The 25mm Warrior

I spent some time on these fellas.

I used The Army Painter on em for the shading work but I took a different approach to these miniatures...

I took my time with them.

Perhaps it's their size (a first for me at 15mm) but they took longer just by default. I looked into the Ospray book series, scoured the net and bought their codex (er Intelligence Handbook...) to get a good feel for the uniform. Unlike fantasy/ sci-fi, these guys are representing a force that actually existed. By way of a little history lesson the U.S. Paratrooper had three variations of the jump uniform before the war ended. Since Flames Of War seems preoccupied with mid to late war it made sense to paint them according to the M1943 late version of the G.I. diggs.

That means lots of olive drab.

Now I could have used the standard way TAP is supposed to be used... simple basecoat, dip, varnish, done. However with the olive drab color permeating most of the model I wanted to go for a level of detail I usually don't care to achieve. Seeing others FOW minis spoke volumes to the size of the mini dulling down the detail. Since the mini is so small and most historical uniforms are so single colored in nature the 15mm mini grouped with others like it on the stand can tend to look like un-detailed lumps moving across the battlefield. This fact is so much so that a lot of players forgo accuracy, sacrificing detail for a better, more brilliant look to the mini on the field (go watch TAP tutorials when he uses the splash technique with FOW minis and you'll see what I mean).

So I layered paint, using a darker green and dry brushing the OD green on. The webbing/ backpack was not strictly khaki but also had a "greenish" tint to it and benefited from the technique too. I shyed away from using to shiny a metal color since the weapons were either had a very, almost black color to the metal or the weapons were painted the predominate color of the forces vehicles. The end result made The Army Painters job look all the more spectacular. It seems the more work and detail you put into the mini before it's dipped helps to make the mini look that much better when it is dipped. While the product is designed to do alot with very minimal effort it goes the full nine the more detail you put on the figs. The Army Painter can't shade away the painters hand.

The really big departure from my norm for me here was the basing. Following my simplistic, assembly line approach to the hobby I treat bases like the rest of the mini. However when I saw the FOW picks on the bases they intrigued me. Using filler and a process that is "stupid simple" (for the record I'm coining that... I'll expect a nickel, no a quarter every time someone uses that phrase) I'm gonna blog about how I do em. When You look below I think you'll agree that they look awesome.












Go out and give historical minis a shot. Flames Of War is a great system. Kinda like 40k but backwards. Fact is if you've played one mini games you've played em all really.