15mm BA 64 armoured cars

 I picked up a trio of BA 64s second hand at the recent Steel Warriors show. They used to belong to Frank, a stalwart of the club, who died suddenly earlier this year.

Here they are chugging along. The only other Soviet armoured cars I have are early war ones, and while my late war recce troops have carriers, Valentines and motorcycles, they don't have any suitable armoured cars, so these are ideal.

I don't know who the manufacturer is, although I assume Battlefront. They appear to be resin or plastic, not metal, and come with either ATRs or MGs as armament.  

They are nice little models, and very diminutive compared to my BA-10s. They were done in a very dark green, so I went over them with a heavy drybrush of Russian camo green (Vallejo 894) to lighten them a bit. The commanders were in black uniforms as well, so I re-did them in khaki. Otherwise they didn't need much painting.

I dirtied them up a bit with a light tan drybrush, which picked up the edges on the angular armour and other details nicely and highlighted the weapons in boltgun metal. Otherwise it was just a matter of basing them.

As I had the Russian Green out, I also repainted one of the old lorries Tim has donated to me. This one is a Zvezda Gaz AA. I managed to break one of the front wheels off getting it off its old base (stuck down with hot glue!). Otherwise it was just the same treatment as the armoured cars albeit with added glass.

These are lovely models which take a drybrush very well.

I usually do the canvas tilts khaki, (VJ English Uniform) but I didn't shake the bottle up enough and it came out a shiny light green as the pigment hadn't mixed properly. I hate dropper bottles, give me a proper pot of paint any day. I've still got one old pot of Humbrol acrylic from 1997.

Anyway, I couldn't be bothered to do anything about it, so I let to dry and just gave it a heavy drybrush of tan, which ended up looking OK. 

One more truck to add to the collection. You can never have too many.

Achilles IIc

In my post about the Battlefront M10s (here), astute readers may have wondered why I only built two, when the more modern BF offerings typically come in platoon sized boxes. Well, all can be revealed!

Another 'idle shopping list' item I've had for a while has been a couple of 15mm Achilles SP AT guns. Having  picked up a box of four Battlefront M10s at the Bring and Buy, I wondered if along with building two normal M10s, I could turn my hand to converting two of them into Achilles. My original plan had been to buy a couple from QRF.

Here they are in all their splendour, so I obviously did manage it.

At first I was resigned to having to make the much rarer Achilles I with a normal M10 turret as I didn't fancy converting the counterweights. While rummaging around in the pile of scrap metal in the BF M10 box, much to my delight, I found a couple of the 'duck bill' turret counterweights. Achilles IIc here we come! I hadn't realised until I did some research that a lot of later M10s also had duck bill counterweights. The model itself was the usual BF horror with a mix of resin, plastic and metal parts which I ended up sticking together with liberal amounts of blu tak soaked in superglue.

The major addition was the 17pdr gun barrels, which had a distinctive extra weight near the muzzle, and a collar when they entered the mantlet. Fortunately I had some spare 17pdr gun barrels left over  from PSC Shermans, and a blob of blu tak soaked in superglue gave a very passable impression of the mantlet collar when the gun was pushed into it and the excess welled out.

The only other thing was the extra counterweight on the gun barrel, which I made up out of a thin strip of electrical tape glued into place. The extra weight behind the muzzle brake is an important part of the 'look' of the thing.

I used the supplied crew, although as with the M10s I only used two figures. Real Achilles crews seemed to wear a very motley collection of headgear, but the RAC helmet seemed quite popular so I just filed down the  M1 pots of the US crew figures into a passable approximation. I thought about converting the 76mm breech into a 17pdr breech, but I couldn't face dealing with the resin moulding so I left it alone.

