Confessions of a Lego Convert

I have to open this very belated post with an admission, I've neglected this blog most shamefully.  No doubt readers (if there are any left) have written Castles of Tin off as just another blog abandoned without a clue why, consigned to the dustbin of the internet.

Suffice to say that I'm still alive and kicking but went through months of a deep funk where I couldn't summon the motivation to work on any of my numerous half baked projects.  Yes, I dabbled with this and that but accomplished little worthy of actually putting together a blog post.  I also dropped out of the blogosphere - a tactical error in denying myself the inspirational effect of viewing other's work.

Personally I've been doing well enough.  Although an unwelcome occurrence this year was the onset of a slight tremor in my left hand.  I had it checked out, the neurologist said it didn't herald the onset of some degenerative disease like Parkinson's and for that I'm grateful.  That said, it's impacted the painting a bit.  Although I'm right handed, holding the object in my left hand can make for a shaky target.  It seems to wax and wane, perhaps I don't have the precision of old but I can still paint !

Oddly, what got me back on track was the gift of a Lego Speed Champions kit from my stepson.  The car is an Audi Prototype racer, in truth not a great replica (not to mention to mention the P1 cars are Batmobile ugly these days anyway).  But I did readily see the appeal of Lego.  That is something American kids growing up in the 50's missed out on. We had to make do with Lincoln Logs or Erector Sets.

 Naturally, I got interested in the military side of things.  Lego themselves are a peaceable sort of toy company, but plenty of others have stepped in to fill the void. And I discovered a whole new world of Lego military groups on Flickr.  Certainly a most vibrant community although you're inclined to encounter a few of the same sort of button-counting pendants who frequent wargaming forums, in this case laughably critiquing toy figurines for small inaccuracies in their kit.

A pink baby awaits the whims of his master

Yes, your basic minifig has the proportions of a toddler, a cartoon face, stud holes in the back of his legs and arms totally unsuited for wielding a rifle in any realistic manner.  What they do have is (aside from a few outlier companies like Cobi and Sluban) a shared common scale and design, thus the multitude of available weapons and accoutrements fit any figure.  Genius !

Capped only by the size of your budget, you can build an army from ancient times up to the modern era.  At present, there's a lot of gaps in what you can get off the shelf, but the Ancient, Medieval, World Wars and Modern eras are well enough represented. Particularly the modern era, perhaps in part due to the popularity of Call of Duty/Battlefield online video games with young people these days.  As you can see below, I've taken a stab at a few different things.  And unlike many collectors, I do really enjoy painting the figures.

At present, the modern era is really where it's at with these things.  And particularly so given the relatively cheap and plentiful figures and armor kits on Aliexpress and elsewhere on the web. You can buy sets of modern infantry with all their accessories for around $1 per soldier.  Turning back the clock to something like Ancient Rome is going to be costlier as once you purchase separate armor, shields and weapons, a single figure will run ~ $5.

My overall objective here is to build up some squads with a few vehicles per side for some toy figure gaming.  My project is a variant on Green vs. Tan, with the Aquilonians (almost NATO) vs. the Hyrkanian Empire (almost Russian).  Let's look at a few of the Hyrkanians, I've done so far. First up is the basic conversion, out of the box guy on the right, my own version on the left.

Here's the first squad, posed with the Winner anti-tank vehicle, pretty much a BRDM and the T-90 tank.

Now for some Aquilonians, Sluban APC and tank in the background:

Painted  the vehicle, a Lego sacrilege of the first order !

I haven't picked the rule set yet, but I have a number which could fill the bill.  Little Cold Wars may well work as well, although these figures look a bit more contemporary.

To sum up, it feels good to revive the blog at long last, and a Happy New Year to all !

Re-Arm with Brickarms 3: Tehnolog 54mm Fantasy

Some while ago, I posted about converting cheap plastic army men to Brickarms weapons which are designed for use with Lego minifigs.  Although the concept seemed well received by Brickarms fans due to the novelty of it, the figures looked a little over-gunned when carrying anything larger than an Uzi.  That is, the Brickarms weapons are nice replicas of the real things, but stylized and of course intended for use with the Lego figurines where the firearms are unabashedly out of scale with the figures.  As is the way with these toys, like it or not.

