I mentioned previously that I had five Soviet T-34s (for Flames of War) on my desk. I bought these guys months ago, and got them assembled and primed fairly quickly. Somehow, though, they had seemingly permanently entered "work in progress" status. Friday evening, I resolved to make some serious progress on them over the weekend.
Luckily, circumstances allowed me significant blocks of time to work on them both days. The painting went fairly quickly, somewhat to my surprise. I used a new brush to lay on the base coat, an Army Painter large drybrush, and I was very happy with it. Not the tool's intended purpose, I guess, but at my level of painting, whatever works works. Anyway, the combination of the brush's wide tip and the excellent coverage of the Vallejo paint I use really knocked out the base coating in what felt like record time.
After that, it was just a matter of a quick wash applied to selected areas for shading, and a couple rounds of dry brushing for highlights. Really, really simple stuff. As always, I am not aiming for "contest" or "showcase" quality, but rather "I am not embarrassed to deploy these" quality. I feel that I got there with these guys.
Everything was dry enough by Sunday evening for the decals. I do not like the new decal sheet included in Battlefront's new T-34 box. The only slogan graffiti on the sheet is in red script. On all their other Soviet decal sheets that I have seen, it's in white, and the text is much blockier/bulkier. I was very concerned about how the red decal was going to look against the dark green of the tank itself, so I only used one of the new slogans. As it turns out, I was right -- it looks pretty terrible. The script is way too thin and dark. Luckily, I had plenty of decals left over from earlier tank boxes, and the blocky white slogans I used turned out pretty well, I think.
After letting the decals dry overnight, I hit the tanks with a pretty heavy dose of Dullcote. Luckily it was pretty (gorgeous, actually) outside Monday, so I had no worries about temperature or humidity or anything. Here are the final products:
And, that was pretty much that. To my amazement, I didn't just make "serious progress," as was my stated goal, I got the things finished over the weekend.
[OK, maybe not 100% finished -- you may have noticed from the picture that they don't have their bow machine guns mounted. When I assembled these guys, I decided I'd magnetize those, in case I ever wanted to field them as flame tanks (the OT-34 had a flamethrower in place of the bow machine gun). That was maybe not the smartest thing I've ever done, as those MGs are tiny. Nonetheless, I've got three of them done and should get the other two tonight. So, I'm practically 100% finished with these.]
So, that was cool. Maybe I've turned over a new leaf! Maybe some of that momentum will carry over into my next project (I'm thinking Germans). And, maybe it was a one-time aberration. We'll see. In any event, I now have a completed, full-strength Soviet medium tank battalion (21 tanks!), and I'm pretty proud of them.
Anyway, some final thoughts about the miniatures themselves: It's too bad about the decals, because over all, the newer T-34 models are excellent. The fuel tanks are now molded on to the hull, instead of cast as separate pieces. There are bits of stowage -- tarps, packs, the ubiquitous Russian "tank log," that kind of thing -- sculpted on to the hulls and turrets now. All five hulls and all five turrets are different sculpts, with different arrangements of fuel tanks and stowage details. I think that's an excellent touch, and I'm glad Battlefront went that direction. The overall casting is pretty crisp and clean too, owing no doubt to the newness of the molds. I'm happy with the product, and especially happy to have them done.
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