Desk clearing.....

It's amazing how productive I can be if I pull my finger out, crack down and actually get part painted figures finished! These guys are the product of 2hrs Saturday morning. They were all 'almost done', and had been hanging around for ages. No longer! (I need the space for some of the 1/48ths I'm working on...)

A selection of 'organised' Mercenaries for any 'not-congo' games - The sikh is inspired by a character from Farcry 2 (no idea if any Indians etc were with the mercenaries in the congo - I've never read anything to indicate it one way or the other) and is an Artizan figure, the radioman is a Warlord chindit with this SMLE swapped for a TAG SLR, the ex-marine .30cal gunner is a headswap from a Warlord Pacific Us Marine and the ex-para is a Mongrel/Badger congo merc...

Foundry Old West figures - 2 'eastern' indians, a Scotch mountain man & his squaw and a chap who looks a bit odd without the pack mule he's supposed to be leading....

WiP

And a few WiP photos....

The paint station - looking about as untidy as ever. I really must crack on with finishing some of those early west figures to clear some space. There are a few which really don't need much (3 mtd/dismtd indians needing warpaint and 6 or so infantry just needing a couple of finishing touches)

ChDKZ militia sniper - another VDV conversion. This guy is close to being finished - just need to do the dark brown for the urban reed camo on his trousers.

CMB sniper - no camo on this guy, so he shouldn't take long to finish...

MVD sniper - the trousers need some black adding, then the jacket will be in the standard Flora scheme...

CMB Militants - The alpenflage jacket & tousers both need black, and the figure on the left will be getting Flora scheme trousers... sometime....  His neck-scarf is supposeldy chequered (tea-towel style), although it doesn't look like it from this angle (looking more like a football scarf).... 

Finished figures - ChDKZ, NaPa & Telegraph poles

So, here's the latest output from my painting desk - all awaiting basing, but hopefully I can get that done over the weekend. Still not sure what sort of basing to do (currently thinking sorto f a sandy dusty colour, with green static grass patches, as opposed to my usual wilted grass. Also toying with adding dust etc to some of the figures to weather them in a bit and make them look a bit more realistic)

NaPa Guerilla Gunman

Origianlly a German kampschwimmer, thei figure is only a paint conversion. The balaclava seemed perfect for my first NaPa figure... I did the jacket as a non-descript parka. the sort of thing you could get from most army surplus stores, or possibly more military inspired clothing lines. The jeans are de-rigur for budding militamen (or so it seems from looking at pictures off the internet from as far apart as Libiya nad Chechnya). Non descript webbing, in aneutral grren is as sourceless as the parka. not sure what the strapping on the legs was supposed to be, but I've painted them up as rubber bands, used to stop the jeans flapping around whilst stalking about... No distinguishing markings on this guy. I'm hoping a lack of markings might become NaPa's trademark in itself...

ChDKZ Rebels



A conversion of a cold weather VDV figure, this figure has lost his beret & grenade pouch, but gained a caucasian muslim beard/shaved head combo. I was toying giving him a skull cap, but decided that would make him too specifically muslim, where as for now he can happily slog along with the other chedaki. He's got a Chicom style chest rig over his tactical vest, so I can only imagine he's expecting to lay down a lot of fire power with that RPK74. The shoulder patches are irregular sizes, but I've tried to paint them on other what look to be exisiting patches/etc. Not entirely happy with how they came out... but not so unhappy that I'm going to repaint them. I am aware that I'm tying these guys down with shoulder patches, but after my lesson with Africans (and hundreds of genera-militia) I'd rather limit my options slightly than loose track of who is fighting who :) )

The Chedaki section leader - another VDV conversion, this guy looks to be later production casting (seperate AK, holster on right hip which I carved off before discovering his duplicates didn't have one) . his beret has been replaced with a beanie (even more popular than jeans amongst european milita/irregualrs) and he's lost his bayonet scabard & holster to make him look a little less well armed/equipped. A similar logic was applied to giving him trainers.
Telegraph Poles

I'vegot 10 of these - scaled to fit 1/48ths, but they don't look too bad against 28's either... I was tempted to give them a dry brush to bring out some of the wood grain, but I think I'll elave them like this for now.



Some Uniforms, Flags and vehicle markings of Chernarus

Although I gave folks a couple of links to background fluff/visuals for the Cernarus setting, I thought I'd collate a bit more info/original insperation for the Fictional Forces:

Chernarussian Movement of the Red Star (ChDKZ - prounounced "Chedaki")
Emblem:

Flag:

Assorted uniforms:

The ChDKZ  unsuprisingly has no set uniform, although they do have relatively good supplies of ex-soviet camoflague patterns and have recently suceeded in obtaining quantities of the russian 'Urban Reed'  pattern. Additionally, the occasional Ex-NATO pattern turns, usually bought from army surplus suppliers. Webbing is a similarly adhoc affair. Most fighters wear red patches on their upper shoulders to differentiate themselves from irregular fighters from NaPa and the CMB. 

