The Western Desert - Now in 15mm! (Plastic Soldier Co and Battlefront for starters)

So... here's the start of another insane project. Following in the footsteps of Conscript Greg, I've started the Western Desert in another scale, this time 15mm.

But there is definitely a method to my madness here. As I worked on the Yom Kippur War escalation I began to accumulate an unfeasible amount of 15mm desert terrain, including but not limited to the buildings in the pic above, and a crazy amount of palm trees. So it only makes sense to start more 15mm desert projects to helpfully amortize the terrain I already have. Right...?

Anyway, I've decided to build a couple forces for Flames of War (the multi-figure basing helps differentiate it in my mind from Bolt Action's individual-figure basing) and I fell into a couple great deals on Battlefront sets. These have been started in on with vigour...

I picked up a box called "Dietrich's Ghosts" from Meeplemart in Toronto, last time I was there. This isn't a "desert" set per se but includes three Pzkpfw IIIs, three Pzkpfw IVs, and three 105mm howitzers. So far I've finished the tanks - the IIIs are in the first photo and the IVs are above.

I did a mix of main guns... the IIIs have one short and two long 50mm guns, and the IVs have one short and two long 75mm guns (the latter being the infamous "Mk IV Specials"). The models were assembled (easy!), primed black, then basecoated XV-88, painted Tallarn Sand, washed with Agrax Earthshade, then panel-painted Tallarn again. Battlefront decals were applied then the model was sponge-chipped with German Camo Black-Brown. Lastly the stowage was painted and washed.

I use a lot of stowage on these Western Desert tanks, some is from the Battlefront sprues but a bunch of it came from Redog in the UK.

Next up I did some Shermans from Plastic Soldier Company. For some reason the early M4 kits are near-impossible to find, but I had a cunning plan... The M4 "wet stowage" Shermans were never used by the British in the desert of course, but the PSC sprues also include small turrets for the 75mm gun, sand skirts, and all the stuff you need to make an earlier Sherman II/M4A1.

I've read that the PSC kits are a bit dodgy on strict accuracy (for one thing, the 75mm Sherman never came with a travel lock on the hull) but I think our group will let that go. The cast rounded hulls look great to me and that's the main thing. Assembly was fairly straightforward but the tracks were a bit tricky... cast in two pieces (top and bottom) and a couple of the models needed some greenstuff filling. Battlefront commander fits well and looks cool. 

These tanks were fully stowaged-out too. The models were basecoated with AK Light Earth, camo was done with Castellan Green, then the whole thing was washed down with Agrax. Then the Light Earth was redone on the panels and the camo highlighted with Death World Forest. Battlefront decals snuck in there too. Since the Shermans only appeared for El Alamein I kept the chipping to a minimum, since these tanks are pretty new after all.

The last thing was to hit the models with matte varnish... and I am so happy to say that these were finished with TESTORS DULLCOTE! Yes it's back!! The best matte finish I've ever used, long out of production, but now available once again, it makes me very happy.

Toodles and heia Safari!