“The Big Regimental 12cm Mortars…”

“…Fire a heavier bombardment at a longer range than the light 8cm mortars.”

This quartet of plastic 15mm miniatures are sold by “Battlefront Miniatures” and can be found inside the company’s 12cm Mortar Platoon blister for “Flames Of War”. The team consists of a two-piece mortar and four mortar loaders. You actually get four teams in the blister so as to build a full-strength platoon, however I picked these particular figures up off “eBay” as a single sprue.

As with all my other “FoW” German soldiers, the figures were initially super-glued onto wooden strips, before being primed in “Vallejo” German Fieldgrey WWII, shaded using “Citadel” Nuln Oil, and dry-brushed with (more) “Vallejo” German Fieldgrey WWII. Their details were then ‘picked out’ predominantly using “Vallejo” Heavy Sienna, Gunmetal, Buff, German Camouflage Dark Green, Heavy Brown and a series of “Citadel” Shades.

"Privateer Press" WIPs - This Paladin Annihilator has slowly had its detail 'picked out'

The beauty of these little kits is that each large base is almost like a tiny vignette in its own right, so despite the fact that each sprue contains exactly the same collection of sculpts, each team can still be attached to their stand in a myriad of different combinations depending upon where the holes for the soldiers are located. Ensuring that the weapon faced “the short edge”, I therefore repositioned the mortar loaders this time round to predominantly stand/kneel to the left of the formidable firing piece.

Moving on to the most recent of my Weekly Challenges, I have been making some steady progress on the first of three Paladin Annihilators I want to field for "Warcaster: Neo-Mechanika". These metal "Privateer Press" castings are a lot of fun to work on, but having used some previously-painted Paladin Enforcers as a guide, I’ve spotted a couple of common areas between the two different infantry teams which I’ve now decided to pigment “Vallejo” Brass and "Citadel" Agrax Earthshade, rather than just plain old Abaddon Black.

"Crooked Dice Game Design Studio" WIPs - These three Sorcerous Sentinels have been based and primed

This has invariably meant that I have dug out all my old Iron Star Alliance models and started ‘touching up’ these additional areas on them, as well as working through my trio of Annihilators. I have however, finally settled upon Cobalt Alchemy by “Scalecolor” for the heavy support troopers’ helmets. Combined with a shade of Drakenhof Nightshade, this should help better distinguish the rapid-fire harbinger cannon-carriers from their similar-looking brethren on the tabletop.

Finally, I have started basing and priming nine Sorcerous Sentinels by “Crooked Dice Game Design Studio” for this week’s monstrous challenge, which as usual was randomly chosen via a deck of playing cards. These “Otherworldly watchers” will be painted up in three batches, and will all follow the ‘official’ colour scheme of the Slayers from Peter Yates’ 1983 science fantasy film “Krull”.