From DallasE: 1/48 Sdkfz 222 Armoured Car (20 points)

For this week, as promised, I have a 28mm vehicle. It's a Sdkfz 222 armoured car shown in North African service with the Deutsches Afrikakorps.

This model is 1/48 scale from Blitzkrieg Miniatures. It's actually a 3D print, not resin-cast, but I don't hold that against it. A very nice model, not many pieces, and good detail. I added some stowage as was generally the style with the DAK and all of the other combatants in North Africa.

Decals are from the folder, the Afrikakorps palm is from Company B. I need to snug it down with some Microsol or "Mr. Mark Softer" as it's showing a little silvering.

I like the model and it'll fit in well with the rest of my Afrikakorps stuff. Funnily enough I thought at first that the model was overscale as it's longer than my Blitzkrieg Miniatures Sdkfz 250 halftrack. But it tuens out that it's right on the money - Wikipedia lists the 222 as being 4.8m (4800mm) in length so a 1/48 model would be 100mm long... and that's exactly what this model measured.So well done Blitzkrieg I guess!

Looks about right next to a Perry crewman anyway.

Points:

1x 28mm vehicle = 20 points

Till next time!

Dallas

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An iconic German light vehicle indeed; especially so in Nord Afrika. The early desert war is a playground for scout cars like this (on both sides) when 20mm autoguns are deadly and ATRs are still worth having!

You've done a great job on the paint scheme too - your blended chipping through the (often poorly applied in real life) desert yellow back to the standard field grey is top notch. Lovely job mate!

- Paul 

From Mike W: 28mm Dark Ages, 15mm WW2 and other items! Squirrel [300 Points]

I was scratching my head about what to paint this week until a friend of mine, Dave from the Wargames Club, said that he had some old 28mm Gripping Beast Dark Ages (Vikings & Saxons) figures that he no longer wanted! Great I thought and I have now completed 32 of these guys!

The completed Dark Ages figures

Dave gave me the figures on Friday evening, so I spent the weekend putting these together and then undercoating them. About 20 of these guys were still on the frame, whilst the others were partially assembled requiring finishing off. With the plastics were a few metal figures, some of which I will present in this group, the others will likely follow-up in next week's post.

The two metal figures that were part of this group

Close-up of five of the figures, all with kite shields and all with Victrix Norman Heads

I wanted to assemble some of these guys as Bretons, so I used some spare Norman Hreads (Victrix & Conquest Games) and shields to give the figures this flavour, and used Breton artwork on the shields. In my mind these Bretons would be heavily influenced by the Normans but might retain some more generic features found in many Dark Age armies of the time. 

Four more of the guys, again with kite shields

Another five, all with round shields with Breton artwork.

These figures will be added to the 'Norman' pool for an upcoming game that I'll be staging recreating The Battle of Hastings,  at the club in coming months.

Next five figures, again wit Breton shields but the guy in the middle definitely has a Viking look! To his left there is a guy with a Oathmark human head with a hood and a cloak from the bits box

Painting was pretty straight forward, undercoated in grey with a white dry-brushing over the top of this. I used GW DarkOath Flesh for skin tomes and then highlighted this with Army Painter Barbarian Flesh. A point to note here is that the Dark Oath Fresh needs to be applied over a solid white undercoat, else it can look very dark, something for me to remember next time!

Six more figures

Chainmail and steel was done in GW Leadbelcher and various colours were used to 'dress' the figures, before applying a watered down dark wash to add shading. Wood was painted in Light Yellow, washed with watered down Soft Tone ink to give shading.

Last five figures, the standard is from the spares box, not Breton but looked cool

All were finished with a matt varnish and shield artwork was applied before baseing.

Next off the production line are 40 x 15mm Afrika Korps figures, I'm not sure of the manufacturer of these but suspect that they are old Command Decision figures - they're metal and have square cut bases - unlike the older Flames of War metal figures.

I use Flames of War basing sizes so here we have 8 bases each with 5 figures

Another view of the finished figures

These were all undercoated in grey then dry-brushed white, flesh was added using Army Painter Barbarian Flesh, uniforms were a mix of greens trying to replicate the German WW2 Tropical Green colour. Riles and machine guns were done in natural colours and belts etc done with brown leather. 

On random helmets, gas mask containers & water bottles I used a sand coloured paint to help give the figures a more desert feel. All was washed with a dark tone and varnished.

