The End of the Beginning

Hi Folks,

I've finally finished the second Grenadier platoon after what felt like a real slog, so to mark point in the project I thought I'd steal a line from Churchill for the title of this post because it seems rather appropriate. As far as painting an army for wargaming goes this is the first army that I have finished…except I'm not finished and I always knew that. But personally this is quite significant in that I completed what I initially set out to complete and for a time I can relish in the achievement, however small it may be!

Stug III's Finished

Hi All,

Andy here with another painting update. As you may have noticed its been a while since I posted up anything, I really can't match the output of the other guys! Also summer just isn't the time to be inside painting models for me. I definitely made the most of the summer while it lasted, but now its well and truly over I managed to find to find a bit of time to finish the Open Fire! Stug III's off.

Grenadier HQ & Pak40's finished

Hi Folks,

Andy here with a painting update that I have to confess has been a long time coming. Unfortunately real life and work meant these were sat there with just undercoat on them for most of May when these were supposed to have been painted according to my initial schedule. Just like Market Garden, things started to fall behind schedule almost as soon as I'd started!

However whilst I was away with work I did have plenty of spare time to read other blogs and stumbled across an article about staying motivated and completing whole armies and I realised I had been missing a trick. My preferred painting time always used to be whenever I could get a good few hours at the table but as we all know this is often hard to achieve. But why not just sneak in 30mins of painting each day? For a Flames of War platoon thats should be sufficient to get one colour done, or a wash on a platoon.

Now I appreciate this may be nothing new for a lot of people but to me it would be a totally different way of working. Its also made much easier by the fact I have a hobby desk which doesn't require tidying up, meaning my models are there and ready to go each time I sit down.

Magnetising Pak40's

Hi All,

Andy here with a post on magnatising models. I haven't built my Shermans yet which came with Open Fire but I really like the fact they've been supplied with magnets. It got me thinking about what else would be good to magnetise and the first thing that sprung to mind was the Pak40.

First Grenadier Platoon Complete, what next?

Hi All,
Andy here with another small update!

So here they are, my first finished platoon for Flames of War, and for the first time ever I finished them on time! I was rushing  them a bit towards the end as I'd been away for work and ended up going a bit dark on the wash for the faces. Other than that I'm pretty happy with them.

First attempts at painting 15mm!

Hi Folks,

Andy here with an update on painting my first Flames of War and also first 15mm scale models.

I had originally bought the Open Fire box on the strength of the US Airbourne plastic models and I particularly love the prone MG teams. However my dilema was that I had never tried painting any models of this size before and I was worried I'd make a hash of my favourite models in the set if I attempted them first. So after buying Easy Company to accompany the Open Fire box I then decided to completely abandon the allies for the time being and start on the Germans.

A Beginners Perspective

Hello All,

I'd like to introduce the latest addition to the Breakthrough Assault Team, Andy Croft from the Fully Painted 40k Blog. I'll leave the rest of the talking to Andy.

Hello All,

Firstly I'd like to quickly introduce myself. My name is Andy and I've been wargaming and painting on and off for about 15 years now. Up until recently this has revolved entirely around Warhammer 40K and my main interest has always been the modelling and painting side of the hobby, with gaming being a more of a side effect of collecting models. However recently I've found that many of releases from GW have unfortunately have failed to inspire me and it slowly dawned on me that I should perhaps just try something new.

Its probably been about 3 years now since I saw Ben's first FoW models and I loved them. They're not the most detailed models in the world, sculpting in 15mm just doesn't lend itself to that. What interested me instead was the balance between nice looking models and the ability to paint whole armies in a reasonable time frame. Now I know there are some people out there who can knock out 28mm armies in no time at all. Others who can consistently paint each new model they buy and over time build very nice well painted armies (thats you Adam!). Then there are people like me who buy lots of models, slowly paint some of them but then get distracted and buy a load more. The result being boxes and boxes of models either undercoated, half painted or in some cases mdoel which never even made it off the sprue. The only consolation is that I know I'm not alone!

The Drawer of Shame!