All,
Okay, so you've seen all my 28mm WWII stuff; well, at least everything that's painted and ready to play ;) I've also delved into some other areas; I've got a decently-sized Vietnam collection (US Marines, US Army SF, ARVN for early and late war, CIDG, VC, and NVA) in various states of readiness, I'm pondering the Korean War (definitely going to do USMC at Chosin Reservoir, just waiting on someone to come out with reasonably priced Chinese), and then I've gotten into some 'Ultramodern' stuff.
There's a series of graphic novels called "Black Powder Red Earth" (BPRE); I've looked a few of them, not really my thing, but they created their own line of 28mm rules and figures, and that's where things got interesting. They're pretty expensive, and they're a pain in my @#$ to build (I've tried four different types of glue and none has brought me joy, they just don't want to stick together in a hurry, gotta hold them for an extended period), but my Goodness are they fantastic looking!
For clarity's sake, I've broken my BPRE figures down into "Good Guys" and "Bad Guys." The books are about a Private Military Contractor (PMC) company vs bad guys in the Middle East, which consists of Middle Eastern Irregulars, Middle Eastern professionals, and North Korean advisors. To be fair, the bulk of BPRE's 'good guy' PMCs are Middle Eastern professionals with former US-SOF advisors. So here are my 'Good Guys,' bought from several of their box sets (I believe it was two of the starter sets and one of the augments with CQB weapons, another LMG, and grenade launchers). These guys were all painted up using Contrast paints.
I built ten of them out as PMCs or government SOF working in civilian clothes, ten as government types wearing OCP/MTP camouflage, and ten wearing US Marine desert MARPAT camouflage. I have another team assembled and based for the arctic, but haven't painted them yet.
Here are the guys in civilian attire. Man the poses, proportions, and the detail on weapons and equipment are just amazing.
A closeup of one off the leader types. All the rifles are different M-4/16 variants (I believe this one is known as "Block 300"), carry sidearms (right hip), wear NVGs, have comms (looks like MBITRs on their backs, you can see mic on his face), and display chemlights for recognition. In reality these would be IR, but I painted them up in neon green so they'd look cooler, IR chemlights are rather dull to look at withtout NVGs ;) In keeping with BPRE, and just 'cause I think it looks cool, I painted their eyepro and everything electronic red.
The 'temperate' team wearing the OCP/MTP camo. Ha, now that I see these guys up close I am reminded that these were not painted in Contrast! I tried but it didn't work, so I had to go back and use acrylics. But the other two teams (PMC and Desert MARPAT) were done in Contrast paints. This painting technique for OCP/MTP is the same I used on my 15mm guys; I think it looks alright, but looked better on the smaller guys.
Closeup of a couple pipe-hitters.
And, of course, my favorites, wearing Desert MARPAT.
Coming at ya. Wow, these figures are just amazing. I wasn't even thinking about doing Ultramodern stuff, but then I saw a couple of these painted up on someone's blog and I just HAD to have some.
To see a bunch more photos, please check the blog at:
link
So, even if Ultramodern isn't your thing, you can see how absolutely amazing these figures are, just too cool. It's dangerous even making me look at these guys again, it's making me want to drop WWII for a bit and bust these dudes out for some close-in, shoot some bad guys in the face-type gaming!
More to come.
V/R,
Jack
adds infantry to his Israeli force.
