DKoK Artillery - TO DONE

 

Greetings and welcome back for some actual painting progress, at long last. With some satisfaction, I record the completion of this Death Korps of Krieg artillery piece; 1st Gun, 206th Battery, 262nd Siege Regiment. And the big seal o'DONE:

I struggled to build enough enthusiasm and inspiration to get this one across the finish line. I enjoy the completed look of my DKoK models, but I have never truly enjoyed the process of painting them, for one reason or another. However, I stuck to my rule of not moving on to a new painting project until the one on the desk is complete.  Thus the looong pause in painting projects for the blog, including my intent to complete a squad for Squaduary 2026, boooo!

That said, I'm enjoying the completion here and the results. I like that GW made this kits a small diorama in it's own right. That's partially what took up some time. I still want to go in with some weathering powders at some point.  But I haven't done that for the rest, so for now this piece matches the rest of the force.

Seen here, a crewman is performing maintenance on this piece while another is on over-watch and the third looks down range assessing possible targets. This gun has been giving the team problems lately, as evidenced by the array of tools and other gear laying about.

I did complete the stubby mortar barrel as well, but the multi-rocket and thud gun options have not been completed; and may never be.  As I completed this piece, I recognized that the howitzer look is very much to my liking. Here's a final top down look at the rear of the piece.

 

 So, there it is at long last.  And now the real work; what to work on next?  I'm excited for several projects across LI, HH, and WH40K.  I have HH models to build, so that will likely be a palate cleanser while I wait and see where the muse strikes next.

Thanks for stopping by.  I hope to keep the content flowing here from now on.

Cheers and Happy Gaming!

 

DKoK Artillary WIP - the Models

Greetings and welcome back.  Today I wanted to share what I have actually been painting since DreadTober. Some may recognize this from the background of many of the DreadTober WIP posts.  This artillery piece has sat on my painting table for a few months, since I completed the Heavy Weapons Squad with stubbers. This was meant to be a follow on project, but I ended up taking a break. As much as I love the Krieg, and very much love the painted results of my force (few though they may be), I struggle to maintain inspiration and momentum to complete them in any numbers.

The artillery piece has been completed to a point that is it now glued to the base. I used a mix of Monument Hobbies Newsh with black and brown acrylic inks in the same manner as an oil wash to shade it. I definitely appreciated the results.  I have never used an oil wash for the same purpose so I cannot compare approach or results, but this acrylic approach certainly did the trick.

Here is a closer look at some of the detail in the kit. I am impressed with the screen tech that allows this monitor to be attached to the gun without shattering during a barrage with this artillery piece. 😂

Now it is time to finish the troops. I batch painted these models to a point while painting the heavy weapons squad so they are well on their way.

There is still a lot of details and cleanup required to bring these to a completed state.

However they should finish up reasonably quickly. Once done, the crew will also be glued down making this piece a mini diorama, as well as a gaming piece. And then there is also some transfer work required on the big gun. I'm not sure why I didn't apply these before using the acrylic wash. I'll have to do a little over shading to weather the transfers into the rest of the model. And the last part will be painting the remaining options for the gun.  I did not glue the main gun in with the intent to swap weapons to suit the need, but I like the long cannon as a set piece.

So that's where this project is currently.  I'm looking forward to finishing it before the end of the year - then January will bring a new project - maybe completing the 40K version of Lion'el Jonson?? We'll see!

Cheers and Happy Gaming! 

DKoK Artillary WIP - the Base

 

Greetings and welcome back!  I've been absent with the posts of late...and 2025 trend that I hope to reverse.  As usual, I have not been idle at the workbench, just at the computer. I thought I'd talk a bit about the base for the Death Korps of Krieg artillery piece I've had on the painting table for a while since completing the heavy stubber team.

After gluing down the scenic bits for a base, I like to use a good quality wood glue to apply ground cover as I did here. In my experience, wood glue holds better to the plastic than PVA or white glue. Sometimes I'll use a product like Vallejo's Black Lava or similar.  But for 40K, I have for years used a simple mix of fine and medium coarse model railroad ballast. In the case of this artillery base, I considered that during a siege, this artillery piece might be in place for some time, so the ground around it might become beat down and muddy where the crew congregate to manage the equipment. I've used poster putty (blue tac, etc.) to mask the areas I wanted to appear well trodden then glued down the ballast/gravel.

After allowing the glue to dry, I removed the putty and applied GW Agrellan Earth technical paint. A note on removing the putty, this had to be done carefully because glue had been spashed and dried on the putty, so pulling the putty up did start to lift the glue in spots. Had I been more careful with the application of glue, i could have avoided this bit. But back to the Agrellan Earth, as this paint dries, it cracks and makes a nice dried mud texture. In hind sight, it might have been fun to take a troopers foot and make a tone of overlapping foot prints as this dried - but I'm not sure if that would have really helped or not in the end, at least at this scale.

Anyway, this looked pretty decent prior to painting.  clearly some dried muddy areas amid the rough ground texture. with the gun in place, you can see the well trodden areas as they appear around the field piece. 

 

At this stage I paused and finished the Heavy Stubber team.  When finally coming back to paint, I laid down the base colors, the washed everything with GW Agrax Earthshade.

