Bolt Action - Band of Brothers Starter Box

[digger303]

They are getting closer

[aur0ra145]

They're still headless but progressing. I also took today to clean off my bench quite a bit. The AH-64D is going on the "Shelf of Kits to be Finished in the Future." Also started to reorganize the paint rack. Vallejo Model Color how has it's own row and the washes I hardly ever use are now in a properly labelled storage bin. By pure luck the additional storage bins I bought are an exact match for the existing one, so stacking is made easy.

[digger303]

Gotta get lucky sometimes we all get enough bad luck it has to balance
Figures look good and the active poses work well.

[aur0ra145]

Just one MG gunner painted tonight. I don't know if I'm sold on gun metal for the MG42. An off black, or rubber black might looks a bit better. I'll experiment with the other gunner and see how that looks.

[Twokidsnosleep]

So impressed with how smooth and clean you are keeping the paint on these figures at this small scale
Nothing looks clumpy or lumpy
Well done

[aur0ra145]

So impressed with how smooth and clean you are keeping the paint on these figures at this small scale
Nothing looks clumpy or lumpy
Well done

Thanks for the kind words!

Did a small experiment. The left MG guy has his MG base coated in AP Gun Metal and dry brushed with Two Thin Coats - Death Reaper Black. The right MG guy has his MG base coated in Two Thin Coats - Death Reaper Black and dry brushed in AP Gun Metal. I think I like the right one better. The texture palette was instrumental in accomplishing these effects.

[digger303]

Me too

[aur0ra145]

Making some solid progress while watching the live stream of USS New Jersey go into dry dock today.



Some of the dudes finally found their heads!



Rest of the afternoon I should be able to wrap up camo pattern on the guys with smocks.

[aur0ra145]

Well it looks okay. Might try a bit different tomorrow.

[digger303]

Given the scale they look great.

[aur0ra145]

We shall see.

[aur0ra145]

Well I saw "Hadestown" with the wife. Turns out that I like theatre, just not he parts she thinks are good.

Helmets came out okay. I need to reorganize the rack.

[aur0ra145]

Another shot of the helmet camo. Painting this camo is hard but rewarding.

[digger303]

Doing well. If I was attempting it the markings would be much less distinct and no where near as good.

[aur0ra145]

One down, two to go. I think I'm getting the hang of this.

[aur0ra145]

The painting is done! I still need to tint them with quick shade but most every thing is done. I'm borderline on not using quick shade as I don't really know what it would help with other than being a topcoat for protection.

Here's and example of the the layering I was doing with the paint for the camo.



Another shot showing the yellow color over the brown.



The final guys being complete.



Gang is all here. I left off the packs for most of the guys. In old photos I don't really see Heer/Waffen SS troops carrying anything other than their load bearing equipment. I went with just gas mask canisters and a spade until I ran out of spades. Overall I'm not planning on any decals for these guys.

[digger303]

They are sharp great work as always.
It occurred to me if the bases were hexagons then they would fit together better and the ground work would be uniform instead of the gaps between circles. Maybe it's not needed with war games ?

[aur0ra145]

They are sharp great work as always.
It occurred to me if the bases were hexagons then they would fit together better and the ground work would be uniform instead of the gaps between circles. Maybe it's not needed with war games ?

Thank you!

Sort of depends on the wargame. Bolt Action (this one) the base shape doesn't matter, so hexagons would be good to go! In something like Warhammer 40k, the base is used to determine "line of sight" so, you'd need to use the round bases, else the balancing might be off based on the base size.

As for an update, sprayed these guys with some Alclad II Lacquers Klear Kote Matte ALC-313. They need to dry for a while, then off to basing and finishing touches.

[aur0ra145]

Painted up the basin of the bases dark green in preparation for the grass bits. In all, these guys are very close to finished. Additionally I tried to dry brush some camo on the half-track. It looks terrible. I'll have to go back and airbrush it better later.

[aur0ra145]

Back in the saddle with some easy projects to get the mojo flowing again. The local game store had a sale of 25-50% off the pre-printed color buildings for assembly with PVA glue. Combining the discounts with some instore credit, they only ended up being about $44 USD for a $149 USD value.



