Sunday 16 September 2012

Ralph and Alastair, no they aren't a posh gay couple.


While most of time of late as been taken up with painting my LRDG list, i've been trying my hand at sculpting. A pal of mine lent me some green stuff  year or so back do add some pipes connector boxes to my nebelwerfers after i'd seen John Boultwoods aka WPB on the BF forums, later i found out that John hadn't used GS (he was using wire and plasticard), so in a roundabout way it's all johns fault, i then moved on to add tarps to my BAR light mkVI's, battlefront has a good how to so if you're interested check it out.
 I've been doing a lot of headswaps of late, with a limited amount of poses for the LRDG rifle teams and drivers/gunners, i've been messing around with the 8th army rifle platoon figures, removing bayonets, backpacks, adding trousers, converting mortar round carriers to satchel charges. So i've been playing with a lot of GS and as always had a bit left over, i got fed up of creating more sandbags and tarps. An thought i'll see if i can sculpt a head, so 15 heads later i was happy not only with the result but the size to, whilst creating them i thught if i can do that, maybe i can do the body to, after doing a bit of research on armatures. I got myself a pair of needle nosed pliers, some silver coloured brass/copper wire .3mm (i think) both from ebay for a few quid. I've found with Alastair (see below) getting the armature right first is very important for the pose (Ralph is standing bolt upright so the armature was quite easy), then after that, it's just getting the GS plastered on right.


Greenstuffed pipes an connector box on the Nebs.
My son brings supplies in the opel blitz.
Ralph.
He's based on Ralph Bagnold creator/founder and first CO of the LRDG, also desert explorer and member of the zerzura club.
Bit blurred, apologies for my bad photography it covers up a multitude of sins. :)
Alastairs based on Alastair timpson he became CO of G-Patrol LRDG after Michael Crichton Stuart was injured, he was commanding G-2 when the descision was made to try and destroy and confuse the enemy by lobbing/placing satchel charges in the back of Italian trucks traveling along the Hon-Misrata road, in his book "In Rommels Backyard" he admits to only being able to place two charges after a lot of messing about with placing a roadblock further and further out into the road. He explains it a lot better than i can and it has an amusing ending when they get flagged by some italian truckers an try to fix their broken down truck.
He's currently missing his satchel charge/hand from his arm, although i've sculpted them they'll get added when i mount him on some plasticard, he's supposed to be crouching behind a fuel drum, waiting for a truck to pass, he'll be made into one of my objectives.
Another blurred one, so you can't make out his holster or water bottle.
This shots for scale, with one of the lewis gunners from a chevy.
The aboves a photo of my LRDG HQ T-Patrol post the attack on Murzuq Fort. It wasn't until i took the photos that i realised i'd forgotten to add the extra m.g.'s to the rest of the half patrol. So this is just a taster.





Friday 7 September 2012

Annatoli does it again.

Just a quickie, hot on the heels of last years release Annatoli expands the invasion of Poland with The September Campaign v.2 Orders of Battle book "Polish collapse"
http://anatolisgameroom.blogspot.co.uk/2012/09/the-september-campaign-v2-orders-of.html I've not had the chance to delve in yet, but after last years quality release and at 217 pages in length, it's gotta be worth a peruse and the 18.2mb's worth of drive space. Well done Annatoli. Ten out of ten for effort.