Raining Fire - SAS Grenadier

An underbarrel grenade launcher is a weapon you don´t want to miss in your arsenal. Being able to hit enemies by indirect fire after suppressing their positions or - heck - just lobbing a grenade over a distance of 300m!  -  is a very powerful capability.

That´s why my SAS support weapon packs naturally had to include one of these. Apart from the fact that it´s historically accurate of course ;) 

Minimi-listic Design

The daily showcase continues with Cold War SAS troopers.  Again, the set is already a few months old and didn´t get painted so far.   The rough quick-inked figures didn´t show the models full potential.

I painted my Woodland camo using a very similar approach as outlined in my Tutorial on How to Paint DPM/Woodland Camo - I used a much darker wash than in the tutorial and slightly different colors.

Yet the approach is very similar - paint basecoat, wash, re-highlight, apply blotches in a sandy color, add brown splotches and draw very fine lines with a dark brown. The trick is in applying the right color in the right places, which can be very tricky.

New French and Portugese Support Weapons

Okay, time for a small break on the painted miniature streak  - we´ll continue with that tomorrow.
I wanted to show you some progress on the sculpting part as well. 

It´s already been a long time since the release of my Portugese Colonial War infantry, and though it´s long been requested and I always wanted to add another Set of support weapon, I never got to it because of higher priority work (commissions, replacing old sets, fleshing out other important ranges).

Now I´ve finally started to create another set of Portugese for Colonial conflicts, carrying a few heavy weapons including a light Mortart a light Machine Gun and this guy:

The other figures are still top secret, but I´m sure there´ll be more pictures at some point ;)
I´m also planning to add more Support to the French, including this Marksman as well as an AT4 Antitank-Soldier among others.

 

 

That´s it with our short sneak peek on the new minis, tomorrow I´ll have more pictures of painted minis for you!

Eye on Terror - The Marksman

On to the last figures of the Special Forces Set - the Marksman!
Actually, I´m not sure what to say about him apart from the usual stuff.

So let me share some trivia about the set. My original intention was to put a SAW-Gunner into the group, but the sculpt turned out so horrible that I had to scrap him. If I´m not mistaken, he´s found his resting place in the box of failures where all the bad or unfinished stuff is collected. 

I don´t remember which figures finally replaced him, but I believe it was this marksman?

Keep Moving!

This guy was a bit unlucky during the photo session - he got into positions that make it hard to see the full extend of the paintjob. I messed up the angle a bit with the pic on the left, so you can´t see that much (though it makes for a cool effect)

That´s not a Chainsaw...

This guy again represents what I was going for with the set. Take away his weapon and attitude and he´ll look like a local woodcutter. Except he doesn´t carry a chainsaw

He got a brand new paintjob and I think the difference to the older models is visible.

Fight Fire with Fire!

This is the second figure from the SF-set that has an older paintjob.
I still like him better than the Grenadier, who´s had a rather plain color scheme with little variation. This operator at least got some interesting camo on the trousers, which unfortunately is hard to see on the photo.

 

The set of figures was created especially with this interesting mix in mind - Special Forces in Light gear, i.e. with a mix of military garb and hardware + local garment to conceil their true nature. 

Codename UGLy

I prepared the next set of pictures to keep this rolling for a few more days.
After taking a good look at the new Insurgents, we´re moving on the Special Forces - an older set that - again - was unpainted for quite a while.


Well, unpainted is not true. Two minis had been painted more than a year ago, but I never got the remaining three figures coated in color.  We´re starting off with the least impressive, the Grenadier who was one of the long-painted figures that is barely good enough to still be acceptable without a repainting session.

But I promise the next few figures are going to be better painting-wise.

Taking the Shot!

And now the last figure of the set - the kneeling Rifleman. 

Again, massive improvement over the old figure as I didn´t have a good understanding of the pose when I worked on the first iteration of the set.

That´s it for the Insurgents.  But other pictures are in the pipeline already! Stay alert!

Babai is Back!

This guy was already a nice figure in the old set, but I think I managed to bring him to a new standard with some small tweaks and improvements.

 

This guy was inspiratio for the mini back in the day when the original was crafted: 

And again, the old set for comparison:

"What was that noise?" - Insurgent Rifleman

Here we are again with the second figure of the reworked Insurgent set.

 

Again, compare to the old figure - though it was one of the better candidates of the old set, there´s still a massive improvement with the new mini.

Tomorrow, I´ll show you the most impressive figure of the set: The Leader aka Babai!

"Scan the Horizon" - Insurgent RPG

Hey all,

As promised, it´s time to reveal some of my painting results throughout the next days. First, we´ll start with a batch of Insurgents.  These are from the renewed Insurgents set released in October.

 

If you´d like to compare with the old set... here:

  

Stay tuned for tomorrow to see the next painted mini from the set!

A quick glimpse onto my desk...

Hey folks,

I´ve been silent again for a while, mainly due to holidays. There´s a lot going on both in my regular job, on the figure front and I´ve recently spent some more hours playing PC than I did throughout most of the last months.

Figure wise, I´m preparing to release the new batch of miniatures that I´ve presented recently. I´m also trying to push ahead on the painting front, getting some more figures painted up for the shop.

During October I tried to mix in some Renaissance Warfare stuff again - this Blog is called Rifles and Muskets after all, as it was always my intention to dig into this era as well. I somehow never managed. Still, my very long term project of building as Muscotive Army for the 17th century has come ahead somwhat - I´ve produced a few custom 15mm models for that purpose, but I´m planning to purchase a sizeable force at Totentanz Miniatures sometime in the future. They´ve recently released very nice Cossacks both foot and mounted that are fabulous for my purposes.

 You can see my current progress if you look closely, the infantry bases will finish my first regiment (yay) and the cavalry is the first step towards a mounted unit.

In the foreground, my figures being painted up for the shop.
As you can see, I´ve made good progress throughout the last week. As soon as I have a large enough batch prepared, I´ll start a photo session.  You´ll get to see each of these miniatures in detail, I plan to take pictures of every one of them, maybe even reviving the idea of a mini-related christmas calendar?

We´ll see how my productivity keeps up and if I´ll be able to pull that off!
Stay tuned for more. :)