I still had some weapons left over, and with a set of Russian Tehnolog fantasy warriors purchased on eBay, I thought they'd be more suitable candidates for conversion on account of their already over-the-top style.

Since these are hard plastic, it wasn't too tough to cut away their sci fi guns and replace with the Brickarms.  How did they turn out ?  Not too bad, I think.  Tough guys one and all in the Terminator style, they'll make pretty good special forces or mercs for the forces of evil Tan.

The figure in the black trench coat is unmodified, the four in the photo just above are the ones I converted.

"Out of our way, kiddies."

The minifigs are cheap Sluban clones with the "Merkava" in the background. More about these in a subsequent post. I have no intention of using the little soldiers.  Ah, but the vehicles, definitely some utility there !

BMP-1: Card Model

Here's a card model I built recently, Paper Forge's BMP-1.  The default scale is 1/48, a bit small relative to my troops which are more 40mm (give or take a few millimeters).  However, 1/48 and 1/43 armor & vehicles fit the size of the soldiers well enough for my purposes.

This and other models such as the T-72, Abrams tanks and the Humvee can be found at Wargamer Vault, PDF file downloads for the princely sum of $1.99.  Not bad at all considering that once you have the files, unlimited vehicles can then be fabricated at no additional cost.  The parts sheets have a helpful conversion table giving the % of print scale to make the models as anything from 1/35 to 1/144. 

For the Russian vehicles, the files come with two different versions, green and tan. The US comes in woodlands camo and tan. The Russian green is nice, with the appearance of mud on the tracks and hull. But the details on the tan version look a little crisper to me.  In the case of the BMP, everything fits on one parts sheet.

This is a very well designed kit. Very simple to build, yet sturdy. The braces keep the hull true so that the tracks sit flush once you've completed the build.

And the end result.  Yes, it's simplified in that there are no headlights, the tracks aren't flared out away from the hull and so on.   But I think it captures nicely the look of the cramped sardine can for infantry that is the Boyevaya Mashina Pekhoty.  In any case, detailed or not it works just fine in my simple imagi-nations context.

I did some things to it, substituted a styrene cannon barrel (although you could just as easily go with the rolled paper), styrene driver's/TC's optics, used an extra parts sheet with cereal box cardboard-backed hatches and fenders to make the details pop a little more.  And I painted the green camo pattern.  Water is death to paper models, but you can get away with using water-based paint on them providing you dry the brush thoroughly after rinsing. The 40mm HLBS crew figure shows the vehicle is a bit undersized, but not outlandlishly so.

I'm now nearly finished with the T-72 and will post about it soon.

Airfix Modern British Infantry: 1/48 Plastic

I recently purchased a box of Airfix modern infantry with the idea of using them with my Green forces.  On paper, this seemed like a good idea as my few 1/48 HLBS modern infantry figures (a range now sadly defunct) match pretty well with the other figures I have.  The back of the box image sold me on the purchase. The poses are fairly static in patrolling mode but there looked to be some useful guys in the box.

The raw materials.  The figures aren't multi-part in the sense of having a lot of options right out of the box, although not doubt some customization can be done.  Things fit well enough together (except for the scrawny necks), although the arms aren't clearly defined as to what angle they need to be mounted in order to grasp the spindly assault rifles. Using plastic model glue there's time to make adjustments before it sets, super glue is a lot more problematic in that respect.

As soon as I saw the size of the parts, I knew I had a problem.  From left to right, Airfix, HLBS, plastic army guy:

The Airfix soldier measures 33mm from the boots to the eyes, HLBS is 38mm.  Seems hard to believe a major model company could muff the scale, so we can say then that the HLBS were "heroic" 1/48, a virtual 40mm. Still, I'm curious how the Airfix might scale up against the Tamiya 1/48 WW2 figures, although I'm not about to purchase a box purely in the interest of research. 