Vehicles Types & Camo: As a general comment, vehicles are often ex-CDF (although some vehiclesh ave been bought of the blck market, these are often old and generally in short supply), with additional 'spray-can' camo and redm arkings to destinguish their new ownership. A black circle with containing a red star, the ChDKZ 'emblem' and red stars with out surroundings are comonly used, as is a red cross over the turret. The use of improvised vehicles by the ChDKZ has also been reported, and a full report will be compiled at some stage

Chernarus Defence Force (CDF)
Emblem:

Flag of Chernarus:

New Style CDF uniform:

The uniform was introduced to replace the older soviet-era fatigues which Chernarus had been using post independance, and which for many are strongly associated with the Civil war. Currently based on the Swiss alpenflage, the camo does works well enough in Chernarus' varied terrain, however plans are afoot to introduce an alternative scheme, based primarily on browns, but this is still at the design/acceptance stage.

Vehicles Types & Camo:

Nationalist Party of Chernarus (NaPa):,/b.
Embelem:

Flag:

Assorted uniforms:

NaPa have limited supply chains, and whilst the ChDKZ can atleast put the vast majority of it's fighters into the field in some sort of camo gear, NaPa lag behind. Fighters wear what ever they can get hold of - often army surplus from neighbouring countries - and make up the rest with civillian gear. The main identifying features of NaPa guerillas is their prefernce for face coverings to preserve anonimity when they return to their day jobs. The same limited supply lines apply to NaPa's armamaents, and as such a much wider mix of small arms is seen compared to some of the other Milita groups operating in South Zagoria.

Vehicles Types & Camo:

The T-34 shown in the picture was 'liberated' from a museum, but NaPa are known to have several which they have reconditioned from various monuments. NaPa's infrastructral limitations have enforced a more covert level of work, and their limited AFV resources match this.

Chernarussian Muslim Brotherhood (CMB):

Updates

Just a quick one - alas, I couldn't get a picture of the medals, but they turned out very well indeed! Certainly, lots of folks were fooled into thinking they were actually metal, which I guess was the aim of the game. Following suggestions, there are now a variety of subscription services available for this blog - including by email & RSS reader - so if you want my wafflings and slightly blurry photos streamed direct to you, then this is now a possibility! ;) I'm not going to be able to get as much painting done as I would like ver the ext few weeks, as I have to give Emma a lift into work (her Dad normally doees this), and that 'spare' hour in the mornings is when I tend to get a lot of my painting done. On the flip side, hopefully I can carry on fleshing out some of my ideas on Chernarus whilst driving. Which isn't to say that there wont be any eye canddy though, as I've got a couple of ChDKZ rebels awaiting basing, along with the first of my NaPa guerillas and the finishhed tellegraph poles to put up at some stage...

On painting medals...

As part of the conference the university is hosting we will be awarding medals (Liftime contributions, best research, etc). Now, the problems arose when we didn't actually have any medals to begin with, so my supervisor decided that as I'm a metalurgist, know a bit about historical metal working and ave cast white metal figures before I would be the perfect candidate to make some. A long story short - white metal into open clay moulds isn't an easy technique to get right (although I did manage to prove all those who said that pouring metal into DAS clay would cause it to melt and burn were wrong. For future refernce, coat the outer surface of the mould in pva to give it a modicum of water resistance, and then sit the DAS in a tray of water. The water whicks the heat from the mould, stoping it from melting etc. It also cools the metal too quickly to get good resolution of detail...) So, in the end, I've ended up painting the hard plastic Masters... As I type, my base coat of tin bitz is drying, then I'll give it a wash with a dark green (in this case GW's dark green ink as I had it to hand when I packed my bag, and sat in the corner of the conference room conditions are a bit primative.) to give a slight patine. Then it'll be sequential dry brushes of Brazen Brass, dwarf bronce and burnished gold, before sputter coating a layer of real gold on with one of our instruments). I hope to be abel to sneak a picture of the finished article before they are awarded this evening, but I may not be able to do so....

Chernarussian types... CDF Foreign Volunteer

Originally a German Kampfschwimmer, I just painted this guy up to be a fairly generic militiaman/mercenary (I'm not sure that the CDF would actually need mercenaries, or that it would be in the interests of their media campaign to use them, but I'm stuck with the lasting images of mercs/volunteers in the balkans which seemed to fill in a lot of the news at an impresionable stage in my child-hood). His combat jacket has been painted in CDF/Swiss Alpenflage, but the rest is generic/civillian. no-one uses the MP5 in bulk, so that isn't a give away to his origins either. Due to the generic paint job, you might occasionally see him in the (disorganised) ranks of NaPa or the ChDKZ, or even NATO special forces... The standing stone was bouight to use with my Dark Age HoTT games, but is giving him something to stand next to at the moment... and afterall, who's to say where some stray band of wandering Varjazi may have erected a runestone as they explore the Rus rivers?

