RoE Hobby Hitler Youth Anti Tank

After base coating the base, miniatures and tank with a black undercoat I started to paint the details.  I’ll split the description here into three parts although to be honest I painted everything at pretty much the same time, as the miniatures were drying I was painting the tank, etc.  I wanted the base to match with the GEG Bagration board which represents a city/town which has seen heavy fighting.  We have a set colour scheme for the basing so that made that the easiest part to do and the part I will discuss first.

Just a quick note on paints; I used a varied mix of paints from quite a few different suppliers, not quite as bad as Cubster mixing all his own colours but as I have used various ranges over the years the colours that I have liked I have stuck with.  So I use the Foundry Colour range for all the flesh on my miniatures; I really like the colours and find that the three part system suits me really well.  I have some old GW paints that I like, and I really do mean old, some of the original paints in circular pots, as well as some of the original red topped glazes.  The majority of the paints I use though are Vallejo, the colour match for WW2 uniforms just makes them the easiest choice.  I recently acquired an Army Painter Mega Paint set and I’ve been painting with them for a while now and really like them.  I tend to find that they need a fair bit of shaking up but then the colour and consistency are really good.  So at the beginning of the guide I’ll put a list of the paints that I used and the name of the manufacturer next to the colour.

Painting the base:

Colours Used - 

After the black undercoat had been applied and dried I gave the entire base a heavy dry brush with Burnt Umber.  Once this had dried I followed up with a dry brush of first a 50/50 mix of German Grey and Uniform Grey, then Uniform Grey and then finally a lighter dry brush of Ash Grey.  I tried to stay away from the piles of bricks, bits of wood, etc. I turned to these next.

The bricks were given a base coat of Terracota, the other bricks/blocks were painted either Green Ochre or German Camo Pale Brown.  Finally the bits of broken wood were repainted with Burnt Umber, making sure that none of the black was showing through.  After all this had dried I applied two washes, the first was Strong Tone which went over the entire base.  After that had dried I used a mix of Dark tone and black paint, about 5:1 in favour of the ink, and watered it down with about the same again of clean water.  This was applied around the gaps between the loose bricks, etc., to add an extra layer of shadow around the rubble and to make the bricks etc stand out.  The individual pieces were then highlighted with the base colour and then, in the case of the brick, the base colour with a little bit of Iraqi sand added.  The wood was given a final highlight with Burnt Umber mixed 50/50 with Flat Earth. When that had dried the entire base was given an incredibly light dry brush with Iraqi sand.  After this I added very small amounts of brick dust to patches of the base, especially around the areas which had the loose bricks on.  The brick dust came with the bricks that I used across the base.  That then completed the base.

On to the Miniatures.