Dieppe Commandos (11 of 16)

 As mentioned in my last post, I and not a fan of batch painting. It’s just not fun. I prefer the experience of putting all my effort into one mini until it’s done. Trying to get a system going on 10+ minis at a time just becomes “work”. Enough grumbling though. :)

With that said I only managed to get 5 of the 10 remaining Commandos completed but I’ll call that a victory! (The remaining 5 are also about 50% done so not all bad.)

On to the pics.

Like a lot of war gamers I am not a big fan of prone poses, but they are more realistic cos afterall, who wants to make a big target of themselves by standing tall?

Overhead shot to get a better look at this prone blokes.

The final 5 waiting to be done.

After these last five are done, then it’s on to the regular troops. Here’s one squad ready for priming. I also have a second squad not pictured to paint but they aren’t in my initial army list and I’ll use them for larger games. I also have a PIAT team too.

Thinking I need a palette cleanser mini to work on before i finish the commandos so expect that next.

Stay safe out there,

- Dai

Dieppe Chaplain J W Foote

 As I was working on the remaining 10 commandos for my WW2 Dieppe Landing army, I realized I had forgotten one very important piece that had yet to be built, a Canadian Army Chaplain! 

I’m not sure just how many chaplains accompanied the troops during the landing, but I am aware of the most famous Canadian Chaplain who was present, Rev. John Weir Foote, the only Canadian chaplain to date to ever have been awarded the Victoria Cross. He received the medal for his tireless dedication to both the wounded and deceased on the beach, even refusing to evacuate when the beach was obviously lost so he could stay with his charges though he would consequently be kept as a POW until the end of the war.

I couldn’t find an actual British Chaplain figure anywhere online, so had to resort to using spare plastic British infantry body parts that I had left over. From the pics I saw online I knew that chaplains required shoulder boards as they kept officer rank and minister’s dog collar as well as an armband with the Red Cross for their medic duties. I tried to sculpt these pieces from green stuff and so they look a bit blobby up close but from arms length they’ll do. 

Here’s a fuzzy pic of the mini with green stuff added. 

And here’s the finished result. Ingame chaplains “can” have a pistol tho I prefer them as being non-combatants so whilst I added the holstered weapon, I only did so for the option. Saying that, my grandfather was a royal naval chaplain and he was a big fan of the idea of blasting an enemy, so maybe not all chaplains are cut from the same cloth!?

And now back to painting those commandos... have I ever mentioned how much I despise batch painting? 

Dieppe Commandos (6 of 16 - Dieppe Landing Project)

 Once again, real life has proven too needy and so my poor hobby desk has suffered neglect. Until that is, this windy weekend, when I was able to slap some paint on and complete these four Commandos for my 1942 Dieppe Landing WW2 project. 

They are (I think) all Black Tree sculpts and they are decent enough and had little to no flash to clear up prior to painting. They're all mounted on steel washers too. Their paint jobs are tabletop quality and I even managed half decent eyes on this lot. I have another 10 or 12 left to do and should have lots of time coming up later this week when I dog-sit whilst my better half is off on a short trip.

Next up is a little bonus mini I got done with a VERY quick paint job using washes, GW Contrast paints and drybrushing. This is my first dip into 3D printed miniatures by a Canadian company I found on Etsy called 3DShoppe. I ordered 5 sculpts and including shipping think I spent around $40 - not horrible. They arrived in a decent timeframe and were packed well. Sadly though, due to both how fine the sculpts were (TINY fingers!) and how brittle the material was, some parts were snapped/missing, like a couple fingers on two of the sculpts and a dagger blade from another. Easy fixes, but a bit annoying regardless. Aside form that though, I have been VERY impressed with the quality of these prints - there are no layer-lines, the minis have smooth surfaces much like any other sculpt, their details are very sharp too. I think I'd buy some again in the future, though I'll be more certain to let the buyer know to pack new orders a little better.

So here we have a Banshee for my roleplay minis collection. I really liked this sculpt as it had lots of cool movement to it and I guess she could double up as a ghost too in a pinch. Hope you like.

Next up are some more Commandos and perhaps another Fantasy offering, though of a much more diminutive stature!

Hope all are staying safe out there,

- Dai