Friday 3 July 2015

Vietnam SEAL Teams: The Ultimate Side Project or Inspiration for Brown Water Navy!

Hello All

The day the SEAL Platoon and Patrol Boats were put up on Battlefront's online store I placed an order. A few day's later they arrived through the post and ended up on our new sofa.
All the models were great but I've set the PBRs asside for now as I was less concerned with these little naval interdiction vehicles than I was the teams they could carry.

The models were clean and free of flash and had that crisp new look you get with well made brand new batched metal troops. There's not a huge number of poses, but then there's not a huge number of teams required and you'll only be fielding four stands in small games if you want that recon element.
The SEAL's weapons are really identifiable, see what you can pick out in the pic, There's alot of detail too in terms of webbing, pouches and kit being carried into battle as well as some clearly sculpted faces for the expert painter.

... and I am by no means an expert painter! Here's the painted platoon which was done in about eight hours which averages over an hour per two figure base. I had real crashes in confidence whilst painting these. As I said on a facebook post when starting its very hard not to make every model look like a brown green blob!
I used seven green base layers in total for different areas or camoflage across the models and due to the models busyness chose not to do flesh first then paint green over the top. I felt flesh borders around the face and wrists would just add to the confusions I was trying to avoid.
I also painted the denim quite bright to stand out agains the greeny brownness of the stands. I know the last thing you'd want is bright blue trousers in the field... but I wanted better looking models. I did however try all four of the camo patterns on the Battlefront artical about building and painting the SEAL platoon 
I'm still not sure when I look at them though that i've done the figures justice for such cool models. It all depends on my mood and the light as i'm looking at them. I certainly could have painted them better but I'd have been moving onto an hour per figure and not an hour per base and I don't have time for that with a new job and increased travel time.
My neuroticism asside these were so much fun to sit down and paint even with the frustrations of painting four camo styles and I'm looking forward to a few small games with Ben and anyone  else whose  up for Vietnam in the area as I can proved both the forces once the rest of my river force is done!

2 comments:

  1. They look cool James, nice work. You going to Adolf don't surf?

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  2. Very nice!

    Go watch Apoc Now, that will inspire you to get painting those PBRs!

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