For anyone not already familiar with them, Clockwork Goblin Miniatures (CGM) are the design masterminds behind Konflikt ’47 which is a standalone game inspired by the hugely successful World War Two game Bolt Action - produced by Warlord Games and Osprey Publishing. Konflikt ’47 allows the addition of completely new types of units and models to existing 28mm Bolt Action armies and the creation of completely new forces set in the alternate future of 1947.
What I didn't know until very recently though was that CGM started out with Konflikt '47 in 15mm scale and they have decided that in addition to continuing to work with Warlord and Osprey on the 28mm scale game, they're re-mastering and re-releasing a lot of their miniatures in 15mm scale, which will fit with Battlefront Miniatures 'Flames of War' ranges.
While I'm not very familiar with Flames of War myself, the Konflikt range has always held something of an interest to me, though I've never quite been able to justify/pluck up the courage to pick up anything from the range and do anything with it (although a few years back I did buy a couple of things, I never got further than opening the packages and looking at the components). In any case, the re-release of 15mm miniatures by CMG piqued my interest and after considerable umming and aahhing I decided to pick up a pair of Coyote Allied Walkers and see what they were like.
As you can see in the photo above, the models are cast in light grey resin and arrived on a single sprue each with a pretty cool CGM coaster. The casting quality was fantastic and the details super crisp and after giving them a soak and scrub in some soapy water, it took very minimal cleanup with a sharp scalpel to get them assembled and ready for painting.
The miniatures don't come with bases, but a quick search of a well known auction-based marketplace yielded some laser cut wooden ones of appropriate size which were delivered pretty quickly, so they didn't stay blutac'd to Citadel bases you can see them on in the photo above for long.
Choices, Choices
While waiting for the models to arrive I started to think about how I was going to paint them - green was the obvious choice for Allied armour, and I had a pretty good idea in mind of how the colours I wanted the different aspects of the models to be and how I would go about painting them after looking back over a couple of projects I did last year.
Around about the same time, CGM announced the re-release of their first infantry models in 15mm: US and German Armoured Infantry and German Totenkorps, after speaking to a couple of the folks at CGM on social media I found out that Soviet mkII Heavy Infantry were up next and British Armoured Infantry in will follow. I'm not a huge fan of the US Armoured Infantry and I find the German stuff a little problematic despite the 'fictional' setting of the game but dig the look of the British Armoured Infantry, as you can see below its a mix of older suits of armour plate combined with servo augmented semi-powered elements and I could see myself picking some up when CGM get to them so that helped to decide how I would go about painting the Coyotes - British forces operating in Western Europe.
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| A pair of British infantrymen wearing suits of 'Galahad' Armour |
Getting Stuck In
With that choice made, I got down to painting - going with a drab green with the 'worky gubbinz' at the back in gunmetal along with the machineguns and a few other bits. Everything was given a shade using Agrax Earth, then once that was dry the metallic areas got a second shade of Nuln Oil. I've found that the all over brown shade not only ties all the colours together but it also gives deeper and richer look to dark silver metals.
I wanted to try and give the models a 'worn in' look, so there are some elements of weathering and damage, but I've kept the fairly light and generally in places that would take wear and tear through normal combat operations.
The reason for this is twofold really, firstly I think less is more when it comes to weathering and battle damage - too much can overwhelm a model and look unrealistic. I think a good example of this is 28mm models that have weathering powders daubed up to their knees or been sponge chipped to within an inch of their lives, the suspension of disbelief is broken and this ultimately detracts from the finished piece. The second reason is that at 15mm scale, a scratch that's 5mm long on the model is between 600mm and 1200mm (between 2ft and 4ft) 'in real life' which is pretty significant damage!
To try to avoid this with the Coyotes, I resolved to slowly and carefully build up the damage to the paintwork using a lighter green to add chips and scratches to hard edges, paying particular attention to the legs and the glacis plate on the torso - though the gunmetal areas had some light scratches in a brighter silver applied as well, but I reasoned that the frontal armour would take the brunt of things in combat so concentrated most of my efforts there.
To give the impression that the powered claws on the left arm of each of the walkers were well used, I went one step further and carefully applied some silver paint to their 'fingers', first with a small piece of sponge then with a fine detail brush - as though they've been worn back to the bare metal and fairly recently too as the edges aren't dulled by oxidisation yet.
The other thing I used sponge weathering for was to 'bed in' the decals, but more on those in a moment. The final stage of the weathering was to add some oxidisation to the metal 'gubbinz' at the back, which was kept light and in places where water might have built up or collected - but I didn't add any streaks as I wanted the Coyotes to look reasonably well maintained. I also used some Vallejo European Dust and Oiled Earth weathering washes to build up grime in a few places, most notably the lower legs, more on those in a minute too as it was done at the same time I was doing the bases.
