6mm Chicago Wargaming: Back in the Saddle again...

Veerryyyyy Belated Update

So after a two and half year hiatus, I’m back to serious painting. (The moral of the story is don’t play World of Warcraft, if you want to accomplish anything else within the gaming community.) I joke, it wasn’t all WoW, D&D was in there a lot, numerous new boardgames (40 year anniversary edition of ‘The Russian Campaign’ is being released in 2017 so that’s going to be several weekends down the drain at minimum), World of Tanks, designing a boardgame for Game of Thrones for me and friends, working a scenario book for Warfare in the Age of Reason 3^rd Edition (should be out later this year). There was a lot going on. Plus painting can be hard.

So I admit the later half 2014, 2015 and 11 of 12 months of 2016, I got nothing done in the realm of painting. Few figures here and there but no real painting (actually I take that back I did paint some War of the Roses for my friend who never played with them). Then a strange event changed my direction. In their insane wisdom AT&T claimed I had cancelled my service after 15+ years and turned my internet off. What! No! WTF! It was a very angry week. They said “Our bad, we’ll come out and give you new equipment, so sorry.” They never showed. I mean seriously, WTF. So screw AT&T I thought. Well now I was faced with a shocking change of lifestyle. Sure I could just go to Comcast, but hell I left them eighteen years ago to go to AT&T. I had no more Warcraft. No VASSAL games 3-4 nights a week. No browsing through dozens of subscribed Youtube channels daily. No surfing wargame boards, entertainment news, Game of Thrones conspiracy boards daily. No more illegally downloading XXXXXXXXX (omg, that show was great). [Those Xs aren’t for porn, but the show’s full name]

What was I to do? What else was left to do? Go out and become more physically and socially active? Let’s not get carried away here (actually I did join a book club so I shouldn’t sneer too much). Painting it was. So I strolled down to my dusty forgotten basement, replaced some light bulbs and looked over the tens of thousands of unpainted lead, tin, pewter, and plastic lying around. Where to start? What should I paint first? Do I have a plan? No I do not. I am literally just opening random boxes and storage drawers and picking out whatever is in there.

And it’s been fun. After a while all the online obsessions quickly faded away. It’s been slow going, but I’m getting back into the grove. And I intend for February to be far more productive than December and January were.

So here’s what I painted the past eight weeks. It’s a crazy mix. Ancients, 16^th century, 17^th century, 18^th century, WW II, Modern, Super-heroes and sci-fi.

Here we have a few overview shots over everything done.

First up is some East German T-72s. These are pretty old H&R molds but they came out nice imo. I never liked Flames of War but really tempted by the ‘Team Yankee’ stuff out there for if just for scenarios, painting tips and inspiration.

Some U.S. M1 Abrams. Again these are really dated H&R molds. I know I bought these about 20-25 plus years ago. When I got them, I painted a single M1 Abrams with my friend’s girlfriend’s nickname on it (is that grammatically correct?), because he was smitten with her and I thought it was a funny/cute thing to do. Well after 20 years of marriage (and still going strong) and three kids (including one D&D player), I thought it be amusing to revisit that old tank with a fresh paint job. So my friend’s personal command tank has a shout out to his wonderful wife.

Some M60A3s, even older H&R molds. I would bet I was in first or second grade when these were cast. But still not bad, by any means. I think I went with too light a color for the ‘tan’ band on the camouflage. It stands out too much over the rest of the paint job. I’ll go darker when I paint some M-113s to go along with the tanks.

WW II Germans. A pair of SPAA with 37mm guns and a pair of Sdkfz 11 tractors. Like I said, just taking what’s in the randomly picked tray. Hard to tell in the photos but I think the gunners came out pretty well. Going with a Luftwaffe colored uniformed. Maybe I’ll go with a Luftwaffe division as the theme for the remaining Germans lying around.

Saw a picture of Warlord games German halftrack ambulance, and I thought “That would be interesting in 6mm”. Did some conversion work to give it a canvas cover like the Warlord model has plus some medics working over a grenadier with a leg wound. Fun little piece. Wish the lighting was better on the German ‘yellow’.

Some H&R Italians painted up as Romanians. Gave this mounting a try with a 40mm by 20mm base. Not bad, but I’m not thrilled about. I think I’ll go smaller (maybe remount those) with future work. Most likely 25mm x 20mm. I always thought doing some kinda Romanian themed Ost Front campaign would be cool. Shrug.

I had tried some H&R planes way back in the day and they did not come out well. Very basic paint jobs very crude, really disappointing. So I figured would try my luck again and see if I could do better. And considering I have little knowledge of the airwar during WW II, painting styles or patterns. I think they came out pretty well. Very happy with them. Although I wish I could I remember why I chose to paint the FW-190 as Hungarian. I’m sure I had my reasons at the time.

So here’s a Russian Sturmovik, German Ju-87D (G?), and a FW-190. Wish I did better on the Russian star though, painted on, not a decal.

Some Games Workshop Empire Handgunners. I like these.

The eight whole Foundry Landsknecht Pikemen I own.

Some Ancients, a stand of Marian period Roman legionaries and some Athenian Hoplites. I enjoyed the hoplites but what a pain to paint. Trying to do two or three dozen bases of those guys could drive me mad.

Some 18^th century. Hessian Dragoons and Cavalry from the Seven Years War and some Bavarian Cuirassier c1700. Plus a Russian 7YW infantry battalion, going with the four ranks style they continued to use during this time period.

I had bought some Marvel Heroclix models few years back on Ebay. Had planned to maybe get the D&D group into playing the really older Classic Marvel RPG game, but that went nowhere. Although repainting the Heroclixs was fun.

Some X-Men villains. Left to right are Arclight, Vertigo and Sabertooth.

Some X-Men and more villains. Quicksilver, Colossus, Marrow, the Black Rook (Henry Leland) and the White Queen (Emma Frost). Sorry this pic was fuzzy.