Fleamarket Discoveries

I love fleamarkets, there can be found a lot of useful and useless stuff, that's the shit I need. Whenever I hear of a fleamarket in my town, I try to visit it. I always wanted to write about my fleamarket finds since I started this blog and now it is the time to do it, I will not include any prices for it, but when it was bought, be sure it was cheap.

We have a big monthly fleamarket in the local exhibition hall and I visit it everytime, I think the best time ist right when it starts (8a.m.), there are less visitors than later and the best things (lol) are still available. Sometimes I make a second visit just before it closes, I think than you can get the best prices, most sellers are happy for every piece that they will not have to carry back home.

Let's take a look, what I found today:

- Body Counts first debut album, I remember this record was the killer when it came out while I was a teenager.

- some comics, one anthology of the Freak Brothers and three issues of Judge Dredd (he is the law).

- 2 diecast cars and a diecast helicopter for a future project

and, last but not least, an old boardgame called Anno 4000, I don't know if I will ever find more players for this, but I couldn't resist when the seller told me the price.

I am happy with my new stuff, and on the way back I bought some fresh buns for breakfast. Can a day start better ?

Maybe the list will be updated, I will visit the market with a friend before it closes, I will see, how much I can drop the prices of some things that interested me.

28 mm Undead Army

 

At the moment I am concentrating on finishing my small Undead army. There is still a lot to finish but I hope that my mate Olli and I can start a first game this year.

We will play the Warhammer 5th edition or maybe the fourth edition, Olli has still his mid 90ies dwarf army and can play both editions with his army book. For the undead that I play I can have two different armies depending on which edition we play. 

But all of this a big work in progress, there are a lot of minis to paint, a lot of words have to be read und understood before.

Here are now the first elements of my undead. They will be a mix of Mantic figures and old GW minis, I like the old GW minis more then their actual style. 

The first picture shows, what I already finished, two regiments of skeleton warriors, bats and 2 heroes. The undead horse is a conversion of a claymore Saga horse and a skeleton horse.
Only the bases are unfinished.

UPDATE: Find better pictures of the Undead army here:

https://ww2modelzone.blogspot.de/2018/03/unboxing-undead.html
 

The next step is to finish my Mantic Zombies, I already glued them and painted their skin, but there is a lot of painting and detailing before they are finished.

I mixed the Zombie parts with the parts of the Mantic Gouls to get a wider variety of poses but my Zombies and Ghouls now look a little similar. I had to visit a supermarket and ask for some bottlecaps, I did not had enough.

UPADTE: Find better pictures of the Undead army here:

https://ww2modelzone.blogspot.de/2018/03/unboxing-undead.html

When I finished the Zombies I will paint my first wolfes, they are crude mutants made from Clyamore Saga wolfes, skeleton horses, metal wolf heads and milliput.

The last pictures will show my eternal enemy, all these dwarfs were painted arround 1995, at this time my mate Olli did not know washs and drybrushing, he will repaint some parts of them when he gets the time for it.

Hong Kong Airfix Afrikakorps Clones With Helmets

Today I received a figure lot from the bay and it included a great surprise. Among many other figures it contained about 100 of Hong Kong clone figures of the good old Airfix Afrikakorps set. But these check out the picture below.

The pictures shows on the upper row some figures from the Airfix Afrikakorps set, the lower figures are their clones. Both look equal except for their headgear. The detail of the clones is not too bad, the details could be better, but these are cheap toys, the scale is like their origin's, more 1:76 then 1:72.

I've never seen these (clone) versions of the Airfix AK before, even when I played as a kid with toy soldiers in this scale and I had hundreds of them including AK clones. But mine weared all fieldhats.

Update:
A reader left a comment, that these minis are copies from the old ESCI hardplastic set of the Africakorps, and it seems that he is right. Check out this link to Plastic Soldier Review.

New Zvezda WW2 Soviet Figures

I found this post in the Tiny soldiers forum. The linked pictures show the Maxim machine gun with crew, the other announced sets are listed too.

The Russian producer Zvezda brings out a new series of Soviet and German soldier figures and equipment of the second world war in 1:72. As I read it from the post, they will bring out their own rule system for them. They started with the T34/76 some months ago, and today I found first pictures of the upcoming figure sets.

Seems like they are available soon, CW toys has listed them but they are still not deliverable.

I always wanted to keep any advertising out of this blog but sometimes there are some shops worth to be mentioned. I do not receive any bonus for this.

Update:

Paul left a link to more pictures in the comments. And I found some pictures and informations at the Henk of Holland site (here). There are also some more informations on the Zvezda homepage (in Russion but Google translations worked fine). 

Update 04/2018

CW toys has closed it's gates.

