15mm WWII Americans for 'O' Group

I purchased these figures on Ebay recently to complete my US infantry for 'O' Group.  My collection is primarily based, and was originally intended for Flames of War. In Flames of War a US platoon is the force shown: seven infantry stands and a small base bazooka team. For 'O' group this is two three-stand platoons, an extra infantry team and a bazooka support section, usually deployed in two or three section teams. 

 

These came fairly well painted. I did some touch-ups due to damage in shipping, added some additional details to the helmets and webbing and gave the bases a spruce up with static grass to hide some questionable basing choices. 

 

 

I'll count these only as 'purchased 15mm figures'. The touch-up work wasn't significant enough to warrant credit on my annual totals. 

First .STL Files Created - Markers for 'O' Group

There are .STL files for 'O' Group markers available for sale, but they appear to be made for resin filament 3D printers. Because of this the markings on them seem a bit 'chunky' to me for 15mm figures. Since I have a resin printer, I thought I'd take this as an opportunity to spend some time learning Fusion 360 and design some for resin 3D printers. 

This is the suppression/pinning tracking triangle that is unique to 'O' Group. I've sized it so it will not only work with large and medium bases, but also small bases (not shown). 

My printer can print twenty (20) of these at a time, directly on the build plate. I've finally dialed in the printer well enough that 'elephant foot' isn't much of an issue for things such as these. 

 

 

 

Order and Company Order markers are also just now finished. I'll continue on the rest of the lesser-used markers later this week. I'll count this as one 'terrain/misc' created.

28mm Finnish Sturmi Assault Gun

I 3D printed this Finnish Sturmi assault gun from the excellent STL files sold by Night Sky Miniatures. Their files are complete and can do any version of the Finnish version of the Stug III. It comes with the gun magnetized so you can use both guns on the same hull, but also this provides for much safer transportation of the model with the gun removed. 

 

I started with the cement-reinforced hull with logs and the early war welded gun mantlet. I'll likely also do a pig-snouted version with extra tracks on the lower glacis. Lovely model all around.

 

 

 

 During the painting I dropped this on the cement floor of the shop and obliterated the MG shield and gun. I loaded the mesh up into Fusion 360 and pulled out just the geometry for these pieces and re-printed and attached and painted these replacement parts as well as repairing various other damage. You can hardly tell that I botched it!

I'll count this as another painted 28mm vehicle in my annual painting totals.

28mm 3D Printed 'Finnish' 1936 Ford Flatbed Half-Track Truck

Another 3-D printed vehicle for my 28mm Continuation War / Lapland War Finnish army. This will be used as another un-armored, un-armed transport for my Finnish army. It can either transport troops, or tow a larger weapon such as an anti-tank gun or an artillery piece.

These were also used by the Canadians during World War II. Similar to the Finnish, they had the weather and terrain to make these a useful civilian vehicle before the war. Pressing them into military service was a fairly small step. There still exists one example in a Canadian museum.
 

I'm quite fond of this model as it prints in both the wheeled and half-tracked version as a single-piece print. All I have to do is clean off the support 'sprues' and start painting. It's a solid print, so it costs about $3.50 in resin to print, but that extra resin also gives it the weight of a commercial cast resin vehicle. I appreciate this as most of my collection is made up of such models. This will add one 28mm vehicle to this year's painting totals. 

 

28mm 3D Printed 'Finnish' 1936 Ford Flatbed Truck

Prior to the 1939 Winter War, Finland used primarily Ford trucks for civilian use having no speak-able automotive industry of their own. When the Winter War broke out, a large number of these were pressed into military service as a necessity. This model represents one such vehicle.

This was printed on my Elagoo Saturn 2 3D printer. This was a wonderful model to work with. It printed entirely in a single piece, fully assembled. I broke it off the supports, did minimal clean up with a knife and sanding stick and primed it up.

