My Mystery Box project for this year is finally finished! Everything has been assembled and painted in about a month, mostly during weekends. And here they are, all together at last — quite a collection of vehicles, infantry, support teams and a few rather unfortunate colour choices.
Seeing all the models together makes the whole project feel much more satisfying than painting them one unit at a time. There is something special about turning a pile of unpainted miniatures into a complete force, ready for the tabletop. The different units also gave me plenty of opportunities to experiment with colours, weathering and basing, even if some of those experiments were perhaps a little more adventurous than originally intended.
The colours are probably not 100% accurate for Normandy 1944, every vehicle has different markings, and yes, I know Canadian tankers didn't wear helmets like these.
Everything was painted according to whatever inspiration struck at the time, my questionable memory, the fact that I was too lazy to walk the two metres to the bookshelf and check the reference books, and of course the willingness of AI to provide the "correct" colours.
To be fair, the AI had plenty of creative ideas of its own. In the end, I took photos of roughly twenty shades of green and brown, and let it choose the combinations for the uniforms. Apparently even artificial intelligence can suffer from camouflage overload.
I didn't obsess over every tiny detail because this was meant to be a relatively quick painting project. My excuse is that these models are destined for gaming sessions and a display shelf anyway — not for a competition table or a museum exhibit.
One of the most enjoyable parts was working on the bases. A little texture, some tufts of grass and a mixture of earthy tones help tie the different units together and give them a suitably battered Normandy battlefield look. At least, that was the idea. Whether the terrain represents a French field in the summer of 1944 or somewhere the AI found on a particularly imaginative day is open to debate.
And if anyone spots historical inaccuracies, let's just say the crew had a very confusing campaign through Normandy. Perhaps they took a wrong turn, borrowed equipment from the wrong unit, and spent a little too much time listening to questionable intelligence reports.
In the end, the goal was simple: get the models painted, make them look good on the tabletop, and enjoy the process without turning a hobby project into a second job.
Historical accuracy may have been wounded in action, but fun survived unscathed.
TomZG, 2026-10