Armourfast 1:72 Sd.Kfz. 251/1 Part 4

I continued the work on my Armourfast 251's. I wanted to paint them in a generic 3 color camouflage with hard edges. For that I started to mask with tape, but the tape I use was/is not good for this. I made a visit to a local hobby store and bought some masking liquid, the shop owner told me that thau would work.

I painted the whole model in Aquacolor sand (#36116) after that I made spots with the masking liquid to the place that I wanted to keep sand colored.

After that the models got a layer of Revell Aquacolor fern green (#36360). Then I applied the next layer of masking liqid to mark the areas that I wanted to keep green.

The next layer of color was Aquacolor mud brown (#36180), I used it even when it is glossy, I learned some day ago that it won't shine anymore after the last layer of sealing matte paint.

After all the color was dry all I had to do was to remove the masking liquid to see if it worked as I planned. Watch the picture, it worked fine. It was tricky to remove all of the masking liquid (very sticky stuff), but when I was almost finished with it, I found out, that an old toothbrush was a good tool to remove the stuff.
I think this technique will work with normal brushes too, you do not have to own airbrush to use it. And the rmoval of the masking liquid (after it and the colors dried) could be easier if only one thin coat of it is used, as you can see on the first picture I took someting more then was needed.
But it worked :D
 

On the right 251 I took the antenna apart, it will be fitted later. The funker workplace was improvised without any sources and was scratchbuilt. 
I'm not sure what to do with the two 251s, but I tought about a new idea to apply wash. If I use now a good shiny clear color to seal it, a wash would only flow in the hollow (?) spots of the kit. I will use this method on an old toytank for a first try, if it works, that is something I will try before. You will read it here in this blog, but before that I have to finish some older projects.

The two Armourfast 251 will go now into the "actual projects" box, they will be finished someday because I found some days ago some pictures of an other model of which I own a kit, and these were a great inspiration for me so, but more infos soon, the topic will be Panzer46.

And then I will take some time on my 28mm undead army, I hope tomorrow my new Mantic zombies will arrive,it's time to kick some dwarfs' asses.

Armourfast 1:72 Sd.Kfz. 251/1 Part 3

I finished the construction of my Sd.Kfz. 251s. The fenders are a little too low, the wheels fit very closely, luckily I lost one of the wheels therefore I use the wheels of the ESCI 251 which are a bit smaller.

On the following picture is a comparison of the Armourfast, Revell and ESCI frontwheels.

One of them got the pioneer bridge of the ESCI 251 kit, and when I'm at it I will loot another ESCI 251 kit so the other 251 will get a frame antenna. I hope I can attach it without too big spots of glue.

Some tools and other stuff will follow, I have to search my spareparts box for pieces to attach.

Both Armourfast Sd.Kfz. 251 got their base color, is this case I use Revell Aquacolor sand (#36116). I will try to paint them in 3 color hard edged camo pattern, eventually I will do this tonight at least I will try to mask them tonight. Then I have to find some decals for them.

Additional informations about this kit can be found in some older posts (here and here).

Italeri 1:72 SdKfz. 234/4

Pictures of my finished SdKfz. 234/4. The figure came with an Italeri kit and doesn't have legs because it was commander of another tank before wher he did not fit with legs.

This kit was build some months ago, I remember that all parts fitted very well. The construction went without problems, but on the next kit I will not glue the wheels before I paint it, this will make it easier to paint.


And I learned something new. I accidently bought glossy mud brown that I used for the camo pattern, but I recognized it after I applied it. That's why the brown in the previous post so shiny, I thought for alsmost 3 hours that the color was still wet.

But after the last layer of matte paint the brown spots weren't shiny anymore. Great, I didn't knew that before, I tought I had to repaint all brown with matte paint.

Italeri 1:72 SdKfz. 234/4 (Work In Progress)

Some pictures of an actual project, this is Italeri's SdKfz. 234/4. This is the first kit that I painted with a "real" airbrush gun, the colors are still a little wet. The used colors were Revell Aquacolor Sand (#36116), farn green (#36360) and mud brown(#36180),  all colors were thinned with alcohol.

The camo pattern is not too bad for a first try and there are some spots where I will use a brush to finish the paintjob.

The picture below shows my new airbrush gun and compressor, I bought the Revell Airbrush starter set (#39199) and I think it is worth its price.

Next week I will publish my videoreview of this stuff, the scenes are already filmed but the sound is too bad, that's why I have to re-record it.

The Figures Of The World Of Warcraft Boardgame 2/2

Here is the rest of the WoW boardgame figures. In this post you can find the first part of the figures from this game.

ESCI 1:72 Victorian Infantry

British infantry of the Victorean era. These figures are from the ESCI set "British Infantry Soldiers" (# 212). Painted with Revell Aquacolor and Citadel acrylics. In my opinion the belts still look too clean, but I will try a wash or maybe some grey.