Paying Attention to the Details
I knew from the start of the project that I wanted to add some markings to the Coyotes, real world armour has identification badges and serial numbers and I find that these kind of details can really help to place models into their setting so I started to research the kinds of markings that were applied to British armoured vehicles during World War Two because although Konflikt '47 takes place in a fictional setting, it's derived from real world history. It turns out during the early war years there wasn't a great deal of standardisation for markings on British armour, but as time went on, certain conventions evolved so things like bridging weights and identification flashes were painted on by crews which gave me enough of a start to begin considering what I could 'realistically' add to the Coyotes in the fictional '47 setting.
Identification markings tend to be simple and bold in design so that you can easily tell what they are and what they represent, so along this train of thought I knew I wanted to incorporate a stripe of some kind, and yellow contrasts well with green so that was pretty easy. With that in the bag, I turned to searching the internet for decal sheets with era appropriate markings and after quite a bit of hunting found 1/100 and 1/200 scale sheets for Unbrigaded British Armour Regiments from Skytrex. The simple shapes were exactly what I was after so I bought one sheet of each scale.
The final detail I wanted to solve with decals was some form of numerals for the Coyotes and for these I turned to my existing decal sheet collection, finding that the stencilled numbers on an Aeronautica Imperialis sheet looked like exactly what I was after.
With all those decisions made, it was simply a case of combining everything to the desired effect: the yellow stripes were applied freehand then the decals went on and I used a combination of brushwork and sponge weathering to 'bed them in' after an application of microsol to help deal with any issues from the backing film.
Although the numbers and yellow stripe may be something of a liberty, I felt they were worth taking as a) they enhanced the look of the miniatures and b) even in a weird war setting, a Quartermaster is going to want to keep track of his war machines.
Back to Base-ics
For many years, basing was the part I feared the most in a lot of projects and I spent a lot of time worrying about whether the bases I was putting models on were 'good enough' but over the last few years or so, through a combination of research, bugging other hobbyists and trial and error I've been able to discover a lot of new basing ideas, techniques and products that have expanded my basing toolbox and made it easier to create better looking bases for miniatures.
When thinking about how I was going to base the Coyotes, I'd already decided that I would theme them to Western Europe, so mud and grass seemed like a safe bet... so why's there a pot of Oregano in the photo below?
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| The ingredients for a basing theme |
I started the bases off by applying a layer of Vallejo Earth Texture, this stuff is amazing and I can't recommend it enough - it's great for all kinds of bases ( just as an example, I've uses it as the basis for the debris and dirt areas on all of my War of the False Primarch miniatures), it's easy to apply and you can build up layers of it if you want a more textured or uneven surface.
Once the texture had cured the I painted the bases Citadel Dryad Bark before drybrushing some lighter browns on and then applying a liberal layer of Vallejo Oiled Earth wash. This is the first project I've used this on, but I've been using the European Dust wash for a while and it's another fantastic tool for weathering both miniatures and bases so after a wee trial of the Oiled Earth on a sacrificial base I had no hesitation using it here.
Once the wash had dried, I started adding some tufts from Gamers Grass, they're self adhesive, but I like to use a dab of Vallejo Matt Varnish to help glue them into place. For the Coyote's bases, I carefully trimmed the tufts with some nail scissors so that they weren't quite so tall - I didn't want them to be 'too high' for the scale. Once I'd done this of course, I noticed that Gamers Grass do 'Tiny Tufts' which are 2mm in height... so I've now added some of those to my basing materials box!
I was fairly happy with how the bases were looking now, but I felt they were missing something to really set them off, but I wasn't sure what. I started looking for ideas on Instagram and through internet searches, and after a while was starting to think that some fallen leaves might look good - but where could I get leaves in the right scale without having to wait? I had an inkling of an idea, but decided to sleep on it.
The following morning, I had a rummage through the kitchen cupboards to see what I had in the way of dried herbs, and found the pictured pot of Oregano and after adding a couple of the leaves to a base to see how they looked, I set about using wee dabs of matt varnish to carefully fix them in place one at a time so as not to overwhelm the bases. The leaves are various shades of green and happily Konflikt's fluff places the narrative in the summer of 1947 so in my mind the leaves are either early windfall or, and I think I prefer this more, the Coyotes or perhaps something more sinister has scattered them by barging through some low hanging tree branches.
With that though, the Coyotes were finished, well almost. The final thing I wanted to do was come up with a couple of 'pet' names for them, as I figured their crew and their comrades would have come up with semi-affectionate names as they grew attached to them. After a little more research, I settled on calling them 'Abbott' and 'Costello' after the famous comedy duo. Although, 'Laurel' and 'Hardy' could be considered more 'staple' in Britain, I reasoned that by 1947 quite a lot of cultural influences would have made their way across the Atlantic from the US to the UK.
Now they were finished.
Well, that's it for now - although I enjoyed working on this pair so much that I've actually picked up an Allied Grizzly Medium Walker from Clockwork Goblin this week and am hoping to get stuck into painting that soon and I've been considering picking up some of the 28mm scale British Armoured Infantry from Warlord Games and I'm really looking forward to seeing what else CGM bring out in 15mm in 2022.
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