Zvezda Tigers for the Western Desert and SU-152 for the Yom Kippur War

More work done on the massive order of Zvezda 1:100/15mm armour kits that arrived last week... This time it's two Tiger I's and an Egyptian SU-152.

These are early-production Tigers I think and perfect for the Western Desert with their Feifel air-cleaners. Pretty easy kits to assemble with only a few parts - but be careful of the fit of the turret to the top plate of the hull. There's a plastic pin that fits in a hole and on both of my kits they bound up, so when you turned the turret it just twisted the pin right off. No problem, fixed that with magnets but it took a bit of faffing about.

These will be used for Flames of War and I love having a commander poking his head out. Unfortunately the Zvezda kits don't have separate hatches so I had to cut off the cupola, stick on an elevated hatch, and resculpt the cupola with greenstuff. I ended up using a thinly-sliced roadwheel for the open hatch but I don't think it's obvious enough to notice. Looks OK to my wargamer's eye anyway.

  

So that's the two models. As for paint I used Tallarn Sand but lightened somewhat with off-white. Washed Agrax and re-highlighted of course, with sponge chipping and decals from an ancient 1/72 sheet. YES I KNOW that Tiger 141's tac numbers should be white outline only (and I think that 231's should be red/white?) but this is what I had to hand.

 

Next up is a relic from the YKW, an Egyptian SU-152 SP gun. To me these look so cool, I had to have one for my Egyptian force. It was built from the box but I added the pintle MG from a Battlefront sprue for looks-cool-factor and to match one that I saw in the AK Arab-Israeli Wars vehicle book. 

I painted this one Tallarn Sand with camo in Deathworld Forest and a medium brown. Again, to match the vehicle in the AK book.

Lots of stuff painted now for the YKW, I feel like I should put on a game soon!

Heia Safari and youm sa'id!

More 30k in 15mm - SoH Reinforcements

Sons of Horus tactical marines wearing Mark IV armour - 3D prints in 15mm. 

More 30k-themed models have been crossing the painting desk through the summer, but I've dipped back into the 15mm project once more. Here we have a nice pile of reinforcements for the Sons of Horus - a big 20-man tactical squad and a 10-man assault squad. All are clad in Mark IV power armour. These are all 3D prints from Byron, with assorted decals sourced from various GW sets. 

Tactical Squad

Officer on the left, with customary scary pistol an scary sword; Vox-equipped trooper on the right.

No matter what scale you partake, when it comes to the Horus Heresy, these huge 20-man tactical squads are all kinds of fun. 

Closer view of a couple of the tactical troopers.

The 3D prints of the Mark IV armour really turned out nicely. The only real hiccup with these guys is the size of the integral chunk of resin at their feet...I find removing them to be fraught (as the resin can snap in funny ways) and I lack the hobby infrastructure to safely sand/grind them down, so I resorted to doing the best I could to shave them down with a hobby knife...not the smartest decision, and this was abandoned after a couple of the figures! 

Horus for hope!

Anyway, they look fine, and will be even better after I re-supply on grass tufts and can go on a little binge adding them to these figures. 

Assault Squad

Assault squad ready to jump into the action!

It's good to get the classic jump-pack craziness of the Horus Heresy going in my 15mm collection. I had actually started painting these guys...I dunno, a while ago, such that I was sure I had already put photos of them on the blog? But I couldn't find them...anyway, in the event I've doubled up, my apologies in advance...

Fancy weapons for the officer, as per usual.

Working class bolt pistols and chain swords for the rest of the lads!

I do love the look of the Mark IV armour on the jump pack-equipped assault marines, and I also like the style of the jump packs themselves, based around a single large jet - a layout that seems somewhat more sensible than the huge twin-jet set up of the classic armour packs - but for all that the Mark IV jet pack itself it still large enough to be very dangerous, and therefore "fit" properly with the setting. 

Lots of fun to work with these little castings!

So that's another 30 troops for cause of the Warmaster! I guess I'll need to do something to balance things out for the Loyalist side...stay tuned for more on that at some point later this summer...

BATTLEFRONT Grants and Zvezda Pzkpfw.II for the Western Desert

Escalation continues in the Western Desert! I'd actually finished painting these Grants a couple weeks ago but had run out of decals for them. Sentry Box to the rescue, they had a set of Battlefront Desert Rats decals in stock and I was headed out to Calgary anyway, so when I got back I set to applying them and finishing the weathering.

The models are from Plastic Soldier Company BATTLEFRONT and are typical great quality and easy to build. 

Painting was the standard 8th Army armour formula: AK Light Earth, GW Castellan Green and Deathworld Forest for the camo, washed with Agrax Earthshade and tipped back up with the same paints. 

I didn't load these down with storage as I didn't want to obscure the detail on the rear deck. However each tank does have a tarp attached for shade.

They are pretty great models, I'm happy with how they came out.

Advancing towards the enemy!

While I was in Calgary more reinforcements arrived from Poland - a box full of 1/100 Zvezda models. The first one completed was this Pzkpfw.II. The Flames of War army list allows the Afrika Korps a Panzer II as a forward observer for the 10.5cm gun battery I've painted already. But getting ahold of a single Panzer II wasn't exactly easy.

Battlefront sells these in a box of four, but I only need one. They also used to sell a blister pack of one metal and resin model but nowadays that's a Noble Knight deal and they are $$$. So I looked on eBay for a single seller that had all the Zvezda models I wanted, and got this single tank for about 5 euros. It's tiny!

It did require a bit of conversion as the Zvezda kit (five parts!!) doesn't have an opening hatch. So I had to file the hatch flat and make some "open" hatches out of card. Not difficult. I also used a Battlefront commander with binoculars. He was wearing a steel helmet though so I cut off the head and replaced it with a Peter Pig head sporting the Afrikamutze.

The tank was painted GW Tallarn Sand, washed Agrax, and highlighted again, then chipped with German Camo Black-Brown. Done!

So that's the update... some infantry have arrived from Forged in Battle so I think I'd better get at those next. It's been a bit of a trip with that bunch but I will give all the details next time. Until then, toodles and heia Safari!  

Executioner Assault Squad

 Summer has been extremely busy and along with changes at work, has seriously impacted my painting time. Despite this, I have been working on my Executioner space marine chapter and have the remainder of the infantry approaching completion. First across the finish line is the assault squad that I have pictured below as well as my jump pack Chaplain. The Chaplain is the old metal model that I picked up on eBay last year.

I’m hoping that during the fall, I have more time available so I can actually finish the Executioners. I have a Sternguard unit, a tactical squad and a librarian remaining which will complete the infantry component of the force. After that, I have numerous vehicles to plough through which I’m hoping to get done by the end of the year. We’ll see how that goes.

Thanks for visiting!