I then added some GW Athonian Camoshade to the muddy bits and all around the edge of the base, though honestly, it ended up leaving only a very subtle dark green to the shading. Probably could have skipped that step, or gone in hard with a couple more coats.

Then it was time to dry brush the ground and sandbags, tidy up the details and add highlights.  The final results are above in the title pic and in this pic from another angle.

Now we're ready to glue the field piece down once it is complete enough to do so.  I'm currently working on it, and in my next post I'll share the process and the progress for painting the gun and crew.  I batch painted the crew to a point while painting the heavy stubber team, but did not bring them to completion at that time. The gun has sat before now waiting in the queue with only an initial prime and grey base coat.
 

We'll see if I can get back to my old posting rhythm, so expect another post later this week.

Cheers and Happy Gaming! 
 

On the Workbench [February] - Death Korps of Krieg!

 

Greetings and welcome back.  So I said to myself when the DKoK box released that I have all the resin Krieg I need and even some plastic thanks to Kill Team.  But then there was a little crack in my armor, in the form of one teensy squad of five engineers and their updated "cyclops" mobile demolition platform. Well the set only lets you build one of two options for every model (except the "cyclops") and a full squad can be ten soldiers, so yeah, a second batch of 5 were required. OK, I'm good.  It's just 12 more models.

They look real slick! I then realized I'd need the new rules and heck, this fella on eBay is offering the paper material from the box AND Lord Marshall Dreir in the bargain for a reasonable price - and of course I want the luachbox DKooK art on my codex! So yep, picked that up.

But this is the famed Death Korps of Krieg, right?  So the big guns really never do tire...so toss in an artillery piece - I mean what's the point of the rest without THAT? Yeah, you can see where this is going...

At this point you sorta HAVE to have the Death Riders too (and why didn't I just buy the damn launch box in the first place...I'm saving nothing by picking this stuff up piece meal on eBay...).  The models are pretty fantastic in plastic; never mind that I already have 9 or 10 in resin...nope, gotta have 'em. I couldn't sleep at night if I didn't pick them up.

What, only five?  Cheapskate...

Oh, and then what's that? A new DKoK themed command squad?  Seriously?! Well Lord Marshal Dreir isn't going to push this lot about by himself, now is he?! SO, yeah, put that in the cart...

OK, we're good. It's a lot, but it's Krieg and that's good stuff. Wait, no, no we're not good.  There's the new heavy weapons set and at this point we can't have all of this and leave just that one box on the shelf.  I mean I have 13 or 14 DKoK heavy weapon teams in resin, so I don't NEED three more (and a dude...?).  But at this point we all know this hobby isn't really about needs...

Wait...where's the spotter dude?

And that's how I ended up with 29ish new DKoK models in plastic, all assembled this month. I have no regrets; they really are well designed and great fun to stare at.  They might even be good in a game. But whether they are or not, this blog was inspired by the DKoK and I figured it's about time some more Krieg got painted.

The keen eyed veteran may recognize all the resin bases from the Secret Weapon Miniatures that was. I have a silly large collection of resin Krieg, and I bought many trench work bases early on to be sure I could mount the whole collection on them. So I dug out what was left to use while building these new models.  The heavy weapon bases are larger than the new bases, but the rule of cool, right? Besides, all the other teams are mounted on these bases and these new models fit like they were made for them.

As for the rest, there's a lot of scenic bits on the new models, so I'm leaving those on the plastic bases. I can add gravel and what have you to blend the plastic in to fit the rest of the look here.  And while I'm on that subject, I thought I'd share my process for building out the artillery gun base... 

I went ahead and glued down the plastic base components that came with the kit in a fairly obvious but pleasing configuration. Then I figured I'd vary the ground cover a bit.  Where the troopers stand and move about, the ground should get a bit trampled and packed down. Probably water collects there too when it rains. So I decided to use poster tac to mask off those areas when I applied my typical mix of basing gravel.

 

Then I pulled up the poster tac after the glue had dried.  Some of the putty is stuck in the glue around the edges, but this is taken care of during later stages. I chose GW Agrellan Earth texture paint to be my packed down, and now parched earth. But first, I needed some gloss coat to insure the Agrellan Earth cracked well.

 

Once that dried I went over all those areas with the Agrellan Earth. You lay this stuff on good and thick to get a good result.

 

Then I headed off to bed, so the magic could happen.  Watched earth never cracks, so they say...

And voila'! Some parched earth. I guess it's not as trampled looking as I might have liked...and I'm killing myself inside for not thinking to use a trooper boot to stamp a ton of foot prints into the earth prior to the crackling...but it's not bad at all for a homemade scenic base.  Should fit in with the resin stuff just fine once painted. You can see the fully assembled model in the title pic above.

With that, February draws to a close. I'll prime this batch and then see what I get paint on next.  With MonsterMarch looming large, I might have to go back to The Lion (cheating?  he is a beast...in combat...). Or perhaps tackle my first Tyranid since 3rd edition. I did promise a new faction before becoming obsessed with tiny troops and tanks. I dunno...but I think the Krieg probably wait for April.

Check back next week to see where the Changer of Ways points my brush. Until then...

Cheers and Happy Gaming!