Staff 600 point Project: Dion’s Rangers

Ranger Company Command Carbine team

Dion’s Rangers

Battlefront Staff 600 point Project...  

Dion is one of our Graphic Designers and is the man responsible for the design and layout of most of our books. He’s a bloody good painter as well.

Of all the U.S. forces the Rangers interest me the most. The ’fire-brigade’ force for the U.S., the Rangers were always in the thickest of the fighting. Although casualties were always very high, the Rangers fight on and always achieve their goals!

Ranger Command team Ranger Rifle/MG team
Ranger Rifle/MG team Ranger Company Command Carbine team
Ranger Rifle/MG team

Dion decide just to make the 600 points.

I wanted to get my 600 points painted quickly so I spent a couple of days reading about the Rangers to get myself into the right frame of mind (Hill 400... very bloody for those poor Rangers!), I also wanted to try a new painting technique out that should speed up my painting of infantry.

I had a scratch around in my bits-box to find some extra things to chuck on the bases, a German pin marker and some random guns and ammo boxes will do nicely. My procedure for assembling and painting this platoon was pretty unorthodox compared to how I normally paint so I will briefly explain what I did:

1. Cleaned up the infantry and then positioned them on the bases to get the best interactions before committing them in place with super-glue. I also added the dead German after clipping away as much of the base as possible.

2. I undercoated the miniatures in Black (FWP300) and then mixed up the basing filler by adding Battlefield Brown (FWP324) and a spot of PVA to some Perma-fill. Applied to the bases and let everything dry.

3. I block painted the miniatures (when I finished they looked like they had been painted by my three year old!) and when dry applied a heavy wash of Klear floor polish mixed with some black ink (known as ’miracle wash’ in the modelling community), once dry it was just a matter of highlighting and adding a few details like ranger patches on the sleeves and the battalion diamond on the back of the helmets.

Ranger Rifle/MG team
Ranger Rifle/MG team

So easy and the end result is well... see for yourself...

4. I then mixed some Battlefield Brown (FWP324) and a spot of PVA with some fine model railway ballast and put it on in patches on the bases to add more texture, I built up some areas on a couple of the bases to look like craters. Once dry a quick drybrush of Comrade Khaki (FWP326) finished the bases.

I glued on some extra weapons at this stage, the empty brass in the pseudo German MG pit was done by cutting up thin synthetic hairs from a house-brush and then painting some thinned down PVA in a patch, sprinkling on the cut hairs and drybrushing with a brass colour when dry.

5. I glued the static grass on last by painting small dots of slightly watered down PVA onto the bases, I thought this may make a more natural grass look by having each grass clump radiating from central point much like it really is. 

Ranger Rifle/MG team
Ranger Rifle/MG team

6. A spray with matt varnish and voila! Rangers! Ready to lead the way!   

The whole platoon took three nights to paint for a total of about 6 hours.

A little later I finished the Sherman platoon, the two bazooka teams and the sniper.

Happy Gaming and remember the Ranger motto ’You aren’t a veteran division until you have taken over 100% casualties!’

Dion 

Ranger Platoon
Tank Platoon
M4 Sherman M4 Sherman
M4 Sherman M4 Sherman
M4 Sherman US Ranger Company

Ranger HQ (10 points)
- add 2x Bazooka teams (50 points)
- add 1x Sniper (50 points)

Ranger Platoon (full strength, 125 points)

Support Platoons

5x M4 (75mm) Sherman tanks (345 points)

Total 580 points