The Shoot and Scoot guys enter Month 2 of the Fate of Four Gamers challenge and with 30(ish) points behind them – give or take a decal or two – let’s see what’s on the painting slab this month!
Lee
Last month saw Three Magach 6A painted (plus two AA Halftracks outside the challenge), so what to do this month?
Why, for variety, another three Magach 6A of course!
There is a reason for this. I want to get 60pts done as quickly as possible and, as a Magach 6 company has to have two compulsory platoons of tanks, another two tanks gets me this and I need a platoon of three in the long run. I’ll also do an additional two tanks outside the challenge to allow for a full HQ of two tanks plus two full strength platoons of three tanks. That’s 96pts of tanks so not something that will see the field often but I like having complete units!
As noted previously this does somewhat backload the third month with quite a lot to paint (Priests, TOW Jeeps, associated crew, and a platoon of infantry in M113) but hey, if Fez can paint 31 T-34 and some SU-100 then who am I to complain!
In the downtime at the end of the last month I did do some conversion work to kill time. In my Magach 6 modelling article I had talked about a pintle 0.50 for the CO and so I had a crack at that.
First, I cut off the existing M85 0.50 barrel. I then got one of the unused overbarrel 0.50 and trimed off its barrel mounts from the underside. A quick look at other 0.50 pintle mounts showed the ammo tin to be mounted to the pintle not the gun so I cut that off too.
Next, I cut a suitable bit of plastic rod to about the right length and glued that to front right side of the cupola and, once dry, stuck the 0.50 and its ammo can on. Now I just need to green stuff an ammo belt on.
(White stuff is Vallejo Plastic Putty I was just using on the hairline join)
Not content to stop there, I also decided the CO ride needed the Loader to have his head out so I shaved off the loader hatch, sadly failing to do a good enough job to re-use it.
I then scribed out a smaller D shape within the outline of the removed hatch and used the dremel to drill a few holes along it that I could join together with knife and file.
Hatch removed (leaving hinge) and portal scribed. Note the turret on left has had its smoke grenade boxes removed. Decided that was too much of a pain to do on all of them.
Finally I made a new open hatch out of plasticard and stuck it on to the retained hinge. Simple!
The little nick in the leading edge will be green stuffed out.
That done, the plan of action is get the stowage on the five tanks, including some green stuffed air recognition tarps, then crack out the painting so I can finish off the month by building up everything for month 3!
Tank crewman needed a little bit of gastro surgery to fit in but looks good in place!
Providing nothing else distracts me…
Ben
Lee here again… Ben is a bit busy with work* so I’ve got his notes!
(*and absolutely nothing to do with giant tiny giant stompy robots)
Having spent the first month painting support elements in the form of Tiran 5’s and Sherman 155 SP guns, Ben’s target for the month is to get the core formation done; ten Ishermans. That’s a HQ of two tanks, plus two platoons of four tanks for a total of 40pts
Eddie
Month two begins… with more tanks.
Only(!) 14 of them this month as they are T54’s, but I’ve really hit a wall when it comes to painting tracks! The T54 kit is lovely, and the lessons battlefront learnt in the years since they made the T34 really show.
I’ve also got a holiday and a work trip meaning my painting time is really limited, so the challenge continues…..
Duncan
After the self-enforced folly of starting my painting challenge with all the infantry in
But even the mighty IS-3s don’t quite make it to 30pts, which is quite annoying, so I’m going to try and add in the PT-76 Scout Platoon and ZSU-57 AA Platoon as they are cheap and essential to the aggressive nature of my forces. I’ve also started thinking about creating some objective markers – I do have a penchant for nice little dioramas for gaming.
I’ve made good progress and blasted everything I need to paint with GW Zandri Dust and the Sepia ink was drying as I took these pictures. I’m slightly in awe of Eddie’s effort last month as painting 38 sets of tracks this month is slightly intimidating to say the least!
I have to say that I’m loving the detail of these models – they shade beautifully as the molding is crisp and well defined and I think that they will drybrush up nicely.
Looking forward to getting these painted up and maybe heading south to take on Lee’s awesome Magrach 6s towards the end of the month… If he’s not stomping with stompy robots and I’ve not been lured towards getting some Israeli Sho’ts in the meantime!
#SendMoreZandriDust