Over the years I have had loads of German WW2 stuff pass across the painting desk, mainly in 28mm but also in 15mm. German commissions outnumber all the other nations by at least 2 to 1 and there are few vehicles I havent painted. Some are obviously repeat offenders and I wont be including the Panzer IVh, the Puma, the Stug IIIg or the Panther here. Instead these are my favourite vehicles by looks, rarity or oddity. They are in no particular order as there are no real criteri

Readers of a certain age will need no reminding about Geoffrey, George, Bungle and of course Zippy but this blog is in fact about painting the rainbow cloaked Warriors Sons. I posted pictures of a box of these guys I painted up for a customer and received loads of requests on how to paint them. When I say 'loads' actually just two but you know that is loads more than i usually get by at least 2. To do the cloaks should you wish, you will need a secret ingredient and be able t

A different sort of Blog this week as I thought I would do a bit of a Pantherama. A run through some of the Panthers I have painted in both 28mm and a few 15mm (at the end). This is a obviously only a selection. As one of the iconic WW2 AFVs it is a rare German Army that comes to me Pantherless. If nothing else it can be a camo resource showing some of the myriad schemes available other than the usual 3 colour wavy lines common in Normandy in 1944. First up we have a couple o

One game under my belt with these boys and a bit of a thrashing by Rasputina 6-3 not in my favour. In retrospect a bubble crew against the "Ice Pillar Killer" with no scheme marker strats was probably not a great choice but at least they looked cool whilst losing and some lessons learned. Lesson one, Lucius needs to take a few soulstones and avoid getting attacked by a Cerberus turn 2. This is a recipe for dead Lucius served on a bed of humiliation with a side salad of WTF. A

In a recent commission I was asked to paint not one but Two Tags, Scarface and a Szalamandra. I thought I would take the opportunity to do a walkthrough on how i paint these big boys to show that there is nothing to be frightened of. First step is priming. After washing and assembling i always spray an enamel primer on metal or resin minis, plastics I only use an acrylic primer. Here after the grey enamel primer i airbrushed over a black acrylic primer. As Scar face is largel

As everybody knows Germany invaded the USSR on 21st June 1942 in Operation Barbarossa and was spectacularly successful in terms of enemy killed/captured/acreage but fell short before Moscow and Leningrad due to some combination of starting late due to the Balkan Campaign or early autumn mud "glueing" German units in place. From here the story goes that thanks to Hitler believing it would all be over by Christmas after the whole rotten communist edifice collapsed there was no

I recently had a commission to paint some SS infantry wearing the rarely painted Rauchtarnmuster camouflage, sometimes known as smokey or blurred edge camo. It is a version of the much more common plane tree camo which i painted a version of here.... https://www.firstcommissionpainting.co.uk/single-post/2019/11/12/how-i-paint-waffen-ss-oak-leaf-camouflage-and-pea-dot However the difference is basically the blurry edge of Rauchtarnmuster - not easy in 28mm and therefore as alw

A recent and very enjoyable commission from a USA customer, Captain Zipp and the Infamous crew plus a few extra bits as you can see in the Team Photo below. This blog is not a tactical guide for two reasons, firstly I don't play and have never played against Bayou. Secondly I'm genuinely rubbish at Malifaux so completely unable to give any advice beyond be lucky with cards. Instead it will be a stroll through the gallery with commentary. First up the ever popular Gracie and h

The Shinhoto Chi Ha was apparently just a normal Chi Ha but with a 47mm Anti Tank gun instead of a 57mm infantry support weapon. I think that this came about after meeting Soviet armour in 1939 and coming off worse. In any event this is Warlord's Shinhoto painted up in a slightly later version of the Japanese three colour camo. Reading other people more knowledgable than myself (almost everyone in this case) the nice yellow stripe and black outlining was dropped in 1942 so do

A couple of weeks ago I bought these Aragorn the King and Faramir the Knight miniatures off Ebay for not much money due to the fact they looked like this.... Poor old Eomer - who is there under several milimeters of paint - had no actual face visible and the other two had paint similarly blobbed on and lots of the little metal flash 'tails' still attached and painted. This is a really common feature of Ebay LOTR stuff as many people bought it as kids, banged on whatever paint