Hasslefree Modern Trooper

[Monty]

Actually it was early spring this year when I stretched my hands out for another side project: Modern warfare. Actually I'm aiming at a small force of modern British for Near or Middle East scenarios. No idea whether historically oriented or (semi-)fictional but something going into this direction. A great source of inspiration has been the blog 'Wargaming with Silver Whistle' which most of you will know for his excellent collection and the top-noth pictures.

Anyway I decided to start with a single model as test piece for modern camouflage and after a long break in favour of other projects I finished him a couple of days ago:

As you see it's a kind of paraparamiltary guy. Maybe a soldier of fortune or private security agent or some kind of covered operations executive. I decided to start with such a fellow to be able to test different colour schemes prior to approaching unitarily equipped regular troops.

The figure is from Hasslefree's excellent range of 28mm modern troopers. I'm not sure how this figure is actually called. Maybe I've mixed the parts of different miniatures but however he looks like a 'Mongrel' with a 'Bergil' head to me. Anyway the figure is wonderfully sculpted and the cast is crisp and clear. It didn't need much cleaning and it was a joy to paint it. Honestly I didn't spot any moldlines. Due to this I can recommend Hasslefree Miniatures without any reservation. During the last years I've worked with a couple of miniature companies but Hasslefree's quality is really upper-class. Not cheap but worth each and every penny.
Unfortunately their figures come with slotted bases which I personally don't like. Nevertheless it was no problem to grind down the bar between the figure's feet to mount him on a flat circular base.

As for painting I primed the figure with Vallejo black airbrush primer as usual. Afterwards I used Vallejo Model Colors in combination with Armypainter water based washes. Four his skin I used the Wargames Foundry 'expert flesh' paint set but skipped some of the six shades.

Most important piece of him were the trousers. I wanted to use these to try the modern British MTP (multi-terrain pattern) camouflage scheme. It was developed during the earlier years of this century and geared to the British 'Operation Herrick'. The MTP in use since 2010 and consists of four tones from black to nearly white sand and shall be useful in any desert or steppe terrain:

For the choice of colours Pat was again very helpful and although his troops carry the older desert DPM his advice was priceless. Thus I'm finally really satisfied with the result. Now I'm pondering whether I should paint the whole British forces in this pattern or change to the older but easier British Desert DPM (picture here). The plan is to raise a platoon of British fusiliers with a couple of vehicles and support elements. More or less enough for a platoon based game of the size of Bolt Action or something comparable for modern warfare.

Thus besides the work with the MTP I'm not sure whether a whole figures in this style might look too disquiet. Especially because the modern body armour pieces carry the same camouflage pattern. Probably I'll combine the MTP pattern with 'older' personal kits with are plain-coloured khaki brownish like those below:

What do you think?
Since there are a lot of experienced painters as well as former soldiers in the LAF I appreciate your advice very much.

By the way has any of you compared Airfix 1/48 vehicles with Empress 1/50 vehicles? I've seen some projects combining Airfix vehicles with 28mm miniatures which looks better than I feared. Especially the figures nearly have the same style and size but I have not idea how they match with the scalewise smaller vehicles. For the British it should be no problem to stay with Airfix but for potential insurgends I need some semi-civilian vehicles like the technicals by Empress or Spectre Miniatures.

In case that you're intested in larger pictures then have a look at my blog:
http://montys-caravan.blogspot.de/2015/08/modern-trooper.html

Cheers
Stefan

[Brummie Thug]

Nicely done.