I think they look the part although the PSC gun barrels look a bit delicate compared withe clunky PSC mouldings. As with the M10s, I added some of the supplied stowage but in this case finished them in the late war British camo shade (SCC15) which started ut looking like US Olive Drab but faded fairly quickly to a greenish shade. Vallejo Russian uniform over a black base is a decent approximation. I should probably have washed them in bronze green too like the M10s and then lightened them up again to give the colour a bit of depth but I didn't bother. Instead they got the usual mud all over the tracks and running gear, and light drybrush of pale tan. I also didn't bother with any markings, the lower hull and mudguards were covered in mud in any case.

BF Wespe

Another item on my vague wargames wishlist (well, not that vague, I have a spreadsheet) was a 15mm Wespe. You really can't have too much artillery for operational games, but I wasn't in a tearing hurry.

Anyway, sitting on the club Bring n' Buy was an assembled but unpainted BF Wespe for the princely sum of £1. It would have been rude to say no.

Here it is waiting to drop shells on some poor unfortunate. No assembly was required, but I did have to prise it off a base when it had been stuck down very firmly with hot glue. Unlike the horrible M10s, this was a more traditional BF resin vehicle with metal tracks and fittings. The crudity of the metal trackcasting really showed so I can see why they switched to plastic.

It sits OK though and looks the part. I researched various Wespe colour schemes but in the end just went with boring late war dunkelgelb and disruptive camo. Balkan crosses seem to be ubiquitous so I stuck a couple on as well. They make nice aiming marks.

I made up a couple of crew figures. One is converted from a sitting PSC Panzergrenadier, the other started life as a Russian horse cart driver. Well, he's got a sidecap, jackboots and a tunic on so that'll do. I think crew are a must for SPGs, they look a bit silly otherwise.

It has some nice sharp edges to pick up a drybrush.

For a quid you can't go wrong really, but it turned out very well. Into the storage box it goes, awaiting a game opportunity.

BF M10s

Like many wargamers, I have a vague shopping list in my head of things I 'need' but can't actually be bothered to buy at outrageously inflated current retail prices. Available as a bargain however....

One such item on that list are a couple of M10s for my 15mm US forces. I had thought of buying some QRF ones, but imagine my delight when some unbuilt Battlefront M10s turned up on the club Bring n' Buy.

Here they are in all their glory, out looking for Tigers to blow up.

In fact they are horrible models, a real dogs dinner with resin bodies and turrets, the plastic track sprues from the BF Sherman models and a pile of scrap metal which on closer inspection turned out to be the crew, assorted stowage, turret counterweights and the all important gun barrels. 

By the application of large amounts of blu tak and gel superglue I eventually got the monstrosities to stick together, and they then didn't look too bad. Dear me, give me plastic any day. One saving grace was that the Sherman sprues yielded some useful gun barrels and hatches for the spares box.

It was nice to have some stowage options included, so I adorned them with various tarpaulins etc.

The hull and turret castings are well done with somewhat exaggerated raised detail, but good sharp lines which take a drybrush well.

I only did two crewmen in each, partly as it is nice to highlight the interior turret shell rack, and partly because some of the crew figures fell to bits as I tried to get them off the casting strip. Maybe the other guy is off to get some Coca Cola.

The deck detail looks good, and I really like the way the counterweights look like a separate bolt on to the turret (because they are).

This one has a great pile of logs and sandbags on the front. I lightly filed the helmets down so they can, at a pinch, pass as RAC helmets on British crews.

They sit well, although I made a mistake positioning the tracks  (the top edges should be more obscured). As they are rubber block tracks I only highlighted the outer edges with metal.

I did these in plain OD, as I've long given up putting lots of markings etc on vehicles. I'll do a few, but it just limits their flexibility. OD is also a tricky colour as it is so variable. I did these in Vallejo Russian Uniform over a dark grey primer base, then washed it with a thin wash/stain of Bronze Green. It came to OK I think and obviously the wash provides some shading. Otherwise I just did all the running gear and tracks in mud, and gave the whole thing a light drybrush of pale tan. The flesh on the crews and the brass shell casing also got a brown ink wash.

So there we go, a worthy addition to my sea of Olive Drab AFVs. They can passably serve with my US and British forces, and even serve as the handful (iirc 52) of M10s sent to the Russians. Interestingly the Russians made exactly the same complaint as the Allies, namely that sub units misused them as tanks and the crews suffered heavy casualty from shell splinters as a result.