Some WiP Scenery and Vehicles...

A statue converted from an old anglo-Saxon model, a pile of sratch built telegraph poles, a fictional ChDKZ apc (probably bought off the black market, I imagined this to be what happened when someone ends up with a Police water canon truck, and replces the water cannon with a pair of Air-to-Air missiles they scavenged from a captured air base...) and a couple of cars curtesy of 2p machines on Brean sea front. The Beach buggy will turned into some sort of FAV, probably for my Rangers... As you can see, I'm not staying completely factul with this setting, but I'm aiming to atleast be inspired by real world equipment even if in game some of it looks a wee bit different...

1/48 - scaling?

'Like-for-Like' scale comparison between 28mm TAG MVD & 38mm/1:48 scale HLBS MVD & Spetsnatz

Another scale comparison - this time 2 HLBS, 2 TAG, and a RAFM '28mm' female survivor... Now, I've stuck her on a chunkier base, but as you can see she was ruddy huge to start with. She'll end up featuring in my 1/48th games as a lanky teenage militawoman... or some such. I don't think too many other figures from the range will be able to cross scales, but I'll keep my eyes open. There might be the potential to get a couple out of it (short older folks, teenage conscripts and the like)

Chernarussian types... CMB Fighter

The first of my CMB 'mujahadeen' types. These guys will be in a mix of scavenged uniforms - so expect a bit of everything. Currently they aren't set to have any distinguishing marks, other than obvious muslim trappings (neck scarves, green items with arabic prayers/pledges, etc). At some stagw I'm also hoping to add so Afghans into the mix, as well as being able to convert some more uniformed types by adding Chechen-style beards (like the ChDKZ fighter with RPK-74, shown in my previous post)

The ammunition ontop of the wire reel will probably be useds as an objective marker in a 'recover the weapons stash' type game; probably using NaPa or the CMB against a more organised and beteer equipped force (CDF, ChDKZ, etc)

Chernarussian types... Chernarussian Police

The only figures that I'm likely to do for these guys - they are based around 2 HLBS US Police officers. The only real conversion work was removing the sheriff's badges, and adding a mustache to the shotgun figure. All the rest was paint based. In an ideal world, I would have sculpted police caps onto them, but alas my putty skills aren't good enough. As for the shotgun, it seems most Eastern European Police forces seem to jump straight to the AK when extra firepower is needed... Still, it looks good and is not out of the realms of possibility. I've a 1/43rd police car turning up for these guys at some point...

Chernarussian types... ChDKZ

A few WiPs to wet the appetite...

WiP ChDKZ militiaman - trying to keep an obvious mix of military (camo coveralls, webbing) with civillian (beanie, undershirt, trainers. For the camo, I'm trying to keep to older soviet designs, although there will be a few more recent urban patterns mixed in. No 'Flora' pattern though, as that's what the Russian army/MVD will be kitted out in, and I want atleast a few visual differences. I'm planning to add some sort of identifier to the the figure, and being ChDKZ a red star would make sense - possibly on upper arms, or maybe on the back of his tactical vest. The figure is a 1/48 HLBS VDV figure in winter clothing, with the original beret removed, along with the AK bayonnet (yet to see any pictures of insurgents bothering with these!).

More VDV converted into ChDKZ militia - similar conversion process to the first figure (removing berets, excess webbing, etc). I was trying to get a Chechen style beard on the RPK-74 guy, not sure I managed it, but atleast he looks fairly irregular. Similar painting plans to the above figure.

A range of photos, and a few musings...

The Mrs. has gone to bed early, and so after a little bit of figure prep I thought I'd post an update... First of all, a view of my desk and paint-station - as you can see, I keep it fairly busy! My completed work next: Foundry Mexican & Mountain man for the Early West... Alternative armies Wyvern, painted un as a White Draca (dragon) for my Saxon HoTT army (so it can fight the red dragon of the Britons :) ) The figure for scale is a part-finished Foundry Indian Squaw.. TAG Modern Russian MVD, painted up in a mix of camo schemes ala Chechnya. Mainly done as a colour test, some of the actual patterns have been/will be further refined before use on 1/48th figures... TAG Modern Militia, done as a continuation of my camo scheme colour tests, including a version of the swiss 'Alpenflage' scheme. I always wanted to do a force in this after seeing the resistance fighters in Operation flashpoint/OF: Resistance in it...