My buddy Wilkie in St’ Louis sent me some pictures on one of his projects for Bolt Action gaming. While I am not really a fan of Bolt Action rules, I have to admit that there are a large number of fantastic miniatures and models on the market to support the game. I do not have any plans to get into 28mm WWII gaming (I am too heavily invested in 20mm), I am a fan of 28mm Pulp Gaming. These would be somewhat outside my period, but I thought these figures where just too cool not to share!
I have always been a fan of the movie Kelly’s Heroes. I remember seeing it as a kid and being awed by the Tiger tank conversions. Something that you just did not see back then. Most movies had the Germans driving around in M-47 or M-48 Patton tanks (the irony cannot be over stated!). The characters in the movie were fantastic and the whole movie was just a hoot! It is also ironic that some of the best WWII movies are more period pieces than factual tellings (Eagle has Landed, Saving Private Ryan, Guns of Navarone, Cross of Iron, etc.). However, Kelly’s Heroes still stands out for no other reason than its comedy appeal.
To make up this menagerie of miniatures, we have an eclectic mix of figure companies. We start with eight figures from the Warlord “Oddballs Heroes”. We then add the Warlord “Hollywood Tiger” model kit. To counter, we also have the Warlord “Oddball Sherman” kit. To fill out the scene we have the Warlord Kurt Knispel miniature that was offered as a free mini at one of the past Historicon conventions. All together, we end up with a very Hollywood WWII collection.
He painted all his models using Vallejo paints, trying to match the paint schemes from the movie. Not to let a good opportunity pass, he opted to include the names on each model for a bit more flavor for the “uniformed”. He did this by creating them using MS Word with a brown colored circle that matched his base paint. Using Word Art, he bent the text to match the circle, printed it out, cut the circles and glued them to the bases. A little basing work and the scene was complete!
- Manteuffel
Amazing! what paints did you use exactly for these? esp the tiger!