WSS COVER BUILD | bolt-action-painted

Wargames, Soldiers and Strategy Magazine Cover build picture

WSS BUILD

AND PAINTING

Building and Painting the Vignette

Wargames, Soldiers and Strategy

Magazine Cover

Introduction

After reading the history of the Cuckoo and looking at the few pictures available and the short video on YouTube, I decided to portray the tank in a rest area after its first engagement with the crew having a cup of well earned tea.

The Challenge
The main challenge apart from creating the vignette itself for this project was the unavailability of the panther G tank with full zimmerit on both Hull and Turret at this

scale 28mm.
Many thanks to Warlord Games and Rubicon Models for stepping in and providing the models and walls and crews etc for project.

Moving forward to solve the zimmerit issue I decided to use the turret from the Warlord kit and the hull from the Rubicon kit. The idea was to match the zimmerit from the hull and apply I paste with texture on the clear hull surface.

Having looked at a few methods on line I decided use Citadel’s Liquid Green stuff and apply the texture with a X-Acto saw blade.
After a few practice runs I applied this to the surface of the hull. This was a delicate job however I was happy with the final result.

The tank was pre -shaded and Ammo Mig’s Olive Drab Basic Modulation Set with an airbrush, followed by a mid brown Abteilung oil mixture for the filter. A satin Varnish and a dark oil wash applied to outline any details. At this point the tank was sealed with another satin varnish and the decals applied using a picture reference.
A weathering application was then applied using Ammo Mig pigments.

I decided to pre shade the whole diorama inc the figures. The figures were first primed with a grey primer followed by a white highlight from the 12 noon position of the sun. This was followed by a 921 Vallejo English Uniform Base coat adding various percentages of Vallejo 321 High British tank crew up to the final highlight. The flesh area were created with a Vallejo Game colour flesh with a Citadel agrax earth shade followed by two further highlights.

To complete everything I used the walls and stowage kits from Rubicon These were again pre shaded and paint applied with an airbrush with an oil wash used to highlight detail, and finally pigments use for some weathering. The stowage was base coated with appropriate colours with the same weathering and airbrush application applied as the walls. The ground was created from a plastic mold with the same weathering application as per the walls.

Conclusion
This was a creative challenge but a very rewarding one. I have fully enjoyed everything including the application of the zimmerit

Many thanks to Guy Bowers, Steve Perry at Rubicon Models and of course
Warlord Games.