Dead Man’s Hand: Banditos – Part 3
My third finished gang member for the Banditos is the planned leader of the gang. The dynamic pose and the aggressiveness the miniature expressed clearly called for that.
The outfit was obviously inspired by Mariachibands and so I let myself be inspired by originals as well. Unfortunately, when I was looking for pictures, I quickly realized that the clothes weren’t far as colourful as I remembered them. Nevertheless, I decided to stay true to the look and tried to give the clean black of the suit a more worn out look, as if it had been worn for a continuously long time. I followed Citadel's app suggestion for "dirty black" again and was quite satisfied with the result.
Preparing the limited & collection section
I have a soft spot for show and con miniatures, exclusives and to some degree limited models. Over the years, I collected quite a few of these of the shows and events I visited. In some cases, like at Salute for example, you can buy remaining stock of older event miniatures at the show, and I often use these chances to complete my collection.
Bolt Action Opel Blitz & Maultier
In late 2017 Warlord Games covered the Opel Blitz / Maultier combi plastic kit for Bolt Action.
The truck is one of the workhorses of the German army, transporting troops, supplies and ammunition were they were needed. The Opel Blitz is the most known of these trucks, other companies like Ford or Daimler supplied their own trucks, in some cases like the DB 701 by Daimler, it was simply the Opel Blitz without the markings built under license.
Where the Opel Blitz was build between 1937 and 1944 and made it to around 70,000 units, the half track variant of the Opel Maultier was released later in 1942/43 and around 20,000 units were built. As these trucks were the standard solution for logistics of all kind, there were multiple variants of them, converted and built for use as ambulance, communication, weapon carriage and even uparmoured ones.
Dead Man’s Hand: Banditos – Part 2
The turn of the year and the usual duties as a father have led to a small break in our Dead Man's Hand article series. Fortunately, since I did not tackle the project on my own, we will again have a Wild Wednesday occasionally. Finn's introduced his first gang member, Hector Villa, some time ago. Now it's time to introduce Tuco. And with this Finn will take over from here on...
With Tuco I went back to the experience I gained with painting Hector’s jeans and painted the poncho in yellow. At first I wanted to apply a light base color layer and tone it down it with a wash, but by mixing in white, it looked nicely faded, so that I used a lighter one than the intended wash. Of course, the pants should look similar raggedy and so I decided to keep them beige. I wanted Tuco to give the impression of a poor helper.
Rubicon Models SdKfz 301a Opel Maultier with Box Body
Based upon the already available Opel Blitz Kit (RM280026), Rubicon published the Maultier variant that replaces the rear wheels with tracks. As with some of their other kits, like the SdKfz 25x, they cover further accessories. For the Blitz and Maultier there is the option to upgrade the cargo bed with the box body "Einheitskoffer".
After the first winter in 1941 on the Eastern Front, the German army high command realised that the trucks weren't capable of handling the weather and terrain conditions. The vehicles often got stuck in the mud and snow. A unit of the Waffen-SS build the tracks of a Bren Carrier under a truck to confront those conditions. After realising the benefits of this modification in 1942, Opel, Ford and Daimler added these variants to their truck production. Depending on by whom the LKW Gleiskette 2t was build, it was called SdKfz 3a (in case it was built by Opel), 3b (Ford V3000 S) or 3c (Daimler L4500). The variant was called Maultier (mule) and further variants were build upon the halftrack vehicles, like the Panzerwerfer or with a 2-cm Flak 38.
Das Boot – inspiring wargaming
I watched the tv mini-series version of the original movie Das Boot from 1981 on amazon prime last year or the year before. It had enhanced audio and video quality, with 6 episodes covering 52 minutes each. In November and December 2018 a tv series sequel of the same name, was released as an 8-part. It plays 9 month after the original movie, and due to the nearly 40 years between both movies, of course with different actors. I had the chance to see the location and mock-up of the submarine in Munich, in the Bavaria Filmstudio. It was quite impressive to see and transported the claustrophobic atmosphere of the submarine quite well.
Annual review of 2018, preview of 2019
Yet another year on the chaosbunker and with 2019, we're heading towards the 10th year of this blog and my 23rd year in the hobby. Chaosbunker continued with the bilingual content, offering the articles in both English and German. And similar to last year, this year was quite busy, again, both in wargaming and private life.
Looking forward to the Holidays
Christmas is near, the holidays have begun and I will spend my two weeks off with the family as well as with the hobby.
I got a little christmas present from Radaddel. Thank you very much, always a satisfied customer and with this little bonus towards the end of the year more than ever. Some sweets, a small jar of model snow and a Citadel Painting Handle. Those are very useful and it is always practical to have one more to spare.
Blackstone, 3D-Prints and Birthdays
Let me sum up this week. I'm currently preparing the review on Warhammer Quest Blackstone Fortress. If you pre-order it, many stores will give you posters and a poker chip as a bonus. And I already gathered a couple of miniatures for the scale comparison shots. In case you have any wishes, what I should cover within the review, just let me know and I'll try to put it into the upcoming article.
Modern Combat Black Dog 1:48 Upgrades
From Czechia with ... some kind of love. To pimp the Tamiya Humvees that I bought last month, I got myself two boxes of Black Dog conversion kits. The Iraq War Accessoires Set (T48034) and IDF Uparmoured Humvee (T48058).
I visited the black dog page a couple of times in the past, as they have some very extensive conversions and upgrade kits for world war 2 vehicles in 1:35 and 1:48. And I like to take those as ideas or inspiration to upgrade my Bolt Action (28mm / 1:56) kits. And to be honest, that was the main reason, why I spend that much money on these kits. Kinda like paying for the inspiration, as the upgrade sets are rather boldly priced with 14,50 EUR and 27 EUR for the two kits and that's without shipping.
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