More painted pieces for consideration

@AlphaKappa:

That is so helpful!  Thank you for the analysis!

It was my pleasure. A chance to pull out my games and admire them? If I must…  :-D

@AlphaKappa:

It’s too bad Avalon Hill didn’t print the new Anniversary Edition in the same colors as Europe '40 Second Edition.  I really like the lighter shade of those Italian pieces because they’re easier to distinguish from Soviet red-brown.

To be fair to Hasbro/WotC/Avalon Hill, all they promised was a re-print. And to a large degree, that is what the New A&A Anniversary edition was: a straight up re-print of the original go at things. Were there differences between the two prints? Of course there were. Were all of those changes for the better? I don’t think so, no. I especially wish they had kept the US F6F Hellcat fighters but instead we got more P-38 Lightnings. But overall, it was probably as faithful as they could do and a long shot better than either 1) not doing it at all (what a pity that would have been) or 2) just phoning it in and wholesale dumping all of the right pieces from A&A 42 and A&A Europe 40.1 Italy.

Instead, we got the original Anniversary Edition Italian tank, the M14/41. We got the Italian brown Japanese Betty bombers and Type 92 Howitzers (artillery). And they put them into a shade about as close as to the shade of the original Anniversary Edition Italians as they were going to get from two print runs separated by 9 years. And that meant that we got a bunch of Italian brown German ships and fighters. But we got a re-print of a game I didn’t think was ever coming back.

And for that, I don’t mind dark brown Italians. Even if I would have rather gotten the F6Fs and the Maroon UK Country class cruisers, I’m happy with what we did get.

-Midnight_Reaper

@Noble:

I love that you touch your pinky to your other hand. I do the same when painting and it’s the best way to stay steady. Keep up the great work!

LOL, that’s funny you noticed! Thanks for the comment!

I have opened my Airfix and find that, although the base/pedestal is shorter, the pieces are of a height with those produced by HBG. I’d feel comfortable using them on my board. My big concern is that the plastic is very soft, and some pieces so finely molded that you’re almost certainly looking at damage-in-storage, if not straight out of the box. They can also be a pain to cut cleanly from sprues, resulting in damaged to pieces during removal.

HaT pieces are in much harder plastic – so hard, it’s brittle. They are noticeably beefier than Airfix pieces in the same scale, but about as tall. I got a Serbian WW1 pack.

Waterloo 1815 miniatures in 1:72 scale are taller, also brittle, and beefier still, but are also acceptable. Sprues for special molds (e.g., machine gunners) are fiddly, creating risk of damage to pieces during clipping.

This may sound like an improbable source, but another idea would be for you to go to some local dollar stores and look around.  Back when I was making myself a dice tower, I discovered that some dollar store chains sell (among all the miscellaneous stuff they have in stock) some plain unpainted rectangular wooden trays of various sizes, made of very thin wood.  Their designs could not be simpler – a bottom and four sides glued together, all made of flat wooden pieces – and they’re cheap in both price and appearance, but they’re about the right size for what you have in mind and they would probably look quite nice if you applied some dark wood stain to them.  And because they’re so inexpensive, picking up as many as you need for your table would be very affordable.  It would also be easy to customize them by, for example, subdividing the larger models into sections by cutting some balsa wood sticks (or other types of woods) to suitable sizes and gluing them inside the trays before you stain them.

The next group of infantry, will be, DESERT LIGHT INFANTYRY.

Until next time.

Cheers!

John

––Calling “Viracocha”----

––My friend,…it’s been way too long since I’ve heard from you. I ALWAYS enjoy my conversations with you.

Tall Paul

Guys,

@coachofmany:

very nice!
**––I’m glad you enjoyed them. Lord knows I CERTAINLY ENJOY HBG’S PRODUCTS!

Tall Paul**

@BluGerman:

today i managed to read through this year long forum thread and I have to ask what happened after November 17th 2011?.. did everybody in this forum mysteriously dissapear? or was it just discontinued? or was it moved to another forum thread or something?.. somebody please let me know because I was really excited to see Allworks whole board with his miniatures (they are awesome!)

In answer to your question- I don’t really know.  :? Allworkandnoclay is an artist who does all sorts of other work for money, not just Axis and Allies. I presume that he moved on to other work, as his Flickr account shows him doing some sculpting and what not. To be honest though, he stopped posting pics, people stopped commenting, and it sort of fell of the face of the earth. There’s some stuff on TallPaul’s page, and there are plenty of other artists with some awesome stuff if you need your daily fix of painted minis!