BF Brummbar

For some unaccountable reason I decided I needed a 15mm Brummbar (Grizzly Bear), so I picked up a Battlefront one some time ago. This is an old resin model rather than one of the newer plastic ones.

It went together very easily and rather looks the part.

The running gear is a bit crude, but that is common to a lot of the older BF sculpts.

The detail is moulded in nice and deep which makes it very easy to pick out the details with a heavy drybrush over a black base coat.

The zimmeritt is also nicely moulded, I gave it an inkwash to pick this out. Otherwise it was finished in dunkelgelb with green/brown camo and a couple of basic white outline crosses. The pattern is from a photograph and rather striking. The whole thing was lightly drybrushed in tan to bring out the panel lines.

It ended up as rather a nice model, and complements my Sig 33,  but unlike the latter, has yet to take part in a game! At some point I'll design a scenario around it and it can come out to play.

BF Jeeps

One bargain I picked up at Triples this year was a pack of Jeeps on the bring and buy. You can never have too many jeeps, and at a fiver for three they were actually pretty reasonable compared to the usual BF price. 

The finished article motors across the dining table. They were marketed as recce jeeps and came with piles of extra machineguns etc but I did them fairly plain so I could use them for a range of things.

They are made of the usual BF resin, No fiddly metal bits to stick on apart from the crew (and MGs if desired). Eagle eyed readers will notice that the crew look like Americans. I haven't painted any Americans bigger than 6mm since 1974, so this is also a bit of a preview of a bigger project.

Left rear view, lots of nice moulded on storage.

Another empty jeep, this one with even more stowage in it.

So, nice easy models with a variety of uses, and in a pack of three, decent value even at full price. I did them just plain OD, or rather sort of.... I have a real problem with Vallejo paint, lovely quality paint but the colours never dry the colour they come out of the pot, unlike Humbrol, so you end up having to experiment to get the right effect. In the end I did this in 'Russian Uniform' (which is unlike any real Russian uniform I've ever seen, apart from heavy wool post-war ones) with a wash of 'Bronze Green' (which does at least bear a passing resemblance to to Bronze Green) and then muddied the whole thing up a bit. Anyway, they look alright from a distance and they'll do for US, British and Russian usage.

German armoured cars 3 - BF Sdkfz 231

Say what you like about Battlefront (and I often say a fair bit, especially when looking at the price tag or trying to stick them together) some of their models are really nice, and this Sdkfz 231 is one of them. I wanted something for the heavy platoon of my early war armoured car company, and this just the ticket. I was particularly pleased to pick this up cheap from Caliver, rather than paying the usual eye watering BF price.

A lovely crisp model which sits really well and has lots of sharp edges and raised detail. The commander is supplied with a moulded on open hatch (or there is a closed hatch too).

The wheel assemblies are separate castings, as is the gun/MG assembly for the front of the turret. I had to trim the latter down to make it fit but the wheels went on without any problems. As usual I had to hold everything together with blu tak while the superglue dried.

Rear view, the hatch details is very nice. The model was suplied with the wierd snow plough thing to go on the front, but I couldn't see any human way to fix it without pinning, so I didn't bother to put it on. There are plenty of photos showing them without.

It pretty much painted itself, just a heavy drybrush of panzer grey and a light overall dust finish. I went for fairly minimal markings, but added some numbers so it could stand in as a command vehicle. I'd originally planned to put them on the turret, but I didn't fancy putting them on over the vision ports. At some point I'll do the numberplate, but that is good enough for now.

BF Sdkfz 251/17

Some years ago I felt the need for some 15mm self propelled Flak, I can't recall what prompted it, possibly the repeated accounts of the use of SP 20mm guns in Normandy in the ground role. Anyway, at Triples I spotted this rather nice BF Sdkfz 251/17 which I thought would fit in well with my 251/9s as panzergrenadier support.

