ACW-Fire and Fury, 20mm- Gettysburg buildings, part 3, Gettysburg college or the building inside the Kinder surprise (part 15)

The Gettysburg college is the missing building for the day 1 in Gettysburg.

I Couldn't find anyone doing this particular building, so mine had to be quite improvised.

Most of this was copied from the back cover of Fire and Fury rule book were you can see Union XI corps being squeezed into town and later into cemetery hill. 

The building is mostly card but this time some new materials were necessary.

The base had to have enough room for some trees and lawn.

The roof dome is a Kinder Egg cut to the shape of the cruciform roof.

The columns are those plastic tubes that come along with brushes. In the beginning we all say "I solely swear to use these plastic tubes after every wash of it's fellow brush" but we generally discard them after some usage. So they can find some utility as architectural columns.

The stairs are some German made hard plastic ones I bought many years ago. They can be easily cut. The kind of expensive stuff that you never regret buying. 

The chimneys are Blueboard cut into shape. The chimneys top is better to be card or other hard material in order to protect the  fragile styrofoam. 

Painting is quite straight forward: Black as primer and white all over. Only the windows are troublesome as there are plenty of them.

The making of the roof is better to be made this: you built one of the full parts, ex: the longitudinal one and then you overlap the other one. Do it always with hot glue as it will help disguise the many wrong calculations.

Once again my father's train diorama saw it self without some trees... 

Now for Gettysburg second and third day buildings and structures.

ACW-Fire and Fury, 20mm- Gettysburg buildings (part 14)

These are just finished and intend to represent some more buildings for the 1st day of the battle of Gettysburg (1st of July, 1863).

Thompson's house is one of the pieces of scenery necessary to play Buford's defence on the Chambersburg pike.

McPherson's barn was another place for Buford's defence soon lost to Heth's Division. 

McLean's farm was close to Oak hill and saw Ewell's attack.

The full latest lot. 

And how was this done? Pretty simple stuff as you can see from the unpainted Thompson's house:

You just need -

1- Some good images of the real thing.

2- Card, the stronger the better. 

3- Plywood or other wood you have for the base.

4- Windows and doors glued to the walls as a saving time measure. If you cut or carve the walls for windows or doors you get into serious trouble! I only do this when the building is intended to hold figures. 

5- Styrofoam chimneys with a hard card top part. 

6- Electric glue to put everything together.

Don't forget the golden rules of Wargaming buildings: make it smaller than the real thing ( otherwise you will not have anything else but built up areas in your table ) and only make windows and door with the real size. And, if necessary, save on the number of windows.

Of course painting is the secret for a good finish. You start with black acrylics all over and the usual darker to lighter colours follows. 

You can also see other buildings of the 1st day of Gettysburg in previous posts namely the Lutheran seminary and the Evergreen Cemitery gate house, along with generic houses for the city itself. 

Rapid Fire! 20mm - Walcheren LVT-4

The Airfix LVT-4 Buffalo is a nice kit that also offers a Jeep for free (or the Airfix Jeep offers a Buffalo it depends on the thing you are after).

I just made a few changes:

- ammo boxes and mantlets for the MG's;

- antennae;

- crew;

- and stowage. 

The crew comes from the Matchbox Falklands British paratroopers deprived of the FN rifles of course. They look quite similar to the winter dress the British RMC used on late 1944.

Other crew are the Revell British infantry with Milliput berets. 

The full RF! 8 x Buffalo fleet for Walcheren. 

Fire and Fury 20mm - Gettysburg 1863 - Slocum's XII army corps (at last!! part 13)

More important than this post is this news: Sporting has just became once more champion of this portuguese Futsal season  !!!

Spoooooooorting!!!!

This said I present you my latest work and quite boring in some moments it was : the last 5 brigades for F&F Union XII corps. 

After painting more then 3000 plastic and metal 1/72nd soldiers for the Gettysburg battle I ran out of minis with frock, sack or whatever small coat and had to use the greatcoat ones to finish this large unit. 

Nothing really to do with the hot July days in which the battle occurred. 

On the other hand I can start to think about the battle of Fredericksburg and those long lines of Union  infantry assaulting Marye's Heights all clad in greatcoats... 

The flag bearers are made out of Revell sharpshooters with GreenStuff hands.

The divisional and corps commanders are StreletsR figures that resembled as much as possible the original commanders like Slocum, Geary and Williams. These came both from confederate and union sets. 

Here and there some head swaps were needed for the sake of diversity. 

The rank and file are the usual Revell, Italeri and Imex, all greatcoat dressed. 

With one brigade and all corps artillery already painted for the XII corps these 5 brigade ended maybe 20 years of painting Gettysburg figures. 

The regimental flags are taken from the web. 

