From ByronM - 15mm WWII Germans and Robotech Zentraedi (164 Points)

Hello again, here is my second submission for this years painting challenge and it is a mixed submission.

First up I have some great castings from Peter Pig to expand my 15mm WWII German force for Chain of Command.

The figures are based in our groups normal way, which was initially planned out by Greg and Curt I believe.  Senior leaders are on hex's, heavy weapons are on large rounds, specialists (in this case sniper teams) are on ovals or pills, and most normal troops are on rounds.

Three new senior leaders for some additional options in my force, and just because I could not resist a few of them.

Two heavy tripod mounted HMG teams.  One of them has 3 men on the base, the other just 2 but the third is separated off.  I already had extra riflemen previously painted so that I can field them as teams of 5 men as they should be for CoC.  Obviously the extra men are not shown here as they were painted before the challenge.

A lot of heavy support to help out against vehicles and tanks.  Here are 5 panzerfäuste armed troopers and 2 panzerschreck teams.  Probably way more than I actually need, but hey they are 15mm and easy to paint up.

Lastly 2 sniper teams for my Germans, for reaching out and touching someone.

All of these are painted up quickly, using a pretty basic 15mm methodology.  Base coat, block in colours, wash the whole model with devlan mud, then highlight with base colour again.  Simple, fast, and table ready in no time at all.  They won't win any painting awards, but they are solid tabletop quality.

Next up is a unit of Zentraedi from the Kickstarter shipment that just came in for the Robotech RPG Tactics game.  The unit is made up of 9 Regault tactical battle pods and 1 Glaug officers battle pod.

I tried to keep the paint jobs simple and fast, since I need to do a whole lot of these and don't want to get too tied up spending too much time on each. Also I wanted them to be very cartoony and match the simplistic look from the show.  Therefore they are done with base coats of white, paint on the other colours, line them with black ink, then touch up / clean up, decal, and then clear coat with a satin coat for some shine rather than my normal dullcoat.  

They are left on the basic plain bases with the fire arcs marked on them with painted arrows, at least until I figure out how important those are.  I am not sure what kind of table or board I am going to setup to play Robotech on so did not want to base anything with either urban or rural themed bases yet.  I realize that may mean a point hit, but the bases are done for the "game" right now, just not as our normal display bases.

The miniatures are actually pretty nice once assembled, BUT whomever designed the sprues and instructions learned model making way back in the 40's or 50's and never bothered to learn how things have improved since then.  Each battle pod is 15 parts and there are 3 of them on a sprue.  The sprues have no part numbers or labels and the instruction sheet can therefore not reference anything.  Each foot and leg has a different angle and go together best with only 1 or 2 of the other foot or leg parts of the 6 on the sprue, however this is not identified or labeled anywhere.  Very frustrating and very fiddly, and something that just a little bit of extra time and effort could have prevented.

Again, the figures, once together are very nice though, and having picked them up through the kickstarter, CHEAP!  I think the final model count was right around 100 models for $140, so you I can not complain too loudly at that price.  

Scale is a bit odd, as while the official scale is really small, as these things are supposed to be almost 5 stories tall, the physical size is actually pretty big.  Therefore I am including a picture with a standard 28mm space marine to help Curt figure out what they should count as.

They are a lot of fun to paint, but I am only doing this squad and 1 squad of the human forces during the painting challenge.  More will have to come later, or I won't be able to get the items I wanted to get done finished this year.

Hope you all enjoy.

From Curt:Great work Byron! Those 15mm Germans look the business, nice and neat work for the tabletop. As for the Robotech battle pods, though they are not really my cup of tea, you've done a brilliant job with them. I really like your approach of using primary colour block-painting as it reminds me of the dynamic cell shading seen in the animated series - very cool.  I'm going to count the pods at 12 points each so 164 point total. Well done!