Not a bad little model although it suffered the usual curse of metal kits, no instructions. I had to consult a few books to figure out which way round the bits of the AA gun went together. Apart from that it went together fine

The finished vehicle, it looks quite top heavy.

Nice detail on the gun and tracks. Just one gunner is provided, there isn't a huge amount of room for any more in the gun compartment!

It looks even more top heavy from the front.

Nice sharp lines on the panels and doors which pick up drybrushing well.

The vehicle was finished in late war three colour camo, in this particular case a curious lattice pattern I came across in a photo, but it basically fits in with my other stuff OK. It also had an inkwash and a drybrush to pick out the detail and tone down the camo.

It has had a suprising number of outings in games over the last few years, far more so than some of my other 15mm SP guns (my Brummbar has never been out at all) and has been a very useful piece all round. The only thing I need to do one day is stick the gun on a bit more firmly with blu-tak as it has a tendency to fall over all the time as the hole is much bigger than the pin. Apart from that, a great model and highly recommended.

BF Sdkfz 250/9

I 'needed' some of these for the Skirmish Campaigns 'Operation Epsom' book, but they are fairly common vehicle later in the war comprising a full company in panzer and panzergrenadier division recce battalions. They were often (mis)used as light tanks to provide armoured support as well, so make an interesting option for an infantry support vehicle.

These are one of the better offerings from BF, really neat and crisp castings which went to together very easily. The usual resin body with metal accessories.

The finished article.

Well proportioned from the front.

The crispness of the casting is evident from the side.

The finished model sits very well. It is very small, the base is 30mm wide.

A lovely little kit and highly recommended. Finished in my usual dunkelgelb with brown/green disruptive with an ink wash and a light drybrush of pale tan to pick out the highlights.

BF Grille

15mm toys again, this time the Battlefront Grille. Yet another SP gun on a Pz 38(t) chassis and also quite a useful bit of kit for supporting panzergrenadier battalions as late war PG regiments typically had a battery of these (of their equivalents) replacing the towed infantry gun battery. The model was the usual BF mix of resin chassis and metal accessories. There weren't many parts and it went together quite easily. The biggest problem I had was fitting the crew figures in, which was a  bit odd considering that there are only two of them and the fighting compartment is huge. I ended up with one of them looking over the side when he should probably have been crouched over the gun, but perhaps I didn't line something up properly.

An open topped armoured box on tracks with a huge great howitzer in it. What more could you want?

The BF vertical scale distortion is less evident in this model.

It has quite a business like side profile. The relative roughness of the track castings compared to e.g. PSCs plastic offerings is fairly evident here.

As usual BF supplied crew figures, very useful with such a huge fighting compartment.

This particular model has seen a fair amount of tabletop action in various Normandy actions in particular (at one point SS Hohenstaufen deployed a converged company of 12 of these things to support its remaining Grenadiers). It just finished in basic dunkelgelb and a bit of green/brown splinter, then inkwashed and drybrushed. The standing figure has Italian pattern camo and the seated gunner probably has the wrong colour cap, but perhaps he blagged it from one of his mates in a panzer regiment. Or something.

Battlefront Marders

I have always been rather fond of the various incarnations of Marder and found myself 'needing' some for the Skirmish Campaigns 'Red Guards at Kursk' scenarios. I picked these up at Triples a couple of years ago, heavily discounted on the Caliver Books stand so they weren't quite the normal ridiculous BF price.

The two of them in their Mardery glory. They both went together well although the gun assemblies took a fair bit of work.

From the front the typical BF scale vertical distortion is very obvious.

The look fine from the side though, plus lots of rivets and hard lines to pick up the drybrushing.

They also look very good from this angle. While I may moan about the prices, at least BF include crew figures, which you need really for open topped AFVs.

A couple of very serviceable  models, although they have yet to fire a shot in anger. They were just finished in dunklegelb and olive green with a dark brown inkwash, a very light drybrush of pure white to pick up the highlights and a liberal daubing of mud around the running gear.