GHQ "Big E" Miniature Review

Things have definitely slowed down for me on the hobby front recently but I was inspired by the the great World War II Central blog and painted a a GHQ Micronaut 1/2400th scale USS Enterprise CV-6, the "Big E."  The World War II central blog showcases some mind-blowing painting of some smaller scale miniatures by GHQ.  What really impressed me are the decals that are available and I had to give it a try.  I followed the tutorial with the following results:

Soviet Attack In Force

I went through a very prolific phase for a while and was able to complete a large portion of my Soviet armored vehicles.  The progress was fueled by my need to get them done since I'm looking forward to moving on to Germans.  Also, I'm trying to take a more organised approach to my painting queue due to my constant switching of priorities based on my current fad interests, an ongoing battle.  I added a painting queue tab on my blog to monitor my progress and plan ahead.

Due to the heat and other commitments, I'm pretty sure my progress will be slow over the next couple of months, but as long as I keep plugging away, getting at least something each evening, I'll eventually have another breakthrough phase of accomplishment.  I'll tortoise it for a while.

BA-64s roll through the town to scout ahead:

Painting Table Update - Elephants and an Airbrush

Over the Christmas break I took the time to get setup for some airbrushing I want to do for German camo. I've had some serious approach avoidance regarding this since, well, I've never done it before, and based on forum posts on the subject, the process can be wrought with problems it seems.  Christmas was five months ago...really?  This year is going cliche fast!  Here are the results of my first try with my budget airbrush setup. Elephants for my HG force.

Hetzers gonna Hetz and so did I!

Today was my annual pilgrimage to the local Air Show.  I have to admit I was somewhat reluctant to go since I was feeling it was getting a little old because it doesn't seem to change much from year to year. Checking the program online,  I saw a F-22 Raptor would be attending.  I knew I didn't want to miss that and I headed out the door to the show.  I was in for a nice surprise, though.

I hopped off the Tram from the parking lot and walked straight towards the reenactment camp, my favorite part of the show, when I immediately spotted a Hetzer.  Not only was it a Hetzer, but there was a short line to actually climb inside it.

Painting Table Update - More Soviets

Desperate Measures soviet scope creep has found me somewhat behind schedule as I continue to add to my soviets.  The Italy compilation showed up on my doorstep last week and I'm psychologically ready for some focus on Italy, especially my HG and British armor:  Panzer III Ms and Churchills.

I know painting takes me some time but I always seem to underestimate how long assembly will take.  I'm tempted to move away from Soviets but the idea of not having a completed LW force to play is really bugging me.  Plenty of partials, though, as I chase releases.  I'm a tortoise chasing a hare right now but I am making progress.  Since I do have substantially more soviets painted than anything else, I think I'll stick with them for a while.  I'm continuing to reach my goal of twenty plus T-34s.  More than twenty to make up for the ones with broken sides.

50 Shades of Hay

In anticipation of determining what materials I would need to base my Soviet horde, I went ahead and based a Spetsnaz platoon.  As usual I agonized over what color schemes to go with since there are some excellent examples out there, especially in my favorite blog roll.  Soviets look great with GF9's static grass colors Aria and Winter or any other color that lands in the '50 shades of hay' spectrum.  After some deep thought I decided to stick with GF9's green static grass to be consistent with what I had originally planned for my German bases.

Katyushas are hard!

As in hard to glue together.  In game terms assembling Katyushas are the Flames of War equivalent of a cross between Rubik's Cube and a 3D version of Twister.  Which brings me to the stark realization of...how cool would 3D Twister be!  I stared at the pieces for a while trying to imagine how they would go together, trying to align the pieces like my two year old son did trying to put Legos together.   I felt like a caveman.