Dust Warfare: Silent Death

These Steel Guards models have always been some of my favorites. Mutilated veterans given a chance to fight again for the glory of their Motherland. Encased in the heaviest of armor and given the most powerful "infantry" weapons they would go and avenge themselves.  Some people like these models others don't.  I think they are awesome.  This is the Steel Guards sniper team and they are armed with man portable semi-automatic cannons.

Target sighted and annihilated.

Hope you enjoyed.  I did have a bit of trouble with the white balance on the last image, but I think it turned out okay.

Dust Warfare: KV-3 Heavy Walker

Here is the Soviet heavy walker KV-3.  Along with the Wotan it is one of my favorite units in the game, both visually and in use.  It's a hard hitting and survivable unit, and it looks good doing it.  As usual with the Dust kits they come pre-built.  However you will spend the time you would have been putting it together to fill, file, and clean all of the mould and seam lines.  Kinda a pain really.  A lot of it would be easier if you built it yourself. The primer that it comes pre-coated with usually works out well though.

Also, they don't include any decals other than some stenciled markings, which I paint over anyway... So, I got some Soviet markings and lettering/numbering from my favorite hobby shop Section 8.  Below you can see the version with the dual 152mm cannons because if one is good two will be better.

"Matrioshka"

I used AK washes and grimes for the weathering. Had to buy more of their white spirit since other thinners don't seem to cut it for the streak marks.

I kind of regret not putting a star on the front, as I had with the KV-47 Aero.

I did not add any extra stowage as I do with my German walkers.

Though this scheme is simpler than my German camo, it does involve color modulation.  So, it takes about as long as painting the camouflage.

Here is the other version, with dual heavy Gatling cannons.
"Babushka"

"For the Motherland!"
This picture also shows off the texture I added to the front portion of the hull.  I gave it a cast look with some Tamyia Mr. Surfacer. It's great stuff.

"Repaired April 1947"

Hope you enjoyed the view.  You may notice these pictures are a bit better quality than the earlier posts this year. This is because I finally got a daylight worklamp and added it to the photo setup.  This shows the colors much better with little to no retouching on Aviary. Before I had to tweak the contrast, saturation, and brightness to get a decent turnout. This had varying results. The new lamp is great, so expect much nicer photos going forward.

Just check out this reshot picture of the Panther from my last post and I think you can see the difference this light really makes. Brings out the truer colors and details much nicer.

Dust Warfare: Frontoviki

More Soviet infantry this week.  Again these were painted in late 2014, I just never took pictures.  These guys are a Soviet Battle Squad.  Frontline infantry, but they come with some decent firepower in the form of their 2 machine guns.  They are not Red Guards like the last unit I posted, so they are equipped a bit differenty.  Most noticeably their armor looks different, but also they wear a simpler and more utilitarian looking uniform.  I went with a Soviet styled amoeba camoflage for their coveralls and Russian Green for their helmets and armor.  I started chipping the armor with sponges on this squad and went back and did it on the Red Thunder.  I still need to do so to my Axis units as well.  

I've got 2 continual complaints on the Dust infantry models.  One is the soft plastic and the other is a lack of detail in most of the facial sculpts that makes them a bit difficult to paint.  I do enjoy the overall look of most of the units though, so I am more than happy to deal with these two, perceived flaws.

Sergei says shoot that way.

Unfortunately, this could be my last post on the blog.  It takes a lot of extra time to take so many photos and I've had less time for the hobby in general.  It's been a nice ride anyway.

Dust Warfare: Red Thunder

A couple of months ago I finally decided to paint some of my Soviet infantry.  The first thing I had to do was look at some historical references.  A few google image searches gave me an idea of what I was looking for and I went out and expanded my collection of Vallejo paints.  

This unit mostly focuses on its two rocket launchers in game and you can use them to engage light to medium vehicles rather well.  That's not to say they can't handle infantry.  The guys with the machine guns all have underslung grenade launchers adding a few extra dice to that punch.  As with my Germans I added stocks to the guns.  I just feel it makes them seem a bit more realistic.  Something to note with these models is that they come with equipment on their belts and backs.  This was a nice change from the earlier Axis and Allied models who did not have anything on them.  I had to add it to my Axis troops.

