From MartinN: 28mm US Winter Infantry (60 Points)

This weeks entry sees something of a premiere on my part. It's the first actual commission I took on, therefore the bases unfortunately had to stay bare for the recipient to match them to his collection. Well, frankly comission probably is a bit of a stretch.
 Actually I asked Pat (of  wargamingwithsilverwhistle.blogspot.de fame) if he'd like to trade some of his awesome terrain for some miniatures, I'd paint for him. He was kind enough to agree so it's been more me commissioning myself. It was an interesting experience to actually paint some more miniatures than the occasional figure for a friend, for someone else. But I definitely wouldn't do this for money.

Figures in question are Warlord Games (oh wonder, I know) new US Army infantry in winter clothing. And sorry to be so rude, but they were frickin' awful. Never since I first dipped my toes into the hobby waters I've seen figures that painted up so terrible. At times I did terrible paint jobs, granted, and there even might have been the one or other figure that wasn't pure joy to paint, but these figures were among the least fun I've ever, ever, ever painted.

Don't want to rant to much about these, but if you like miniatures that actually have folds in their clothing than you should keep your hands off these. Of course I hope that Pat is happy with these, though.

Next is a M3A1 Halftrack from Rubicon. The kit was a straight forward build and painted up nicely. My only gripe with this kit is it seems like the plastic used doesn't react to plastic glue like most other plastics I've encountered. Somehow it doesn't seem to melt properly so the joints remain quite brittle. I've tried two different brands of glue but neither worked. So in the end it's fingers crossed the Halftrack survives the trip to g'old Great Britain intact.

But otherwise it's a very nice kit with quite some potential for conversion I'd say. For a wargames kit it's quite detailed too, without swamping you with myriads of parts to assemble. For the first time I did the weathering and pin wash using exclusively oil paints. It worked a charm and was definitely cheaper and easier than using the various enamel based products out there. Still have to do some experimenting as to what works best, though.

Unfortunately I forgot to take pictures of the two crew members, so all you can see of them is their helmeted heads on the above pictures. They were no nice sculpts anyway, so not overly tragic.

I didn't glue the backrests in the rear compartment as the kit comes with the options to be built either as command vehicle with communications equipment or as troop carrier. So I painted both options for Pat to decide what he likes the most. Also the weapons weren't glued on for both ease of transport and flexibility.

So this entry should give me another 57.5 points (37,5 for the Infantry, 15 for the Halftrack and 5 for the seated crew) towards my total. So as an aside this also let me take the lead in Chris' and my side challenge with 369.5 straight points vs. 344 points. As that's a marginal lead at best, I should better stop to blather and get back on the brushes.

Even though these figures were boring to paint, you've done your 'typical' magic on them Nick - they look brilliant. The halftrack is lovely as well and your oil-based weathering worked tremendously well. I think Pat will be absolutely delighted with these miniatures and more than happy with the trade. 

 I'm going to round off the points for this entry to 60 due to the various stowage options and weapons.

I look forward to seeing what terrain Pat does up for you as trade for this nice lot.