Zulu Ibutho Complete

 I finally completed my first Zulu regiment, inDluyenge. It has been quite a long time, but I am happy with the result. 

I based them for The Men Who Would Be Kings, so there is 16 figures per unit. The bases are ones that I printed, with Leader printed on half of them. There is also a spot on the back of the base where players can put their leader values. I used magnets so that players can interchange the values.

Here are a couple of close ups:

To the Limit

 I've added AMS Lite to my 3D printer. AMS Lite is an attachment (not literally) for the A1 Mini and it allows you to print in up to four colours. I also ordered a spool of black, dark blue, light blue, and a sort of fleshy colour. Also in my order was a 0.2mm nozzle. Naturally, I wanted to see how tiny I could go. Pretty tiny, as it turned out, using the smallest layer height (0.6mm).

I decided I would also try my hand at designing some figures. I worked in Tinkercad creating 8mm American Civil War figures, which I knew I would scale down by 25% in Bambu Studio. I sort of knew beforehand that the figures would be too skinny, but I also wanted to see if I can get "realistic" and "proportional". Here's a more close up photo with a 15mm Zulu mounted on a penny.

I'm pretty impressed by how these turned out. Yes, there's some fuzz between the kepis, the flag didn't survive removal from the plate, and it is extremely wasteful of filament, but it was a worthwhile experiment.

I'm already working on 2.0. I'll make it much sturdier by having the figures slightly overlap, thicken up the flag a bit, and make the base thicker. 

Comparison between MMG teams

So now I have a German MMG team from Warlord and one from BTD. Let's compare them.

The Warlord one is on the left and the BTD on the right. The most immediate difference between the two is the tripod mount. The BTD one is thick and heavy. This gives it some welcome sturdiness. It also makes it way over-scaled. The other problem is that the stand looks very two dimensional.

The Warlord stand is far more accurate in scale. It also spreads out in three dimensions. But it wasn't easy to get there. The legs come flat and there were no instructions. Fortunately, I found a picture of the entire stand. So it was a matter of delicately twisting and bending the legs until they were the right shape and fit with the gunner. Of course, this meant that a stand was an absolute necessity.

The figures themselves are similar in size and chunkiness. The Warlords are a little more impressionistic while the BTD are firmer in detail. The difference shows up more when you are actually painting them. You have to use your imagination more for the Warlord ones while the highly raise details on the BTD make them easier pop them.

Overall, I generally prefer BTD figures but the Warlord ones blend in pretty easily and nicely supplement the gaps I had in my troops.

Support Options for the Germans (Part 3)

The Germans get some long range AT support:

These figures are actually Warlord 75mm gun and crew.

I find the Warlord and BTD figures to blend rather nicely. The BTD figures have more raised detail and slightly better sculpting (IMHO) that make them easier to paint but when painted, it is hard to tell them apart. I think the figure in the background with binoculars is BTD but I'm not sure.

Here's the front view:

Support Options for the Germans (Part 2)

Here's some additional support options. I have two Panzershrek teams (previously photo'd but this picture is much better.

Here's three pictures of the sniper figure:

Support Options for the Germans (Part 1)

Yesterday, I posted the main platoon but that is only half of the figures that I have painted. Here are some of the support options that I have done.

First up, some engineers with some engineery equipment.

The backside show off their labels

 Next, a couple of LMG teams that I can use to convert from regular infantry to panzergrenadiers

Down range shot

 Lastly, an MMG, a mortar, and a flamethrower. I'll use some spare figures to flesh them out into full teams

From the reverse

Germans from BTD

They are finally ready (minus the Dullcote that I want to put on when the weather is a bit more hospitable because it doesn't dry very well at -8 C) for Hot Lead.

I bought these from Stephen after he picked them up from a Black Tree Design sale. They are easy to clean with very little flash. I had only one figure who was slightly mis-molded but other than a slightly off face, you would not know. I really appreciate the detail that the sculptor included because it made the figures easy to paint. I'd easily recommend BTD.

Anyway, on to the figures:




I've marked the leaders and given the platoons a coloured dot to make separating them easier for Hot Lead.



Let's get a bit closer




Everyone's favourite German LMG pose

From the back







































And the whole company (minus the Lt)




One last shot

Panzershrek teams

When I purchased my Warlord Germans, I realized that I did not have the Panzershrek team that the Chain of Command list called for. Fortunately, Stephen had bought a large number of German figures while they were on sale from Black Tree Designs. I bought the Panzershrek teams from him right away.


The figures painted up so nicely that I bought the rest of Stephen's Germans. Now I have more Germans to paint but they are going relatively quickly. Lots of detail but easy to paint.

German Platoon for Chain of Command

I finished the two boxes of Warlord Germans, which is enough to give me 5 sections. Though one box was actually Panzergrenadiers, I did them as regular infantry instead. (A comment on the photos; the actual color of the mat and figures is more green in real life)



The Warlord figures paint up OK but they are a lot of work as the detail is not as raised as on their plastic Russians or on their metal figures. For some of the MG figures, I substituted a thin copper painted piece of plastic instead the ammo box.

Here are the front of some of the figures:


And here is the back:


Now that I have painted them, there are a couple of details that annoyed me. First is the epaulets are under the webbing instead of under. Not only is that wrong historically, it is tougher to paint. The second annoyance is the Sam Browne style strap they added in addition to the Y straps. I'm not sure why the gave both types of strap because hat that is supposed to be doing but it is something you don't often see in pictures of German soldiers. Unfortunately, it's molded in so I was left with the choice of either painting it or scraping it off. Painting seemed like less work.

I have 60 or so Germans from Black Tree Designs and I suspect that they will see far more table time than the Warlord plastics. They are just better looking and far more durable. I've already had to fix more German plastic weapons than I have Russians and the Russians have seen twice as much action.