The Figures Of The World of Warcraft Boardgame 1/2

Some days ago I saw the WoW Boardgame in the window of a local secondhand store. Maybe these minis could be a supplemnt for my undead, therefore I searched arround the web to find some pictures of the figures that are included but I did not find any pictures of the figures.

Today I asked for the price, it was low enough for me to get this game, even when I`m not interested in fantasy stuff except for my undead forces that I am building up (hey Olli, they will kick your dwarfens asses ;D).

Check out these pictures, I know nothing about this WoW MMORPG stuff but it seems that all of the normal fantasy races are included, Elves, Human, Dwarfs .....

Last picture shows a comparison of the WoW Boardgame figures with some other 28 mm figures.

I hope these pictures will help interested people to make their decisision if to buy this game or not. Pictures of the monsters will follow, maybe tomorrow.
My copy of this game will serve as a perfect christmas present for my sister and her husband, I remember that I never mentioned this blog (and if I did, "Hey sis, please forget this post till christmas.").

Pobeda 1:72 Dead Soviet Infantry

 

The figure above is from the Pobeda Set "Die in Stalingrad" (#72-101) which contains some resin figures and a vac-formed base.
The stretcher is made of steelwire and aluminium foil.

This pile of bodies comes from the same Pobeda kit. I think this is one of the strangest figures in my collection.

Booth Pobeda figures needed a lot of sanding, on the pile of dead I used some putty to fix the worst airbubble holes.

Hmmm, no comment. The figure is the dead one from the Pegasus Summer Soviets, the ladder comes from Airfix. The rest was built from scratch.

LW/Evolution 1:72Soviet Artillery Crew

Soviet artillery crew by Russian (?) producer LW but also produced by Evolution. Sealed in a ziplock bag with a photocopied paper that contains the "box art". The bag contains 2 sprues, each with 7 crewmen and some boxes and shells.

As you can see, this figures were not sculpted by LW/Evo. They are only modified figures of the ESCI set "Soviet Infantry", but the modification was well done.

The figures were based on 1cent coins, panted with my standard Soviet color scheme and will serve on the 122mm or the 152 howitzer, I have the PST kit 72030 and you can build each of them.

Partly Scratchbuilt 1:72 Soviet Recovery Tank

I found this interesting article on the website of Henk of Holland (first part can be found on his website, too) and suddenly I knew whats to build next. Actually the this mod was for an Tamiya SU-122 kit in 1:35, but I used my kit of the SU-100 from AER, or was it PST?

Here are some pictures of the almost finished model. There are only some smaller parts to attach, then the kit will get its sealing.

Almost all parts are from the SU-100 kit, the tracks and the saw are from the Revell T-34, the other small parts (pickaxe, cable eyes, hatches) came from Pegasus. All other parts were build from scratch.

I had to correct the positions of the roadwheels, you can find more about this big fault in the kit in the AER T34 kit review at On the way models.
The crane is made from 1mm steel wire, booth parts were connected with heat shrinking tube. The steel wire is actually made of copper wire and the winch is made from plastic card.

I used the same color scheme on this model that I used for my ISU-152.

The last picture show the model while constuction.

Offtopic:

a) I wanted to rework my links and give them an own site but it does not work as I want it, so this operation is moved to the future.

b) This new Blogspot editor sucks. I have some problems with sizing the font. In my view, the option "small" is too small but the option "normal" is too large. I managed it to get the fontsize that I wanted to have.

If the text is too small to read it, you still can use [CTRL] and [+] or [-] to change its size.

Faces Of War (2)

More pictures made by my grandfather during the African campaign of the second world war. The pictures from the first post can be found in this post.

I already started another blog for this pictures, but at the moment it is still work in progress and nonpublic. You will get informed when it's done.

Dieses Werk ist lizenziert unter einer Creative Commons Namensnennung

 - Nicht kommerziell - Keine Bearbeitungen 4.0 International Lizenz. -

Great Find At Ebay

About 1 1/2 weeks I found this on the bay.
Hm, I think I've seen the sprue with the figures on the picture somewhere else before and after some search on the web, I decided that I must have that stuff.


Today it arrived. And what a surprise, I got the ESCI Wirbelwind manual that was not included in my Wirbelwind kit. The auction also included an old Fujimi BMW motorbike and some spare parts. Great, I like the old Fujime/Nitto kits, even if the are harder to get than the usual Revell/Italeri stuff.


But I did not bid only for the BMW. Maybe, if you watched the first picture, you already have seen what made this auction so interesting for me.

So here it is, I got my (first?) ESCI Nebelwerfer kit, hooray for that. Since I started with modelling I wanted to have one of these kits. And now I got it. For an unbeatable price, in my opinion. I don't think 5,55 (p&p included) was not too much for this stuff, or do you ?

By the way, I will re-structure some elements of this blog on the weekend, also the link list. So if you want your site or blog linked, please leave a comment or send me an email, the adress can be found below the links on the right side.