These particular buildings had printing on both sides which was quite nice. It also didn't have the protective masking tape over the printing. Which in the past had been very tedious to remove.



I neglected to take any in progress photos as the buildings built up incredibly quickly, and interlocked to where I didn't really need to wait for glue to dry between assembly stages. Overall a nice design and will look good on the game table.

[Twokidsnosleep]

Good price and those look great!

[digger303]

Buildings are interesting to look at and look well put together. You have me off looking at or trying to find 1/35 rail buildings now.

[aur0ra145]

Alright, we got the Band of Brothers box officially finished! I've got a few other bits to tighten up; but, these look pretty good. Now I just need to convince the wife to play with me. She did say I could buy a gaming table that has a dining topper. They look to be close to $4,000 usd, so I may keep looking. Or build one on my own?

Next issue. Bolt Action is about to update their rule sets. I believe they're supposed to drop in September. It sounds like they're updating how armies are built, so other than infantry I'm going to hold off a bit on getting stuff.





Also upgraded the paint brush holder. This wood one is much more organized and easy to move everything if the need arises. I may expand on the wooden setup for tool/file/brush/etc. holding if I can find good deals on the stuff.

[digger303]

Great looking army you have there.
Love the organisers they really help.

[aur0ra145]

Time to start on a few other buildings. Nice little project for today while I'm finishing up watching Star Wars: The Acolyte. I'll reserve my opinions for now and may start a non-spoiler thread once I'm done with the series.

This particular set of buildings are in the nesting dolls fashion with a destroyed base layer, then a nicer layer going up two stories. Also, I think this set got a bonus building, so that should be cool to see. Continuing on the trend of good things, my mother in law got me a belated birthday present of a gift card to the local hobby store which stocks more of these types of buildings.

[digger303]

Cool buildings.

[aur0ra145]

Not a ton of model time this week unfortunately. However, was able to prep the Grenadiers for primer, that will hopefully get accomplished this weekend.

[aur0ra145]

So I tried the "Slap Chop" method for speed painting. I think I like it. I'll have to see how it does on infantry guys. The tentacles including basing took me less than an hour for all 6 tentacles. So it is fast, which is nice.

[digger303]

Slap Chop ? I'm more familiar with lamb chops
The method must work cause they look very good.

[aur0ra145]

Ordered some paints to try with the Germans and realized I ordered the wrong color. Fear not, nothing a quick trip to the store can't fix... Well, the store didn't have the color I wanted so I guessed on a color of AP Burnt Moss. Fieldgrey has been described as a spectrum, so I'm happy to take that forward with my speed painting.

In all, this mini took about 10 minutes to paint not including the drying time for the primer. In the future I think some pieces will be "slap chopped" while others things, like the helmet, will get a normal coat.



Bit closer photo.



Example of the wide range of field greys out there.

[aur0ra145]

Slap chopped another guy. This time an ammo bearer. The cartridge belt came out nice, I'm just not convinced on the AP Burnt Moss is the color to really go with for the uniform. I'll have to experiment some, and maybe make a trip to a different hobby store.

As an oddity, this series of models were sold as Wermacht Grenadiers (from the used models bin), though I can't get over the idea that this ammo bearer looks like a Fallschirmjäger. Especially with how the helmet is cut.

In other news, I finally caved and started using a fidget popper thing as a dry palette. You don't even need to clean it. Just leave the paint to dry over night, then pop out the dried paint. Good as new.

Lastly, I've started labeling my paint where it came from in my storage apparatus. Now I've got a complete spreadsheet of all hobby supply consumable, and where they are located. Then as I use the paint I'm marking them as opened or not and writing on them where they belong. Hopefully this will stream line the process of locating supplies (and putting them back where they go without having to lookup a spreadsheet.)

[aur0ra145]

Did a bit more slap choppin' tonight. The "Vallejo Xpress Viking Grey" I accidentally bought does not look good for a grenadier, but may look okay for some of the Luftwaffe uniform colors. It also may look really good on WW1 French infantry if I use a different base coat color.