Since I used OD green colored primer, painting was relatively easy with a quick dry brush to highlight panel lines, picked out the tires, windows and metal bits, and gave it a panel wash and a European dust wash. After both washes, some of the details were a bit muddled, so I did a few touch-ups. Decals were applied prior to the final washes. All total, maybe 90 minutes total 3-D print clean-up and painting time.

This will count as one 28mm vehicle in my annual painting totals. I enjoyed this enough, and I could use a second truck for my Finnish since they didn't use APCs, so I might print a second one. The 3D printer started to earn it's cost back with this model. This cost me about $4.00 worth of resin. A similar quality commercial offering would be over $30.00
 

 

Two 28mm Komsomolets artillery tractors for my Finnish army

These are two 28mm Komsomolets artillery tractors for my Finnish WWII army. The Finns captured a bunch of these during the Winter War and used them to the end of WWII and beyond. These are both 3D printed. The one on the left a filament print gifted to me by my friend Mark D., the one on the right printed by me in resin on my new Elagoo Saturn 2 resin 3D printer. Mark, thanks for the wonderful gift!

Both of these were weathered up with some mud in the tracks and splattered throughout. This 'mud' was made with Mig 'European Mud' pigment and some acrylic medium. A nice coating of dust was added using Valejo dust weathering wash, which I actually like a lot. I've intentionally left off the Finish markings on these. Some were pressed immediately into service, so this is not all that a historical. Also this will allow me to use them with a Russian force should I ever get around to making one. 

 

I'll count these as two 28mm vehicles painted in my annual painting totals.

28mm Ruined European Church

I purchased this ruined church model over 15 years ago during a trip to Historicon. I believe it's a Hovels brand model. It didn't come with a base, so the rubble surrounding it and the base I added. This is a useful piece as it's simple, nicely sized and has sufficient area inside to house a decent number of figures, including room for a sniper up in the steeple. 

Not much more to say about it. I'll count this as one 'Terrain/Misc' in the annual painting totals. 

Two 28mm Ruined Brick Buildings

Two more ruined buildings and an extra wall section. These are more of my continued effort to reduce my un-built, un-painted scenery stash. These were primed off-white, wet-ish dry-brushed the brick walls to get the bricks red and keep the mortar white. The stucco and plaster sections were painted, then I went at them with a special 'brick mix' I made using rust and 'European Dust' pigments from Mig. These were followed with some random applications of 'Smoke' and 'Dark Mud' Mig pigments. I'll count these as two 'Terrain/Misc' in this year's painting totals.

28mm Ruined Building

  

This is a 28mm ruined building I built from resin wall pieces I bought around 20 years ago at Historicon. Recently I decided it was time to start working on chipping away at my un-built terrain pile. I had always thought I'd do a ruined city game, possibly Berlin or similar. This piece is suitably generic enough that I think it's timeless. That said I'm most likely to use it in WWII skirmish games. 

Recent events in Ukraine have unfortunately given me the opportunity to see far too many destroyed buildings. The one thing that has struck me is how monochrome these scenes are, with the exception of burnt areas. I expect that's from the thick layer of dust that the collapsing buildings creates. I've attempted to recreate this with weathering effects and powdered pigments. The last of which were the black smoke/burnt pigments. Ideally I'd like to have more rubble in and around the walls, but this would make it a much less effective gaming piece, so I opted for a more cleared ruin.

28mm Round Sand Bag Emplacement

This was a quick, simple project. I've had this resin sand bag emplacement in my 'terrain to paint' box for maybe a decade. Recently I've decided to start actually working on this backlog and this piece floated to the top. Manufacturer is unknown. I primed it white and painted it with contrast and speed paints. Finishing touches with Mig streak and grime, Mig rust streak (on the corrugated metal and barrels) and a light dusting of Mid 'Europe Dust' dry pigments.

This is sized nicely to fit a good portion of my man-packed weapons teams as shown below. Due to the modern materials and 55-gallon fuel drums, it's only really usable for World War II and later. This will count as one (1) terrain piece for my annual painting totals. Expect to see more terrain sprinkled throughout my blog posts for the foreseeable future.