Preparing for Team Yankee

Team Yankee by Battlefront is coming soon. Thus I started preparing my forces. I am not sure what side I will play thus I have incentive to paint both Russians and Americans. I have enough American army figures by Rebel Miniatures to create two full Team Yankee platoons. One is almost finished.
For Russians I have modern Zvezda T-72 tanks, which are historically inaccurate, but so are T-72 tanks by Battlefront, as in 1985 in Germany Russians would have used T-80 and T-64 tanks. I have 4 T-64BV tanks that need last coat of paint. But I don't want to use them as inferior T-72s. I think of creating count as force using American rules. I will use figures by QRF/TSS and have everything replaced by soviet stuff that Battlefront is not making. This way with photoshopped cards it should create less confusion than using for example Hind and saying it is Cobra.  I envision this count as force this way:

Soviet replacements    - USA

T-64BV                       - M1 Abrams
BTR-80                       - M113
BRDM-2 (AT-5)         - M901 ITV
SA-9                            - M163 VADS
2S29                            - M106
2S3                              - M109
Mil Mi 8 Hip E           - AH-1 Cobra

For infantry I'd probably use Eureka Miniatures modern Russians painted like 1985 Soviet troops. They could represent afghanka uniform wearing soldiers in body armour.

Sneak peak of US Army infantry platoon. Painted figures by Rebel Miniatures, unpainted by QRF/TSS - those are designated marksmen from current TO&E. All figures are based individually and magnetised to FOW style bases.

The Cleaning.

I had some time, and the weather felt good so I took my Romans to coat them in GW Purity Seal (satin varnish) and behold what happened:

The whole army got it's purity sealed and have been covered with grayish mist thing. I know it's my fault. I shouldn't have left them outside for this long ( 5h).

I knew that I'd have to clean them, and that it wont be easy. I've read the TMP discussion and with my fingers crossed tried several options.

The first contender was:

Cheap nail polish remover, and the result wasn't satisfying :

The second contender came from hobby supply shop :

Acrylic paint thinner, it costed twice as much as nail polish remover but the result was good, there was some rubbing required and the figures ended being covered in cottonwool:

The last item used was Revell Brush cleaner, costing three times more than acrylic paint thinner:

And the result, was great. Everything was removed. Even the paint.

So what is the best option ? Here it is:

By replaceing cottonwoll with foam that comes in 28mm figure blisters I came with a solution that works realy fast, leaves the paintwork and does not leave cottonwool sticking to pointy elements.

That's all. Hope someone finds it useful one day.

Hittites almost ready.

I have finally painted the last element of Mick Yarrow Miniatures Hittites (3 elements have have figures sculpted by me and converted Xystons). The whole army is now ready to have its bases and proper photos done. Here is a quick shot from cellphone camera.

It's been a while ...

It's been a while since my last post, but with the Christmas season I didn't had as much free time as I supposed I would have. On the other hand holidays meant that the chariot era armies that I ordered and wanted to paint along the Hittites didn't came to me :-( So there was nothing to write on.

But the long wait is over. Today I will pick the package from the post office and start cleaning the figures, later I might post some pictures featuring Essex and MY Miniatures together for further scale reference.

Happy New Year by the way :-)