Present for a Mate Finally Finished

All the figures were actually painted during the Painting Challenge and even based, just the German base needed finishing as I did not have the stones to do it. It became THAT PROJECT, you know the one that sit's just off the desk out of site for months unloved , untouched and almost forgotten. Well I sent the kids on a mission and they did me proud.

These are 28mm Africa Korps by Black Tree Miniatures and my friend is a big fan of ASL played in the desert. I wanted to add something that was very much in keeping with ASL. He has quite a collection of my Sniper Reminders so I thought I would go deluxe (bigger base). The difficulty in digging foxholes had to be solved by building walls out of piles of stones or Sangar as they were called. In reality these are rather large to be correct but I do like the look of them.

These were also more often than not built to cover all directions but obviously not always. The stones start life grey in colour and I have just drybrushed them in the two yellows that I add to the brown of the base. I reason that the stones would not be the same colour as the ground but would have a fine coating of sand given the way the stuff got everywhere.

Good old PVA holds the whole lot together and as I drybrushed after the sticking no tell tail signs are left. You have to love PVA, far to good to give to the kids.

I still think the standing guy is too wooden, also if he fires that rifle from that stance I am thinking he will be lucky not to end up on his back. I think he is probably new to all this war thing as his stance is poor, his rifle is not tucked into the shoulder and worst of all is stupid enough to stand up making more of a target of himself.

All in all I am happy with it, hope he likes the finished article.

This one I am more pleased about and it's the look I had in mind from the start. The idea was infantry charging through a mixed defence of wire and mines and I bought the wire about two years ago but never got round to buying the figures until about nine months ago.

To get the correct effect I had to attack one of my mine counters from ASL and make a sign, this is perfect as it says Mine in German. Given that I have two sets of basic counters for ASL I think I could spare a counter for the cause. 

I really like the way I finally did the wire with the breaks for the troops to rush through, it's one of those were everything you thought of comes together perfectly.

I was at the local library when I saw pictures in a book of wire strung on poles, not curled but criss-crossed. This was a strange idea for me as I assumed all wire was curled. As the book was just images of the Desert War I could not resist using it.

So I will be giving my mate these later today when I see him. I should get a game in as well so hopefully he will be distracted enough for me to take the win.