Did a bit more experimenting with slap chopping the base colors, then doing normal painting for the interesting bits. Which I then shaded with contrast paints. It's like going forward and then in reverse for the techniques. It looks alright, much faster than doing them the "normal" way. If I can find the right uniform contrast paint I may switch to this method full time for German troops. I don't think the US Airborne I have will do well this technique as their uniform is beige/khaki and I don't think will do well with the base colors.

Unfortunately doing skin colors with slap chop hasn't been looking too hot. It's either too white if I just shade with a contrast paint. OR I paint the face the normal way and shade with contrast, which then makes them look sunburned. I've tried the normal way and then shading with Citadel Nuln Oil which makes the facial features look waaayyy to defined. More experimenting is required.



The first 4 guys together. At a stand off of 3 feet they look real nice, which is how we'd play with them.

[aur0ra145]

Little update while I'm waiting for my prime to dry.

Went and primed everything in Ultimate Matte Black. Plan is to dry brush all my terrain pieces a la Slap Chop, and add details as necessary. Which will likely be Vallejo Acrylic Effects. First up were two 3d printed bridges I bought off eBay. They took next to no time to paint and came out looking great! The buildings I'm dry brushing in probably two colors. A lighter grey for the corner pieces then a darker grey for the main stone work. Plus some detail highlights for wood pieces, etc. I've got a tendency to want to keep going the "lighten up" the stone work; but, I'll hold off until everything has dried to re-address.

In other news, I had two different packages show up with incorrect items. The first was a keyboard I bought specifically for the part number and key types (exact same kind of keyboard I'm used to.) Unfortunately they sent the wrong part number, so that one is going back. The second package was obviously stolen by some Amazon workers. They slapped my label on some other persons package and stole my stuff. Really disappointing, we'll see how the product return/resolution ends up. The item I had bought was around $150 and highly desirable for resell. Also feel bad for the person who ordered Violin String Conditioner I ended up getting. It will be a few days before they actually get their product.

The terrain:


Unpainted bridge:


The two bridges painted up via Ultimate Grey dry brush:


After dry brushing with a lighter grey the edges of the building, I went back and re-did the black base that I over brushed. So hopefully it will look nice. This is how it sits as of writing this post.




Goal is to have two tones of grey on these buildings going forward to have a sense of depth. I also need to dry brush all the rest of the infantry in prep for slap chop.

[aur0ra145]

The broken buildings are finished now. It's amazing how well dry brushing works for this stuff.





Slap chopped the fence piece. I'm very impressed with how it came out.

[digger303]

[aur0ra145]

Next up I'm going to make a grain silo out of a scotch bottle box. Essentially, I'll just 3d print a silo dome to put on top and voila, grain silo.



Still needing to get around to the troops, it seems I'm doing every project imaginable except painting the troopers.

[Twokidsnosleep]

Oh that is a lot of stuff to paint up

[aur0ra145]

Finished some mounted infantry. Theyr'e really low quality models that are just supposed to sit in the back of a half-track to show that it is occupied. For some reason I can only ever get 3 out of the 4 to sit correctly in the back. They're not even called out in the instructions on how they're supposed to sit.



Back to the Half-track. I resprayed the exterior with the Tamiya spray color from before to remove my previous horrendous attempt at dry brushing. Tonight I brush painted the wheels and the tracks, with a bit of edge highlighting thrown in. I still need to apply some basic weathering and seal the whole thing with a top coat.

[Twokidsnosleep]

Awesome work
I found a Citadel paint pot holder on Thingiverse that holds the bottle, but more Importantly also holds that damn lid open
I am battling with the base part and have had two failed prints on it so far



https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:3319115

[Stokesy44]

This project has expanded somewhat since I saw it last

Looks like a whole lot of fun, proper world building

[aur0ra145]

Whelp, bought a 1/56 88mm Flak gun and forgot to also get the gun crew. So with a of bit sleuthing, I found some .stl files for sell that I could print out.

