Or I Painted a Monocle with a German Attached!

Imagine, if you will, you are ready to play the next mission in your NUTS! campaign. You’ve successfully played a patrol mission, so this mission will be an attack mission. You’ve crafted defensive positions – a bunker and slit trench and then you realize you have no support weapons for those positions.

I went on-line and did some shopping and comparison. I could have bought the support weapons and their teams separately, but then I found Warlord Games had bundled them together with a headquarters team. It was like buying two support weapons and getting the headquarters team almost for free.

I had bought the plastic infantry platoon and like them. The miniatures in the Support Group pack are all metal. The only things I had to assemble were the weapons themselves. In each case I had to glue the weapon to its tripod.

On the mortar team, I glued the observe on a separate stand, but left room for him on the weapon stand. An NCO/officer with binoculars is an useful figure to have around.

The radio operator is a difficult figure to photograph since he is prone and looking down. This picture reveals something that is common in sculpture – the hands are oversized. When looking at a figure, we often focus on the face (what a person looks like) and then on the hands (what a person is doing). Sometimes a sculptor makes the head and hands a little larger to emphasize what he or she wants us to see. Sometimes, especially in metal sculpts it is to prevent the hands from breaking off when the piece is removed from its mold. Adler’s 6mm Napoleonic figures are often affectionately referred to as “bucket heads.”

This senior NCO or officer is a decorated veteran, he wears an iron cross around his neck.

I really like the medic, he looks like he is calm and collected while the world is exploding around him.

When I first saw the senior officer figure, I asked myself “Is that General Model?” But after checking photos, General Walter Model wore his monocle in his right eye whereas this figure has the monocle in his left eye.

The Count

The end of the year is nigh and my goal is in sight. The total number of figures painted so far is now 454.

• 43 28mm Fantasy Figures
• 182 6mm Ancient Greek Figures
• 2 28mm Dark Ages Viking Figures
• 58 10mm Seven Years War Figures
• 12 28mm Old West Figures
• 11 28mm Colonial Era Figures
• 111 28mm World War Two Figures
• 35 28mm Science Fiction Figures
• 47 Pieces of Terrain
• Rebased 13 Science Fiction Figures

I’ve sometimes wondered what I would do if I didn’t paint minis – well, a quick glance tells me I could keep Floozy Manor a bit cleaner. Manors are expensive to upkeep! The Floozy spent over $25K this year in repairs and restoration, luckily 2/3rds of it was covered by insurance. A tip learned the hard way – your average home owner’s policy does not cover the sewer main when it collapses, but does cover water damage in the home when the collapsed sewer backs up. Also, insurance doesn’t cover 30-year old toilets & bathroom plumbing fixtures that fall apart from age during the restoration process. So be sure to put money aside or get a supplemental policy which covers what the home owner policy doesn’t. Because over time, things break!

P.S. Having things break is even worse during a pandemic. The sewer collapsed at the end of July and the repairs weren’t completed until November – honest to God, everything manufactured in this world has to wait on something from China.