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!

Egyptian T-62s and BTR-60s, Israeli M48 Chaparral for the Yom Kippur War

Popping in a quick post here with some more work done on the YKW project. First up are three Battlefront T-62s. These are great looking tanks, not much extra work required on them, I just filled in the mounting holes for the snorkel at the back of the turret with greenstuff.

I took inspiration for the three-colour camo pattern from AK's excellent book, "Middle East Wars - Arab-Israeli Conflict 1948-1973" by the unlikely duo of Pere Valls and "Zachary Sex". As someone with an unusual name, I feel for that dude, I really do.

Anyway I painted the tank with Tallarn Sand over Morgrot Hide, Skrag Brown over Doombull Brown, and Death World Forest over Castellan Green, washed with Agrax and re-highlighted Tallarn. Looks OK I reckon.

These three will join nine Khurasan T-55s... speaking of which...

Here's one on the left. Notice that the Khurasan model is about 10% smaller than the Battlefront tank. I know the hull of the T-62 was "a few centimetres longer and wider" than that of the T-55 but this is a bit much. Oh well.

Next up is some motorized transport for the Egyptians - BTR-60s.

Again, Battlefront models. These are really good kits. I stuck some spare fuel cans on 'em but otherwise left them built from the box.

Love the commanders included with these.

I used the technical pen to add some tactical numbers to the hulls.

Last up is a "speculative" vehicle. After painting a bunch of Israeli and Egyptian jets it is only prudent to paint some anti-aircraft defence. I have Shilkas coming for the Egyptians (and the SA-2 SAM of course) but that left the IDF to consider. I've read that they captured Shilkas from the Egyptians during the 1973 war, but can't find any pictures of them in action. What else did they have? 

Well, I understand that the IDF did get some of the new M48 Chaparral anti-aircraft missile platforms and they were used in the 1973 war, one apparently shooting down a MiG-17. Good enough for me.

This is a 3D-printed model from "3D Battlefield Miniatures" - he also sold me the T-62 sprues. It's a really nice crisp resin print but came with one of the missile tailsections broken off. No problem, I just cut off the nose and that was a missile that had already been fired off. The missile rack was even pre-magnetized, which was nice! It's painted in Grey-Green washed with Agrax, like my other IDF vehicles.

The model didn't come with crew though, so I pinched a couple of crew figures from the Battlefront Israeli/Iranian (!) TOW jeeps I have on the painting table. Of course I built the jeeps with Israeli crew, but one 15mm crewman is very much like another, so I did a quick head swap on the Iranians with a couple of US WW2 halftrack passengers left over from my PSC project. Hey presto, crew dudes for the M48. The only thing is... the driver is hanging onto a steering wheel, but the Chaparral was controlled with levers. As you can well imagine, I'm not particularly bothered.

Til next time... youm sa'id and shalom!

 
 

Three Million Pageviews!

Well there's a milestone I guess... three million pageviews for the blog. It's been a pretty good run since we started back in December 2008. In fact looking back at the posts from the old days is good fun, what with Spacekrieg, old battle reports, new insane projects that became long-term obsessions, and of course our intermittent dunking on Games Workshop (I cannot believe that our "145" post from 2012 is still near the top of the "most viewed posts of all time" list, I guess I shouldn't be surprised given the number of comments it generated)

The best part is that 2,121 posts, 7,548 comments, and 394 followers later, we're still having fun with this blogging thing. You keep reading and we'll keep writing! And if you have a favourite post or memory from the blog, I invite you to post it in the comments!

Cheers,

Dallas  

ps I hope you like the image above... I thought it was apropos considering the recent passing of the Prince of Darkness, Ozzy Osbourne... RIP

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.