The divisional and corps flags are hand painted.  

I can finally say uffffffff... 

Now all seven Union and three Confederate corps are ready for the refight. 

One day hope to show you my full Gettysburg F&F Union and Confederate armies. Be patient my faithful followers as it's a lot of figures and I'll need time to portray them. Meanwhile you can comment favourably en masse this post :)

Pineapple miniatures 20mm - Waterloo lancers and individual minis -Buçaco 1810

New 20mm both boxes and individual hit the shelves of the Buçaco museum:

20 mm Portuguese and French grenadiers. 

Spanish (Talavera 1809) and French line. 

Polish Blue lancers for Waterloo 1815.

Dutch Red lancers for Waterloo 1815.

Next there will be more boxes for Waterloo as the 200th anniversary of this battle is closing by.

Impetus rules, 20mm - Mohacs 1526- part 3, Hungarian crossbowmen in 20mm

In Extra Impetus 3 is referred the need for  3 bases maximum crossbowmen S in the Jagellion army list.

I made a few more and later I'll save on archers S. Do you mind, Sartori? In fact I would have the extra crossbowmen hanging around doing nothing and so they turned Hungarian...

The figures are Zvezda with two officers from Ottoman Lucky Toys turned also into standard bearers. 

The standards are photocopies of the ones I placed for printing in a past article.

The Zvezda figures are just great. 

Sometimes so much detail even hampers painting but overall they are probably the best around.

The shield patterns are taken from those nice video games from the web and from visits to local museums.

Rapid Fire! 20mm, D-Day/ Normandy 44, Airfix S-7 Schnellboot

This 1975 model is a fine example of what drove thousands of modellers into our hobby: a very complete and detailed kit representing a famous weapon of WWII.

Not bad for such a 40 YO model. I read that some of details are not accurate but what the heck it looks great when finished!

Of course it has his drawbacks, namely if compared with the newer S-100 from Revell, like many flimsy parts that will self destroy if used, specially, for Wargaming.

But overall a great kit, well detailed, with some excellent crew models and it really looks like the real thing. 

The rigging is thin cord from a sewing kit.

Like many Airfix kits the underwater part is separate which allows the model to be portrayed in a wargames base. 

As always everything is paintbrush. The base is a piece of balsa wood textured with silycone.

I may have rusted it too much wanting to portray an old Schnellboot (model S-7) on D-Day times.

The crew is the native 5 crew from Airfix plus several Esci and Preiser crewmen painted as seamen. 

Pineapple Miniatures - first of the first - Brunswick Army, Quatre-Bras1815

How could I forget to take a picture of the 1st Pineapple of them all?

Of course! No one would think that Pineapple Miniature could reach the world wide prestige it holds now as number 1 product for sale at the Museu Militar do Buçaco! 

The first was a large box packed with 30 Brunswick miniatures - infantry, cavalry  and artillery - Esci transformed miniatures, including a figure of the Duke itself from Waterloo1815.

The flags are hand painted in paper. I remember using avıdly the excellent Osprey book on the subject for painting and scratch building my Brunswickers.

I found this rarity in Izmir, Turkey by puuuuure coincidence in OB house.

How was this possible? 😳

Pineapple Miniatures 1/35th scale - New figures for Portuguese flags,Buçaco1810

This is the second model you can change in the ACTA Belgian figures in order to have new Portuguese flag bearers.

 

To the right you have the original figure.

After a lot of X-Acto work you can take out the musket as you can see in the left figure. 

Then it's time to apply the heat of a lighter to bend the left arm into the desired position.

Finally use the drill (1,5mm)  to make holes in both hands. 

 

A thick broom thread heated also with a lighter, squashed at the end and cut to shape enters both hands and here you have a new figure.

These new ones will carry the military region flags (white, yellow or red field). 

As usual you can find the unique Pineapple Miniatures at the Buçaco Military Museum.

Rapid Fire! 20mm, D-Day/ Normandy 44, German strongpoint by Queen'sHussar.

This is the generic WN (Wiederstand Nest, something like "resistance point") from the late Queen's Hussar. 

This is a several kilo resin part with 3 separate parts for the bunker roofs and a 

metal ex-French FT-17 turret.

Originally I intended it for Omaha beach western strongpoint (WN72) but when this big diorama arrived I realised it was quite generic, and didn't fit the area RF! planned for it.

Even so It's a nice, heavy piece of resin, easy to paint and assemble.

Only some netting and barbed wire was added. Also a piece of cardboard was glued to the bottom part of the diorama to withstand some eventual rough usage.

The figures are Britannia. As Queen's Hussar and Britannia worked pretty close together the standing MG42 fit nicely the trenches.

With all these MG's around, there will be no Ranger left to save private Ryan...