Nobody tosses the dwarf!

Here are some Eureka 18mm dwarves I painted a couple of months back. Although advertised as 18mm, they are closer in scale to 20mm so they are suitable for 1/72-1/76 gaming. At that time I still thought I would be able to wargame fantasy in 20mm. Alas, my efforts were in vain. As much as I tried, all I could do was dwarves, some few elves, some orcs and undead. No dark elves, no derro, no trolls, no nothing. I switched to 15mm fantasy instead where the pickings are anything but slim. These will be a bit tall for dwarves, especially in 15mm, but I'll deal with it. I ordered one pack of crossbowmen, axemen, spearmen and command. This set me back around 20 pounds (plus shipping and handling) but has given me enough dwarves for at least 2 warbands for the Song of Blades and Heroes game. Here is the first batch:

Miniatures in the Song of Blades and Heroes are divided into personalities and warriors. Personalities have special abilities that set them aside from the average fighter. They may be leaders, heroes, magic users, clerics, or just plain tough and mean.
In this case I painted 2 miniatures that can be used as personalities. Here is the leader (or hero) with his banner bearer and horn blower. The hero is the largest of all the miniatures. He is probably as large as old Airfix figs. Not quite dwarfish, but he looks good on the table. The banner bearer is a particularly imposing miniature and the dragon standard is very well sculpted. The other personality is a magic user or cleric (can be used for either). A 300-point warband will not have room enough for both of them, but he's a useful option, especially if you know you'll be facing undead.
The warriors are a mixed bunch. I've used axemen, spearmen, dwarves with hammers and a few crossbowmen. With the short movement, some shooting may be useful to whittle down the enemy some.
The figures took me about 10 days to complete. There was minimal cleaning up to do and the miniatures pretty much paint themselves. One of the axemen was a bit complicated as I could not figure out the layers of the armour, but that was the only difficulty I faced. I still have enough miniatures left to make another full warband and then some.
Here's some work almost complete; support units for my late WWII german platoon. Everything is almost painted up and the wash has been applied. After that, all I'll have left to do is highlights, painting up the bases and spray some mat varnish. I hope I'll be done by the middle of next week with them. After that? As you can see, plenty of work awaits me.
Have a great night from chilly (for once) Athens.

Armour

First post of the year... I hoped it would have been sooner, but there is this weird bionic flu making the rounds in Athens. It went through our home like Genghis Khan through Samarkand. As soon as I got better I tried to limit the number of vehicles in the stash, with some success.

First of all, the old Matchbox M-40 GMC. It's not a typical WWII subject, but since I can't find the Hasegawa Long Tom (plus associated crew) it will have to do. Not a hard kit to build, I had trouble with the painting. I used black acrylic spray as primer, let it dry for a couple of days and then masked with bluetac. Put two layers of Lifecolour Olive Drab and then removed the bluetac. The primer promptly was removed with the bluetac in most places. I brushed some black back on, washed, painted the details, dusted with British Dark Earth and then used mat varnish. Yet another disaster. For some reason the clear frosted. It should suffice that I swore in most of the languages I can speak (there were some choice bits in Hungarian). I followed what has worked in the past, namely a coat of Pronto. Didn't work too well, so I added tons of mud with an old brush and then used a different bottle of flat. Worked well enough. It should be noted that this can only be built with the gun at rest/travel position. Anything else and you'll need to do some surgery on the recoil springs.

Another old friend; the Matchbox Chaffee. Nice little kit, with some useful extras (an MG-42, a signpost, and a tripod mounted .50cal). I used the kit stars and a random serial number from another kit. I plan to build 3 of those to boost my recon forces. I had the same problems with the flat clear here as well, but the problem was mostly solved after I sprayed Pronto. I omitted the rear decking star, as it would not possibly settle down. These looked like older, stiffer Revell decals.
The lovely Pegasus T-34/85s. Untill now, the best bet for these were the old Airfix kits. Sure, Revell had an excellent T-34 but who wants to build kits with a gazillion pieces for wargaming (some people obviously do). The kits fall together by themselves. I used some Tamiya Extra-Thin glue and an old brush to roughen up the surface of the turrets. The only real problem I had is that the plastic is too hard and not so prone to melting if the glue is not "hot" enough, so that some pieces got unglued and had to be reattached. In the last Pegasus kits I build I used ModelMaster cement with no problems, but these were assembled with Humbrol and I think its not "hot" enough to handle Pegasus plastic. Or I might have screwed up somewhere. I glued some crates on the rear decking as I've seen tons of pictures of T-34s carrying supplies on them. After a coat of Humbrol 30 (gives the slightly bluer look of Russian Armour Green), wash and drybrushing, I used some flat with the above mentioned results. Thankfully, the tanks recovered. If anyone has built these, let me know if you had any gluing issues.
Finally the HaT Sdkfz 251. A lot of people have build this so there isn't much to say. I added some stowage in the form of tools and crates. I plan to build 4 of these, one with a 37mm doorknocker liberated from an Esci German Gun Set, to be used as the platoon commander's vehicle.

That's all for now. I'm off to take care of the mrs. who is coming down with yet another bout of the flu. The hazards of working in education I guess. Next up, figures. I have about 50 based, primed and ready for some paint. I'll probably do some fantasy first, to detox myself from all the guns and armour.