Two 15mm Built-Up-Areas for Napoleonic through WWII Gaming

I made up these two 15mm BUAs primarily for use with the 'O' Group WWII rules. They can as easily be used for any 15mm gaming from Napoleonics through WWII. 

The farmhouse and stable were resin pieces pulled from my 'dead lead' box. I believe I purchased these about 20 years ago. The walls I 3D printed. All pieces were painted and glued to a custom laser-cut base. A trough and wagon were added. I think the trough was from Musket Miniatures and the wagon might be Essex. 

The small house and outhouse may look familiar to regular readers of this blog. This is a reduced scale of the "Small Italian Farmhouse" that I printed and painted in 28mm scale a few posts back. The outhouse was a free STL file and the walls come from the same STL pack that the house comes from. Coincidentally, these are the same walls that I used above in the farm complex.

 

Both pieces are designed to have some open space to accommodate a few stands of 15mm figures. Here's an 'action shot' of the farmhouse being garrisoned by some US infantry.

I'm counting these as two 'terrain/misc' in my annual painting totals.

15mm 3D-Printed Greyhound M-8 Armored Cars

Last Thursday I realized that I needed an M8 Armored car for my American force in an 'O' Group game I was hosting the following night. On my lunch hour I started the 3D printer on these three. An hour at the painting table after work finished them up. Liquid at noon, table ready after dinner. Bob's your uncle!

Three 15mm figures to this year's totals.

 

28mm Carthaginian Veteran Spearmen

These Carthaginian African veteran spearmen are Old Glory figures. I've painted them up based individually for Clash of Spears or Saga Age of Hannibal. I'm running a game of the former this upcoming Friday at our club's monthly game night as a way to drum up some excitement for the rules which I like a lot. Since our group also plays quite a bit of Saga, these are great for that faction in Age of Hannibal as well. 

Nobody makes Carthaginian transfers for Old Glory shields that I could find, so I created some myself using my laser printer and decal paper. The process is fairly simple, but it is laborious. To be completely honest, I'd rather buy transfers than make them. If they are available I typically just buy them. In this case, necessity was the mother of invention.

This group comprises 18 more figures for this year's painting totals. Next up on the painting table are a bunch of built-up areas for 15mm gaming, particularly WWII using "O" Group rules. Come to think of it, I owe the blog a post of the "O" Group game I hosted a couple of weekends ago!

3D Printed 28mm Small Italian Farmhouse

Quick 3D print and paint of this small Italian house. I intend to use it as a small farmhouse. I purchased the STL files for this as part of a larger set and I'm very happy with the purchase. More from this set to come.

One terrain/misc added to the annual painting totals.

 

Three 28mm German SdKfz 251 WWII Halftracks

These three German SdKfz 251 half tracks were 3D printed from free files I was able to find on the Internet. I printed them up on my resin 3D printed and got them painted up in a couple of evenings. The stowage is comprised of additional free STL files I also got on-line (search 'stowage project'). I absolutely didn't need these, but I found the excellent STL files and I'm TRYING to have a personal goal of not 3D printing stuff that I'm not also painting, so here we are.

There are two standard 251 Hannomag troop transports and one 251/9 'Stummel' with the short barreled 75mm gun. Cammo was airbrushed on with the remaining details brush painted and then the whole group was doused in Vallejo's excellent European Dust wash - my new secret weapon. This stuff gives a nice durable 'dirty and dusty' look with very little work.

Three more 28mm vehicles for this year's painting totals. Honestly I'm finding this resin 3D printing to be quite the 'scam'. You can go from liquid to tabletop in a couple evenings in the hobby room.

28mm Roman Velites

Twelve Roman velites based individually for either Saga age of Hannibal or Clash of Spears. Truthfully the latter was the primary motivation to paint up these figures. I likely have plenty of Velites for Saga having already painted up one unit of twelve figures previously. 

These are more Old Glory figures pulled from my 'dead lead' collection. Previously purchased for my Roman Hannibal at the Gates army, I had purchased way more than I needed. Luckily for me I held on to them as now I'm happy to have been able to pull them from the pile of shame and get them painted up!

 Where the previous unit was painted using traditional methods, other than the metallic paints, these were painted exclusively with 'contrast' paints - primarily Army Painter SpeedPaints (version 1). I have to say, I'm happy with how they came out and the speed at which I was able to paint them up. Twelve more 28mm figures for this year's painting totals.

