Forged in Battle 8th Army 6-pounder AT Guns

Another update for the Western Desert! Having seen models from Battlefront, Plastic Soldier Company and Peter Pig, I'm taking a first crack at some 15mm castings from Forged in Battle.

As Flames of War people will know, Battlefront's retail operations are a bit of a mess. There's lots of unavailable product, with no plans to bring it back into production (according to my email from BF themselves) and unfortunately this includes lots of Western Desert stuff. So this prompted me to find an alternative supplier, which led me to Forged in Battle from the UK. The models look great on their website and I duly put in a large order of Akrika Korps and 8th Army infantry and AT guns. There's a bit of a story behind what arrived but I'll leave it till it's resolved to lay it all out here. Suffice to say that they have promised to sort it out.  

Anyway I've started in on the models with the 8th Army 6-pounders, you get two in a pack for 15 pounds. It looked from the pics on the site that I got sent different crew - my pack had nine crew models (one bonus I guess) but I didn't get the SD-capped officer at all. In any case these are fine.

I like the shirtless chaps, really gives you the desert vibe.

The castings are "OK" but show quite a bit of flash around the wheels and some lumpiness and lack of crisp detail on the inside of the gun shields. Didn't bother me too much.

The models were painted mainly with AK Light Earth, washed with Agrax Earthshade and re-done with LE. I just left the webbing alone and it contrasts OK with the Light Earth uniform. Socks are Steel Legion Drab. The gun was done LE, washed and re-highlighted. For the groundwork I mixed some SLD into a blob of basing acrylic texture gel and this worked well, as I had glued the crew down and just worked the gel in around the bases. The groundwork was then drybrushed up with AK Khaki and Rakarth Flesh.

Here's the British force so far.

I have to say that the FiB AT guns aren't ideal for Flames of War as they don't fit on the Battlefront bases! They're about a quarter-inch too wide and there's no way to narrow the stance as the gun trails are cast solid. 

Anyway I have plenty of 2mm plasticard so I made some new bases and I think they're fine.

So that's my first foray into Forged in Battle. I enjoyed painting the models, the crew especially were superbly done, really nice detail. Not sure why the crew in the pictures were not supplied with my models but they were ok nonetheless.  The guns look a bit tired as noted with some detail lacking but were generally good. It would’ve been good if the models fit on FoW bases but you can make your own if you want to use them in FoW.