Some Picoarmor

Between painting Swedish regiments for the Great Northern War Maurice project, I dug into my 3mm (1/600) picoarmor to put together a few extra bits to fill out a scenario for the next game night. This stuff is just lovely, shame I am such a lousy photographer (not that I am much of painter either..). I did a battalion of Crusaders, terrain, some air support (Hurricanes and CR.42s) and a few Italian support units.

Picoarmour desert rats

Over the weekend I completed a couple of regiments of British picoarmour for the Beda Fomm scenarios I have planned. This first batch is mostly tanks

There are some transport for the 25lber guns (not received yet)

This is an FAO:

An HQ

2lber portees:

A10s

Vickers MKVI and A13s

 A13s

business end of some portees:

A9s

A10s

More of the wee Vickers:

Pretty close to having the first scenario ready to go, waiting for the artillery guns (required for the Brits who used 25lbers firing over open sights) and some additional terrain pieces.

Picoarmour Italians for Beda Fomm

I just finished the first batch of picoarmour (3mm) Italians for the western desert. I have worked out an Operation Compass Beda Fomm scenario. Here are the ill-fated Italians starting with the CO, 3 HQs and an FAO stand. There are a variety of vehicle types. I used vallejo Desert Sand with Vallejo black wash. The Vallejo washes are superb, they settle well and dry flat, unlike Future. Vastly superior, and worth $12 for the large bottles.

Next there are 2 battalions of medium tanks M13-40s. The tanks are very nice, the height is exagerrated but it works. Lots of depth and detail in the sculpts:

a company of light tanks (L3-35s):

A couple of battalions of bersaglieri, I decide to base them 5 foot and 1 support weapon per stand since more than that looked a bit crowded. These guys are in Vallejo Game Colour desert yellow (more of a dun yellow than their Model Colour desert yellow, which is quite orange) with Vallejo sepia wash, plus the capercaillie feathers picked out in black, guns in metal.

Support weapons: 2 artillery stands and 4 MG stands:

All this for about $25 cost. A blister is either 15 vehicles (5 stands) or 60 foot castings (5-10 stands depending on basing) for the cost of $4. This stuff is awesome!!!

BTW- here are the products I have been using for basing and washes:


Next up: Brits.

Picoarmor or not to Picoarmor

A couple of weeks ago I ordered a sample pack of 3mm (that's 1/600 scale) desert war stuff for a project on Operation Battleaxe that I have wanted to do for some time. I am just not sure of the scale- 20mm is skirmish for me, 10mm I like a lot, but have contemplated 6mm and 3mm to get more models on the table and better represent the tank battles of the western desert at a battalion level scale.

I can't decide which scale to go with. In 3mm I can go with 3 models per base for about 1/2 the cost of microarmour, which is about 1/2 the cost of 10mm. I like the model density at 3mm, and the models are really quite good, but is it too small? You can only really drybrush and wash at this scale, the infantry are the size of a rice grain. I dunno, here are some pics:

PzIIIs
trucks, Sdkfz 221s, PzIIIs:
same:
British infantry:
2pdr AT:
trucks:

Crusaders:
Brits:

Any thoughts? I'm leaning towards microarmour because it is so nice to paint, this pico stuff is great but really small. 10mm would perhaps be my first choice but the cost might be more than I want to drop on a new project, and minifigs are no more. Picoarmor had awesome service by the way, I like the company.