with the monster rule books which pervaded the industry at that point. Together, we came up with Mage Knight, the first collectible miniatures game. Our company was called WizKids, and it went on to produce lots of different miniatures games based on cool properties like DC and Marvel superheroes, Mech Warrior and Major League Baseball.


Here is a pic of some of the figures from that game system.

I moved to Edmonton in 2005 and hooked up with Bob Barnetson's excellent Edmonton Wargame Group. Miniatures gaming really took off for me at that point and I started collecting lots of armies, gaming models and terrain sets.

Here is a sample of some of the figs I've collected and painted for our games over the past few years.

15mm German PaK and Infantry for Disposable Heroes.

15mm German Motorcycle Troops & Panzers.


25mm British Paratroopers.

15mm Ancient Greek Hoplites.

1/72 scale Pfalz D.XII for Canvas Eagles.

25mm Troll Chieftain for War of the Ring.

25mm Wild West Gunfighters.

1/144 scale diecasts for Warbirds in Miniature.

30mm Warmachine miniatures.

25mm Romano-British Calvary

Well, there's a sampling of what has occured in miniatures gaming for me over the past while. Next, I'll move on to current projects. Thanks for taking the time to look through this blog...hope you liked it. I'll try to update regularly.