Whipped up a few of them. 2x are printed at full size and 2x at a 5% reduction in size as some commenters said they're slightly too big for Bolt Action.

The files.



Printed out alright, though one dudes foot looks distorted. I'll have to clean out the vat.

[aur0ra145]

The toughest part of these 3d printed minis is getting them to stick to the base. In this instance I used some medium CA glue. We'll see how it holds up to play. The bases are bulk produced ones for WH:40k, which are legal for Bolt Action based on how the rules are currently written.



Also dry brushed some guys before turning in for the night.

[digger303]

They look great that slap/chop method works well.
If your having trouble getting the figures to stay stuck to the base a small pin drilled into the foot strengthens the bond immensely.

[aur0ra145]

They look great that slap/chop method works well.
If your having trouble getting the figures to stay stuck to the base a small pin drilled into the foot strengthens the bond immensely.

That is genius. I will try it out!

Started a print this morning and they came out alright. They're yet to get cured/based/primed. It's hard to see in the photo but the print layer lines are pretty apparent when dry brushing. Which leads me to shopping for higher resolution 3d printer. Maybe for Christmas?



Had a casualty when dry brushing one of the 3d printed guys from yesterday. Fractured the resin at the heels. But, he got glued back together and should be good going forward.



Here are the print lines I was talking about. Though, when playing the game you're never going to be that up close with the minis.



Finished up all the dry brushing. I tried out doing a Vallejo Model Color 70.830 German Fieldgrey WWII dry brush and see how those came out without slap chopping. The rest are done in Vallejo Model Air 71.119 White Grey, Army Painter Company Grey, Army Painter Brigade Grey and Pro Acrylic Bold Titanium White. The minis are lined up with which color I used. Of note, the original 4 guys I painted up where done with the Vallejo Model Air 71.119 White Grey.

[digger303]

What resolution are you printing at ?

[digger303]

What resolution are you printing at ?

[aur0ra145]

What resolution are you printing at ?

The machine is billed as a 2K printer. The settings say it's at 1620x2560 with a XY-Pixel size of 51um. The print space is 82.62mm x 130.56mm for the LED screen.

I'm trying out another print, this time with a smaller layer height and see what happens.

[aur0ra145]

Three more printed using a .020 um layer height. They're okay, still some slight striations you can see up very close.



The other batch came out nicely done with a .030 um layer height.



Trying out the Digger technique if drilling holes to help with adhesion to the base.



Bases for all my friends.



The two German snipers I bought the STL files for and printed I'm very happy with. We'll see how they look once painted up.



Then on to priming all the troops, and a boat.



Only "finished" a single mini today, though I got a lot of the pre-processing done. I'm still scratching my head if some of these figures are actually Fallschirmjägers instead of Grenadiers. Some of them seem to be wearing coveralls with the more airborne like helmets. Either way, none of them have FG42's so they will work for the normal infantry I'm trying to build them as.





The rest will be painted up using either AP Burnt Moss or AP Gravelord Grey. Idea is to paint 3 in each speed paint of the 6 for each base. Should end up giving me a good representation of which base and speed paint looks the best.

[digger303]

I have no real experience with 3d printing is the first thing I should say.
I do have a interest in this area and sometimes I will dive into utube and podcasts and see where things are at. Now I believe a .020 um layer height is about how small it can be stretched atm and it doesn't always work well. Going back up to .030 um is back in the safer zone. To me until you showed the close up pic I could not see the layer lines even in 50um.

Just as a bit of interest have you seen them building house walls with a huge printer using concrete. Not sure what resolution they are using

[aur0ra145]

Hmmm interesting on the .02 layer height thing. I really hadn't touched a thing till this past weekend. The .05 layer height does look good from a foot away, which is plenty good for table top gaming. I'm just so used to polystyrene smoothness that it's weird to see the striation lines.

As I'm shopping for a new resin printer, my main thing is a much higher resolution (like 4K+ in resolution) and a larger print space. Or I'll get a laser cutter, which is what the wife wants for Christmas.