British Commandos, The Twins, and Other Madness

First, lets start with the Other Madness.

Earlier this week I received two packages in the mail. The first was from my FLGS back home. It contained a few packs from Musketeer Miniatures VBCW line. Originally I had wanted to order some of the 1920's IRA figures as I thought they would be more versatile for use with VBCW and my own VACW game. Sadly, only the VBCW figures could be ordered from Gripping Beast for some reason, and so I went ahead and ordered those. After ordering, I moved about half way across the country and in all the chaos and disorder, it kind of slipped my mind for a while (a couple of weeks). Then when I did remember, I figured I would wait until this temporary move was over, but after a while... it became apparent that the temporary move was going to be a little longer than anticipated. So I had them mail me these along with the Conquest Miniatures, Woodland Indian War party. I figure if I am going to get into the French and Indian War I would start with my own ancestors.

The second order, that came the same day was from Black Tree Designs. I went ahead and ordered some stuff during their 1/2 off holiday sale, after just looking for the last three years. Total I ordered some 96 miniatures from BTD and two vehicles, so now I really have my work cut out for me. My order consisted of 48 partisans, the Soviet character set (which will be my partisan mortar crew), a couple of German motorcycles, and 40 Boers. The Boers are going to get converted into a militant farm faction for my VACW game. Oh yes, and a four pack of British Commandos. The plan for the commandos is to use each as an NCO for a partisan squad. So that they will be easily identifiable as such is the massive rabble they will be leading. Eventually I will pick up a British radio team as well.

See, utter madness!

I went ahead a based a few figures the first day using what bases I had. Ten total, out of those ten I managed to get six of them painted on Saturday.

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So looking at these pictures again I realize that I need to go back and paint the spaces between the open stock of the Sten gun to match the uniform. Seems I have forgotten to do this.

I even painted eyes and 12 o'clock shadows, and I almost never do that.

"We always go commando!"

Well there you go, not to bad for an afternoons worth of work. So far I am pretty pleased overall with the BTD miniatures. The commandos and the twins had lots of details and didn't look at all out of proportion as I had been told previously. A few of the miniatures a bit strange looking, very big in the shoulder etc, but overall I am very happy with my purchase and wouldn't hesitate to order from them again (well except for that I don't need anything else to paint right now). Out of the 96 miniatures in my order, only one was a miscast. One partisan was missing a hand and Molotov cocktail, but that can be easily replaced. 

Partisan Painting Party

So two Saturday's ago I was apparently in the mood to paint. All together I managed to paint 36 miniatures in a single day, now THAT is amazing! Then on Tuesday I painted another dozen miniatures, which put me at around 4 dozen in less than a week. My usual output is more like 3-4 a week.

Now these are my usual level of painting not speed painting. Still, I won’t be winning any Major Awards (like the one below), but they won’t stand out like a sore thumb among the usual rabble.

 Here you go. The best that I can manage. Now if I could just learn how to take some decent photos, that would be something else amazing. Really, it took me multiple attempts to get decent photos over the course of the week. I painted mostly partisans, 29 total and then 7 Black Legion soldiers for my VACW game. I would like to use the partisans for both games, but it turns out that I wasn't really thinking about this when I put them together. So I ended up putting a lot of German and Soviet equipment in their hands, and quite a few of the weapons and equipment came out after 1938, or otherwise would not have been widely available. Still, I have more figs I can put together and will try and do some VACW American Legion members and some people for various factions, depending on what I have left.

Yep, my partisan commander has a sword. Why not?

So I know someone probably have something to say about the colorful and character filled, if somewhat ahistorical hats. I just want to say, I like them, and don’t care if my partisan’s look as if they raided the Golf Pro shop.  :P

Okay so I missed a couple of partisan guys so I put them in with the Black Legion goons.