Despite his deformity, Private Pencil Neck somehow passed the army's physical exam.

No, they just won't do.    

Cloning a Clone: Plastic Army Guys

Everyone has seen them, those ubiquitous bags of cheap plastic made-in-China clone soldiers hanging on the rack in seemingly every supermarket and drug store in the US.  Do kids even play with these anymore ?  Maybe just big kids like us.  As often as not, they're 35-45mm knockoffs of their 54mm plastic army men brethren, the Airfix or Timmee roots clear to see. I've posted about them before.

Inspired by the engrossing series Jono's World at the Archduke Piccolo blog, I decided to to take another crack at these.  In this case, I modied one of the figures for the evil Tan forces. The raw materials in this bag are two main types of soldiers.  The Vietnam era guys seem to be copies in the Timmee style. But others look like British WW2 infantry from the neck down, capped off with US M1 style steel pots.  This helmet had a good long run from WW2 until the Fritz in the mid-80's, wore one myself (now over 40 years ago, wow !).

Here is the candidate figure, selected for his appealing and useful assaulting pose.  The main change was was substituting an AK for his WW2 rifle (Enfield ?), brass wire for the barrel and green stuff magazine and front sight.  That and giving him boots for a more Russian sort of look, plus a rucksack to cover the old-fashioned web gear.

And for added strength and repeatability, made a mold to cast the figure in metal.

The result ?  Not too bad and he certainly meets my needs.

The BMP in the background is a cheap and simple paper model. More about this in a subsequent post. For now, I'm belatedly painting the first example of the modified cavalryman.

Green vs. Tan - Send in the Clones

On the home stretch now with the A-H Hussars.  Should have pictures in a week or so. In the meantime, here's some more miscellaneous stuff from the not too distant past.

These are mostly all cheap plastic army men straight off the discount and grocery store racks. You know the type, "Attack Force !" etc., 40-45mm clones of their superior 54mm brethren. I wonder how many kids actually play with them these days ?  As a lark, I tried out painting them like wargames figures. 

Green. Mixture of guys here, the tanks are LeClercs. One diecast, the other a paper model.

Tan.  The soldiers are a real mixed bag: some Airfix clones, an old Rambo set,  a Timmee style machine gunner who started life as a dayglo Walmart birthday cake decoration, and a couple of Green Berets gone rogue. I built the T-90 and BTR-80 from 1/48 Korean motorized kits. I believe these have been recycled through a few companies, now, Frog-Fuman, Bandai, now Kitech. The fit quality ranges from decent to abysmal depending upon the kit.

Where am I going with these ? Nowhere really. It was a fun exercise but when I get back to building squads for Combat Storm, it will be with the 1/35 - 54mm plastics. There's just more available. For me, part of the fun of playing with army men is the personality of the larger figures.  I've also picked up a few sample Brickarms weapons (intended for Lego minifigs) to convert US weapon-toting soldiers to bad guys. They're quite good, wasn't sure about the scale and consequently didn't get too many. But now that I have them in hand, for the larger 54mm figures I think they'll make for some nice conversions. 

Modern Stuff - 54mm

Sorry, It's been pretty quiet here. I'm halfway through painting a unit of HWG-Modelle Austro-Hungarian hussars and prefer to wait until they're done before I show it.

In the meantime, here's something completely different, things I did a couple of years ago.  First, let's build a Russian tank. $4 from Russian Traditions.  This is a very simple kit produced by Umbum (Umnaya Bamaga). Simple, it uses the familiar old "insert Tab A into Tab B" construction formula.

How's it look ?  Not too bad, really. I've also built a BMP-3 from this company, also an easy build.  That's an ESCI Warsaw Pact figure, a Czech paratrooper.

Now we need some figures.  These are plastic Russian cops, my paint jobs inspired by the Soviet VDV.  Made in Russia, I have no idea if they're still in production but they do pop up on eBay now and then.

And Caipo Americans. Not great, but cheap. You get a bag of guys molded in green & tan (naturally), about half of which look like this and the other half somehow got off a time machine from WW2.