In summary, while the Warlord plastic Russians are excellent, the plastic Germans are not all that good. I understand that Warlord have redone their panzer grenadiers and they are better. If so, make sure you are buying the new ones and not the old ones.

A Horde of Russians

Having basically completed all of my 28mm Russians, I thought I would take a picture of them. I basically have a full rifle company according to the 1944 TO&E (of course there's lots of disagreement on what that actually looks like).

I also have a scout section and a tank rider section. I could easily make a full platoon by moving figures around. The observer doesn't actually do anything in Chain of Command but I have the figure so I put him in anyway. The observer and radio men were for communicating with the division, not for artillery (or they used flags if the radio wasn't there or working)

The tank hunters can use a molotov cocktail, panzerfaust, or AT grenade. I just remove whichever AT weapons they are not using.

The mortar is actually an 81mm but I'm going to use it to represent the 50mm mortar that was with Russian companies earlier in the war. I have another one that I haven't finished and a 120mm mortar that I will use to represent a pre-game barrage.

Not pictured are my two T34/85s. One is finished and the other is partially finished.

Oh, and there's also one rifleman who got placed into the wrong box.

In the Box: Panzergrenadiers from Warlord

I traded a box of 15mm Flames of War Afrika Corps figures with Richard for a box of 28mm Panzergrenadiers from Warlord Games so that I would have an opponent for my rapidly expanding Soviet force.

Let's see what I got. First, here's the box art:

Inside, you get 6 sprues of 5 figures. Here's a front and back shot of two sprues:

Credit to Warlord here: they modeled the figures so you could load them down as ordinary infantry who need to carry everything everywhere or you can lighten their load as panzergrenadiers who leave their packs in their trucks.

Update: I bought the 25 figure Late War Germans by Warlord and they have the exact same sprues. So I now wonder whether they were helping their customers by allowing them to choose what type of infantry they could build or saving money by repackaging existing sprues, Probably both views are correct.

You also get some weapons sprues, bases, and decals:

As panzergrenadiers, the box also comes with 3 sprues to build 3 halftracks (and one gunner figure who, unfortunately, really cannot be used outside of the halftrack):

Here's one that I dry fit together:

Progress on my 2mm ACW troops

Now that I've completed all of my 28mm Russians, I've returned to my 2mm Americans. When I last left off, I have based and painted all of the ones I had. What I hadn't got to was labeling them and flocking the bases.

I've done that now. I have completed the entire 2nd Corps of the Union army at Antietam, the Cavalry Corps, and started on the 1st Corps. Here's a shot of the 2nd Division of the 2nd Corps:

I used the trefoil symbol that the 2nd Corps used and also the colour system they used within the corps to denote the division. Red for the first division, white for the  second division, and blue for the third division. I expanded on that to surround the trefoil with a colour for the brigade.

Here I have a picture so that you can see sort of what this looks like from the front. I'm rather pleased with the result.

6mm Americans from Adler

I've had these little guys painted for a while now and they were documented in a previous and now defunct blog. But since I have this blog and I have some pictures of them, I might as well have a post about them here.

These are wonderful scupts. There's a lot of animation and detail in them as you can see in the following pictures. This is the same stand showing the front and back.

The webbing isn't painted on. That's detail that's on the miniature. All I did was highlight it with a bit of colour and use a black wash.

Here's what I mean about the character. Can't you just feel the determination oozing from the
tommy gunner?

Leon at Adler does a nice job of packaging his miniatures into useful groups. I ordered his engineers and they came with some flamethrower crews:

I've based all of these guys for BKC, so I've done some command stands for the CO and HQs. Here's one that features a GHQ Dodge command car as well as three Adler figures. The two on the left are yelling orders over the radio.

 Finally, here's just under half of my Americans.

Soviet Platoon for Chain of Command

At Hot Lead, I purchased a box of 28mm Soviet WW2 troops from Warlord along with a MMG and a mortar (technically an 81mm but it will serve as a proxy for a platoon mortar). I finally completed them last weekend.

Here are the troops ready to kill the fascists.

 

These figures paint up nicely. Here is a section:

To give you an idea of how nicely they are sculpted, here's a close up:

Most of the paint is Vallejo. I used Russian Green for the helmet, Reaper tanned skin, Russian Uniform Green, Leather Brown for the belt and cartridge cases, Violet Green (?) for the blanket, and I think Khaki for the straps and puttees. I then gave them a coating of my depleting Devlan Mud was. I then went back and hit the high areas with the original colour to counteract the darkening and colour change done by the wash. I finished them off with a couple of sprays of Dullcote. I've never used it before and it's a little shinier than I thought it would be.

Just in case my troops do not show sufficient bravery and self sacrifice, I've done a Commissar. Unfortunately, the picture does not show the nice blue he has on his cap. Trust me, it's there and nicely painted too.

I have some anti-tank troops as well. Here are the tank hunters. I can have them throw an anti-tank grenade or a molotov cocktail. I've updated the flame in the cocktail after this photo so that it is a bit brighter than what is shown here:

Here is the longer ranged solution:

Here are the metal figures I bought. I prefer the plastics to the more cartoonish metals. Judge for yourself. Here's the mortar team:

And here is the MMG team (at least the ones that came in the blister pack. Obviously, I'll add a couple of rifle men in the game to bring the team up to full strength):

Finally, a sniper team. This is my favourite photo because it captures the animation and detail in these figures best.

I do have a few questions though. I want to get another platoon. I could go for another box of Warlord but I'm wondering about the Wargame Factory Russians. Are the comparable in size and bulk? Would they mix and match well? Do they have a nice mix of weapons and poses? Do they have options that are not available in the Warlord box?