More 28mm Viet Cong & Some Jungle Scatter Terrain

    Five more of my 28mm Viet Cong figures begin to take fire near some tumbled ancient ruins

My morning painting sessions are becoming a bit like a juggler with three balls in the air. I tend to have one batch nearing completion, another midway through the painting process, and a third I've just begun. So, how to ramp up the challenge level? Add a fourth ball, of course! That fourth thing turned out to be 1.5" round wooden pieces with jungle vegetation on them. I have some of this already completed, but will likely need more for my battles for this project. 

    One of the poses armed with a sub-machine gun...see! I recognize types, but not which make/model

First, though, here's the latest batch of 28mm Black Sun miniatures from Crucible Crush. These are from Vietcong #3 pack, and feature the insurgents dressed in their trademark black pajamas while carrying a variety of small arms. I painted these identically to the first batch of VC, and they also were finished very quickly. Perhaps a bit too quickly? After resizing the photos in my Affinity Photo software, I noticed a mistake. I had missed that the bareheaded figure was actually wearing some kind of headband. The joy of extreme closeup photos -- they point out your mistakes! I did go back and paint the headband, but I did not set up my photo light box again and retake its photo. See if you can notice my error, as well...!

    I like the camouflage foliage affixed to this guy's helmet/hat -- nice variety in the five poses

Once again, I relied heavily on the photos that are on the Crucible Crush website for how to paint up these miniatures. I especially can use their help on the weapons. I am not the gun enthusiast that can tell differences between various forms of assault rifles, sub-machine guns, and so on. I recognize them by category or type, of course. Well, except for the M-16, -- which I was trained on while I was in the Army. I know that I mentioned in my last post on the VC that I would start to add in some irregularity to their clothing, but I will actually begin that with the third batch of VC. I'd kind of forgotten, and while juggling my three batches painted their pants and shirts all black. Once I remembered, I decided not to go back and paint over them. I still have half the VC packs to paint up, so plenty of time to mix in different clothing colors.

    I like this guy's hat -- very Chinese communist looking!

I do believe, though, that with this batch I am halfway through the figures I bought for this project. Of course, there's always a possibility that I will buy more after these are done and as I begin play testing my rules. Still, I reached the halfway point much sooner than I might have guessed. I am hoping to have all the packs finished by the time I am at Historicon this July 17-20, in Lancaster, PA. I'll have my greatest chance of finding manufacturer's stocking the Black Sun line there, or at least other 28mm Vietnam figures. I know that I would like to have some civilians painted up eventually, too. I'm sure some vendor there will have some figures that will work for that.

    This is a great pose, too, with the Non La - the traditional straw hat - on his back while marching

It was in response to the fact that this project is going quickly that I added my fourth juggler's ball in the air. I picked up a bag of 1.5" diameter round wooden discs from the local craft store. I have done similar terrain scatter like this and find the best method is to flock the base first before adding vegetation). I do this by gluing the wooden discs to nails with white glue. I have a piece of blue foam insulation I created long ago with 12 nails and slots for them to rest upright in. I affix each nail upside down in the center of the disc. Once dry, I paint the base completely with a 50/50 mix of brown paint and white glue. While still wet, I pressed it down into a tub of Woodland Scenics Fine Brown Ballast. I spin it in my finger to remove loose flocking and then place the nail into its slot to dry.

    This Vietnamese soldier's pith helmet I painted khaki, but some will done in OD green, as well

The next day -- after working on my Vietnam figures -- I painted the flocked base with a 50/50 mix of white glue and water. I then tamp the disc down into a tub of Woodland Scenics Blended Earth Turf. I spin the nail with my fingers again to get off excess flocking, then I let it dry overnight, again.

    A look at just the 12 scatter pieces (& the Aquarium decoration Khmer ruin) without the soldiers

The third day, I used full strength white glue and painted on three irregular shapes covering about 2/3's of each disc. I sprinkle on Woodland Scenics Blended Grass over the white glue and tamp off the excess. I let that dry, too. While the dozen discs were drying, I took some time and went through my selection of plastic plants leftover from the last time I had done something like this. I felt that I needed some more, so I made a trip to the craft store and picked out 4-5 other likely pieces that were fortunately on sale 40% off. I sat at the dining room table and pulled the plant pieces off of the brown plastic "stems," separating them by type. I then sat down and trimmed off various pieces from the collection that would be later be planted upright into the disc. My thoughts were to use about three pieces on each disc. One would go in the center and the other two spaced around it. Later on, I would add fallen leaves and such on top of the flocking.

    Looking at the pieces from above -- I used a variety of different types of plastic plants for the effect

The next day, I used a pin vice to drill a hole in the center of each of the 12 pieces. I then mixed up some two-part epoxy, dabbed a blob of it on the hole, pushing some down inside with the end of a paperclip. I then pushed the trimmed greenery's stem through the hole in the disc. I balanced the disc on something so the stem would not touch my cutting mat that I work on. Once dried, I drilled a second hole and placed a different type of trimmed greenery, and then a third. I let each new piece dry overnight so that it wouldn't tip or lean at some weird angle. The pin vice hole seemed about perfect for the width of the stems I was inserting in the discs. That stage took three days. Once all dry, I trimmed off the plant stems protruding through the bottom with a box cutter knife.

    Bunching the pieces together with a low angle shot gives the impression of dense foliage

For the next step, I cut off individual leaves from various pieces of greenery. I made a lot of them, knowing I wanted two to three pieces of fallen vegetation on each. I decided to not use epoxy for this, but instead Tacky Glue. It is a bit cheaper and I had a lot of gluing to do! Once I had the fallen vegetation affixed to the flocked ground of each piece, I let them sit overnight so that I could evaluate them with a fresh eye in the morning. Upon looking at my handiwork the next morning, I decided that the plastic plants were a bit too shiny. There was too much of a sheen on there for my liking. I sprayed them with acrylic clear matte next. That helped some, but it was still a bit bright. I decided to use my brown vehicle wash and quickly splashed it over the leaves of the standing pieces of vegetation as well as the fallen ones. For one final time, I let my jungle scatter pieces dry overnight, again.

    A close up of the fallen leaves and other vegetation on the flocked ground of each scatter piece

"Much better!", I said to myself in the morning. The final step was to add a couple pieces of the leaf flocking that I am putting on the bases of my soldiers. Once that was done, and the glue was dry, I did a final acrylic matte spray coat. I liked how they turned out, and since I had just finished this batch of Viet Cong, I decided to pose them with the jungle scatter pieces for my photos. For the next batch, though, I think I will try larger wooden disc. I plan to glue a palm tree to the center of each with the plastic greenery spaced around it. I think that a mix of sizes of jungle scatter will add to their look of the table and make a more attractive tabletop.

I won't be starting on those right away, though. I want to get some of these things I am painting up to sell at the flea market at Historicon completed. I am even thinking of putting some things in the Origins Game Fair consignment sale, too. So, expect more variety than just 28mm Vietnamese soon...!

MINIATURES Acquired vs. Painted Tally for 2025

• Miniatures acquired in 2025: 145
  
• Miniatures painted in 2025: 90 

TERRAIN Acquired vs. Painted Tally for 2025

• Terrain acquired in 2025: 21
  
• Terrain painted in 2025: 32

SCATTER Acquired vs. Painted Tally for 2025

• Scatter acquired in 2025: 93
  
• Scatter painted in 2025: 72