'O' Group Tokens

This is a selection of casualty markers for 'O' Group. I 3-D printed these. The design for them is my own, available for free along with all other O-group tokens on my Thingaverse page.

We've recently started playing O-group and are finding it quite enjoyable, so much so that I figured I'd finally paint up these casualty tokens for our next game.

Here they are next to some 15mm figures. I use Flames of War basing since I have a sizeable collection mounted for that system. Thankfully O-group is mostly basing agnostic. 

22 Terrain/Misc created for this year's painting totals. I'm counting these. They were quite laborious to paint!

28mm Finnish T-26 M1932 / M1938

This is the 1:56 scale Rubicon T-26 plastic kit. The kit comes with the ability to be built as any variant of the T-26. I chose to model the quite plentiful T-26 M1932. A side benefit of this is the kit's multiple variants allow for a reasonable proxy of the M1938 variant by using that turret on the nearly identical M1932 chassis. Close enough for our gaming group at least. I'd guess most of the time I'll be using it at a M1932 though. 

 

Here is the reverse profile with the M1938 turret on it.  I've chosen the more coarse Finnish 3-color camouflage scheme based on this museum example in Finland as well as this historical photo. There are plenty of historical photos of these in action in plain Russian green paint schemes with only Finnish markings on them, but I have leaned on that crutch a lot in this army and for this tank I wanted to do a bit more. I'm glad I did as the effort was worth it.

 

At this photo appears to ride off into the sunset, I'm reminded that this 'completes' my Finnish WWII army. Sure armies are never really 'done', and I'm likely to add more in the future, but for now, the Finnish army is done. I have no more unpainted figures or vehicles to paint for this army. 

 

Upon researching the Lapland war, I did however find out that the Germans used a lot of leftover captured French tanks all the way to the end of the war in Finland, so there's some opportunities to add a tank or two to my German army. I also have picked up a couple units of Gebirgsjäger which my German army needs to truly represent a proper Lapland war force. There's always more to to. 

This adds a single 28mm vehicle to this year's painting totals.

Two 28mm Finnish Komsomolets Artillery Tractors

I previously posted two Komsomlets artillery tractors that I painted up last August.  One of these was an FDM (filament) print from my friend Mark D. and the other was a resin print printed by myself. After visiting my friend Scot and comparing these to his Warlord model, I discovered that both of the previously-painted models, which were printed at 100% scale from the STL file Mark and I used, were 'true' 25mm and not the 1:56 'heroic' 28/32mm scale that Warlord uses. All of my 28mm WWII vehicles and figures are either Warlord brand, or brands/prints scaled to match Warlord's 1:56 scale. The previous two tractors were too diminutive in size and were dwarfed by my figures and other vehicles. 

These two models were printed at 110% scale from the same file that Mark and I used before. As you can see compared to one of my Finnish engineer figures, the scale is much better. It's not impossible to imagine a figure-sized 'person' inside driving this tractor now. 

I've gone with a dirty look but this time I opted for less mud on the tracks. The mud was mostly to compensate for the FDM print's layer lines.

Here in the foreground, the old resin print with the newer, 100% scale one behind it. Not only is the scale of the newer print better, but since I've learned more about tuning my resin 3D printer, you can notice that the newer print is much smoother with no real visible layer lines. 

These will count as two painted vehicles for my 2023 painting totals.

28mm Roman Velites

Twelve 28mm Roman Velites for Clash of Spears of Saga age of Hannibal. These are Old Glory figures that I rescued from my 'dead lead' box and painted up to match the red-shielded Romans I recently purchased and re-based. 

I've kept these pretty generic as far as shield markings go. Some of the hastati and princeps in the rest of the command had unadorned red shields, so I went with that for these for expedience and because I didn't have appropriate matching shield transfers.

I've mostly painted these with traditional paints and techniques. I used contrast paints for the wolf skins, but in the end my Zenethil priming was too dark so I had to dry-brush the grey streaks to make it all work. Lesson learned. I'm still happy with how they came out. These will be a full unit of levies for Saga, or two small units for Clash or Spears. Likely for the latter I'll use eight figures as a single command while four figures remain as extras. 

Twelve figures closer to evening out my painted vs. purchased figures. Next up on the painting table, a couple of vehicles for my Finnish army.