One of the good thing about Battlefront extending its range to the Soviet-Japanese border conflicts of 1938/9 is that it's a great opportunity to fill in the gaps in my Japanese WW2 army.
Here's one example: I finally have the Type 41 75mm infantry/mountain guns that form part of the brigade assets of a Japanese infantry regiment. Nice models.
I've had problems painting late war German tanks ever since I first started on them. How do you get that camouflage looking right without using an airbrush?
Of course, the simple answer would have been to get an airbrush...but I haven't, but have finally worked out how to do it. The answer? A sponge!
The Battlefront 15mm Konigstigers below were painted with a base coat of dull yellow, then stripes of sponge applied green and brown paint. Pop a brown wash over the top and there you are. And where did I get the sponge from? Well Battlefront put loads in all their boxes as part of the packing!
I like to try and keep the list of WW2 15mm figure manufacturers as up to date as possible, so it's annoying to have missed MMModels.co.uk off it for so long.
They produce a nice selection of "tail" models (staff cars, vans, buses, tank transporters, landing craft etc) to order. I haven't got any myself at the moment, so can't really comment on the quality, but they certainly look good from the photos. I am about to put together an order which should keep them busy for a little while, and will report back once I have them in my hands.
Two bits of painting finished today: the Soviet flamethrower teams and German Wirbelwind needed for the Bashnya or Bust! scenario pack.
Those of you who encountered me in the latter part of the Salute Day will be aware that I was looking for a 15mm WW2 Russian Orthodox church to serve as a terrain piece for playtesting my late war Eastern Front scenario pack, Bashnya or Bust!
Well I found one!
A Polish company called Wargamer Company were at Salute promoting and selling their game called By Fire & Sword. This game apparently (and I'm quoting their website here) recreates the 17th century wars fought by the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth against Turkey, Muscovy, Sweden, Crimean Khanate and Cossacks.
Well Bashnya or Bust! is set in Lithuania, and they had a Wooden Orthodox Church model, so I bought it immediately, and have painted it up ready for Saturday's playtest of scenario 2A.
Cracking terrain piece, really easy to paint, and looks very good. Here are a couple of 'model' shots; more to follow in the AAR that will doubtless follow Saturday's game.
I have had a packet of Battlefront's Libyan/Italian colonial infantry hanging around in the lead mountain forever, but waiting for various orders to arrive from far, far away moved them slowly to the front of the queue until I really had no choice but to paint them.
These are nice models: the officers and NCOs in particular. I don't think I've quite got the skin colour right, but I do think they will look good on the tabletop. Time to dust off the Operation Compass scenario pack again!
I have finally finished my squadron of Churchill tanks: all nineteen of them!
These are really nice models from the Plastic Solider Company finished off with decals from the equally excellent Dom's Decals.
Whilst waiting for more decals to arrive from Dom in order to finish my Churchill squadron, I thought I'd polish off something that has been sitting, half-finished, on my painting table for ages: the Battlefront US Artillery HQ.
Absolutely pointless in wargaming terms for IABSM, it's nevertheless another piece of battlefield clutter with which to dress the table.
Oh, and for those interested, the maps are made from the QR code found on the cards you find inside the Zvezda boxes. Just cut out a square or a rectangle from the QR code and add a little blue line (for a river) and some green patches (for woods) and away you go.
Those of you who visit regularly will know that I am in the process of painting a whole squadron of Churchill tanks: 19 vehicles if you include the full HQ Troop.
Boxes of tanks from PSC come in fives (although they also do single sprues if you need just a single tank etc) so the four boxes I bought at Warfare left me with one left over.
This I painted up as a lend-lease tank sent to the Soviets. It gave me a chance to practice painting a model from start to finish, which was very useful in terms of finding out if the spray paint I was using would melt the plastic (it didn't) and such things as checking and then repainting the road wheels not in black 'tyre' colour but in 'rest of the tank' metal colour - doh!
So here is my single lend-lease Mk III Churchill from PSC (with Battlefront Soviet tank commander). Lovely model but, as always, the turret was a pain to put together. I'm just glad that all my British Mk IVs have the cast turret! BTW, note the way the varnish has frosted the (very thin) gun barrel...must remember to watch out for this when painting the '19'.
Now I am not normally particularly fussed about making my tanks from specific units: I use the same Panzers for every theatre they fought in. With the Churchills, however, I am endeavouring to paint up one specific unit: C Squadron from 4th Coldstream Guards, part of 6th Guards Tank Brigade. This is mainly because Dom's Decals provide a sheet with the names of all the C Squadron tanks on them, so I don't have to go mad painting the little blighters' names myself!