I changed up the basing from my Germans a bit and went for more of the patchy style that was featured on the Ta-152 model's stand.

Let's hear some love for the Dust universe.  It's got a pretty cool storyline and a killer aesthetic which really drew me in.  The folks in my usual game group don't play the game but I recently found some people in my area who do play.  I even went with them to a small tournament in Toronto where my distinct lack of play experience really showed.  Oh well. 

EDIT:  I've got posts ready to get through May of this year.  So be ready for an actual update schedule.  *GASP* I know.  Expect the first and third Wednesdays of every month.  Perhaps more If I post what I am actually working on in real time.  Though I may just keep tacking the posts onto the end of the queue.

KV47 AERO

A New Year, a new blog post.  I was pretty lax on updating this blog through the latter half of 2013. Furthermore, I was pretty lax in painting and hobby work.  I was spending my free time doing other things. I started playing some more video games, playing airsoft, and in the last month or two I started playing Magic The Gathering for the first time in a few years.  This year I am going to do my best to update this blog at least every two weeks and have something new to present in every blog post. With the new IG codex due to drop in the next few months I feel I will have plenty of motivation to finish working on my Guard army this year.

Anyway, a few months ago I went to Millennium Games for an X-Wing tournament and had decided beforehand that I wanted to start collecting an SSU army for Dust: Warfare.  When I got there I saw that all of the Dust stuff was on clearance since sales were not doing that great.  For me, this is sad since I love the miniatures and it's a pretty solid tabletop game.  However, it also meant that the models were 50% off...  I ended up winning the X-Wing tourney and spent my store credit on a KV47 Aero kit and a few squads of infantry.

I finished painting this model in I think November.  But with hunting season and other stuff going on I would get home and not feel like taking photos at all.  I have been sick the last few days and had some free time, so today I set up the camera and finally took some pictures.  I've been using Flickr to host the pictures for the blog since they allow up to 1TB of free storage and the in-site photo editor, Aviary, is rather nice indeed.

The KV47 Aero is transported in game by a helicopter, which was also included in the kit.  I did not yet paint it, but it will probably be the next Dust model I work on.  I painted all of the greens with my Badger Anthem airbrush using a Russian Green paint set made by Vallejo which I picked up at Section 8 Hobbies.  It includes 5 different shades of green which I used to do a lot of color modulation on the surfaces of this model. More after the break.

PzAufklL. I-C "Hans" (Early Production)

I finally got around to finding my memory card today and so I charged up the camera and took some pictures of the walker I finished last week.  This is the early production Hans that comes in the Dust starter set which I split with one of my friends.  I primed this walker at the same time as I did the medium panzer walker and as such I did not have my new airbrush and did not attempt any color modulation.

Even still I don't think any of the colors turned out looking flat or too uninteresting.  For the chipping I mostly used a blister pack sponge piece to dab and a brush to add scratches and larger scuffs.  After that is a rather light highlight to look like the edge of chipped paint. I used a lot of AK Interactive weathering products for this model.  A couple of filters, the brown wash for DAK vehicles, and three of the streaking grimes. After the clear coat I add some MIG Productions pigments for a dusty finish.  Especially on the feet and lower legs.

Here's the front of the model.  The only thing I am unhappy with in these pictures is how the color of the grass shows up as really quite yellow.

More after the break.

Back at it.

So, August went by with very little work on the hobby front.  I spent one night working on a warcaster and a talon light 'jack for our Iron Kingdoms RPG game and then put them aside due to a lack of drive.  After that I went ahead and finished my scratch built Neptune Frigate.

This only took a couple of nights to finish up, but it felt good to finish it up.  After that i started work on an orbital drydock for BFG, got it rough built and not much more.  Felt the need to paint something since I had just scratch built the frigate.

So, a couple of days ago I started working on my Hans light Panzer walker for Dust: Warfare.
The first night was spent doing the filters.  The second night I did chipping and some chipping highlights on all but the legs.  Tonight I finished up the chipping and went on to some washes.  I picked out all of the seams and corners and other details with AK Interactive's Wash for DAK vehicles.  This step is what really brings out the lines and actually helps the colors look much more interesting.