I thought, therefore, I'd share some of the research I used when deciding which unit to paint up, all of which came via the excellent TFL Forum.
June tank returns:
http://niehorster.orbat.com/017_britain/44-06-06_Neptune/Land/z_tanks_44-06-22_21AG.html
A complete list of British tank names (this is incredible!):
http://mmpbooks.biz/mmp/tables/Vehicle_Names_V3.pdf
The Armour in Focus page of the Churchill tank:
http://freespace.virgin.net/chris.shillito/a22new/
And, finally, the FOW page on Churchill tanks in Normandy:
Some Christmas painting: I've added some Leichtgeschultze 40 recoilless rifles to the Fallschirmjaegers. Thinking about it, I should have used a slightly different yellow for the guns and for the base smock colour; and camouflaged the guns as well. Lesson learnt: laziness always leads to a slight feeling of dissatisfaction!
Second, we have the Type 94 Tankette for the Japanese. Typical Battlefront tank model but, again, seemed to fit together more easily than usual. I also like the command figure. The Type 94 wasn't used in the invasion of Malaya and Burma, my usual theatre, but will be useful elsewhere I'm sure. Again, recommended.
More Christmas painting: this time figures from Battlefront's range covering the pre-war battles between Japan and the Soviet Union.
First up we have the SU-12 battery: Gaz trucks with a 75mm field artillery piece mounted on the back. These are nice models that are much easier to build than others that I have done, particularly in the way that the wheels went on and the gun went together. The Su-12 was used during the Great Patriotic War as well, so great for Barbarossa scenarios too. Recommended.
The first of my Christmas painting: the German field kitchen from QRF, with a couple of customers from Peter Pig's 'German Infantry Eating Lunch'.
The kitchen itself is really nice: a good cast with plenty of character. The two chef models are horrible, though, no definition to the faces. The Peter Pig figures are exactly what you'd expect: well cast infantry in imaginative poses with the usual open mouths...more appropriate than normal here.
Useless for wargaming, but absolutely necessary for the serious wargamer, I also like the way the vignette makes it look as if the chef is being taken to task for the quality of his food!
More early war tanks from Battlefront: this time Soviet T-28s. Bad picture, but these are nice little models.
With Battlefront flirting with the Sino-Soviet confrontations in Manchuria just before the "official" start of WW2, they have released a whole new set of early war Soviet kit. Here are the BT-7A tanks i.e. the BT-7 tank with a howitzer rather than a normal tank gun.
Now that I've re-catalogued all my late war Soviets, I can clearly see where the gaps in my collection are. One such gap was transport for the Scouts. Looking at the lists, I saw that lend-lease White scout cars were an option, and as I happened to have three of them lying around in the lead mountain...
Here's the cleaned up Battle for Liberation gallery for the British Air Landing Company. Landed by glider or transport aircraft, these are better equipped than the parachutists, with anti-tanks guns, pack artillery, and even tanks.
One thing I do like to do is to make sure my troops have enough transport: I'm a real fan of "tail". No surprise then that the latest addition to my collection are the Soviet engineer trucks from Battlefront i.e. their usual trucks with some cargo added in!
I have finally finished my squadron of Cromwell tanks for the later British force. These models, all fifteen of them, are all from Plastic Soldier Company, bought for a grand total of £51!
The models are very nice, and with plenty of options. You can have the normal gun or the 95mm howitzer support weapon; you can add the allegedly-fictious, boccage-clearing prongs; and you can add the cover that sits over the exhaust grill and stops the enemy spotting a tank starting its engine from the gout of black exhaust fired straight up in the air!
Mine are organised into a Squadron HQ of three tanks (CinC with exhaust hood, 2inC with prongs, support tank), then four troops of three tanks each (two with exhaust hoods, two without).
Here are some shots of one individual tank and the whole squadron:
Vis Lardica is a website devoted to wargaming and military history, with a special emphasis on the company-sized rulesets produced by the TooFatLardies: I Ain't Been Shot Mum (WW2); Charlie Don't Surf (Vietnam); and Quadrant 13 (science fiction). There’s also a lot of content devoted to To The Strongest (Ancients/Medievals) and For King & Parliament (17th Century).
Welcome to Vis Lardica, a not-for-profit website mostly dedicated to the company-sized wargaming rules produced by the TooFatLardies, but encompassing my other gaming interests as well.
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