Close-up of some of  the figures, all rifle or MP40 Sub-machine Guns

Another close-up of the figures

Bases were finished off with fine sand and dried grass tufts.

And a very close view

Finally this week I have some 10mm English Billmen for my Flodden Project, these have been painted up as Lord Surrey's retinue, with red hose and green and white halved jackets. I have given each of these figures a leather / quilted jack and they sport either steel helmets or caps of various colours.

Six bases of ten figures in line of march, flags sourced from the internet

In a 3 base wide, 2 bases deep formation with standards to the front.

Again I have made this billman unit double sized with six bases instead of 3, as per WarMaster standards, each base with 10 figures. These tiny guys only get three flags in the unit as there are no suitable figures to convert to standard bearers! I had to press gang some spares into service here, something I'll need to sort out as I expend these armies, as I like a lot of flags in these type of units!

Unit in formation, with standards to the rear - as I prefer them to be on tabletop

And a view looking down on the unit.

Again time was a bit of an issue this week, so I didn't get everything finished that I'd hoped. There are some 10mm Flodden Horse nearing completion for next week, along with more Warlord Epic units, maybe even some more naval stuff if I have time to do the rigging!

POINTS

32 x 28mm Dark Age Bretons Figures @5 Points ea        160 Points

40 x 15mm Afrika Korps @ 2 Points ea                    80 Points

60 10mm Flodden English Billmen @ 1 Points ea           60 Points

TOTAL                                                  300 Points

+3 Squirrel (28mm Afrika Korps, 28mm Dark Age Bretons, 10mm Flodden English)

SylvainR: Another generous submission this week with a variety of scales, periods and color palettes. You continue to impress me with your diverse interests. Great work!

From DallasE: Afrika Korps and a Few Normans More (55 points)

Just a few models to post this weekend before the "free-fire zone" that is the last week of the Challenge. A couple days ago my order from Perry Miniatures (placed in mid-January) arrived, apparently it was postponed by a UK postal disruption.

In any event, I've started in on the models. First up was this six-man crew set for my Sdkfz. 7 8-ton semi-track, also completed for the Challenge.

The crew figures are really good, typical Perry which says it all. But they are small!

They do look good in the vehicle though. I really like the dude with his legs crossed, talking to his buddy. So much character in these models.

Next I've got "a few Normans more" for the game with GregB coming up this week. Greg said he had some crossbowmen he would bring so I quickly painted my last four unpainted Normans with crossbows.

They went up quite quickly too. Hopefully there will be a space for them in the game.

There was one more spearman to paint as well. 

He was originally going to be a standard-bearer but in looking through the ranks I saw that I had two Crusader Miniatures standard-bearers painted but lacking banners, so I printed some out and rectified that deficiency!

They look OK and will likely take part in this week's battle!

Scoring for this post:

    6x DAK crewmen:     30 points

    5x Norman foot:         25 points

    Total:                          55 points

See you in the free-fire zone!

I bang on endlessly about the variation in german field grey shades (and other variants). Excellent job.
 

From DallasE: Return to the Western Desert! (World Cinema, 70 points)

Back to the Western Desert indeed! In preparation for an El Alamein game I hosted on Thursday, I built and painted this 1/48 Tamiya Matilda (yes I know Matildas weren't really a big deal in '42) and some really nice Perry Miniatures Germans. On with the show! 

The model was pretty straightforward to assemble, as are most Tamiya 1/48 kits. But nowadays rather than having a metal lower hull, the newer Tamiya kits are all plastic - albeit with some solid metal tubes to insert inside the hull to add some nice weight to the model.

I painted the model in a weathered Caunter camo pattern. And if you've ever read anything about Caunter camo, you know it's controversial! Some say blue, some say grey, some green... who knows. But I think this ended up looking OK. The base tan is AK Deck Tan, the blue is Thunderhawk Blue, and the slate grey is Vallejo German Uniform. 

For Christmas I got a box of AK Interactive paints and washes - "Rust and Staining" edition. Pretty good stuff and has come in handy, I used the Dark and Light Rust on the exhaust mufflers.

There was a bottle of German Camo Black-Brown in that box as well and I love that stuff, especially for sponge chipping. I used to mix craft black paint and GW Rhinox Hide but I love the pre-mixed GCBB for this work.

I used some of the kit decals on the kit but not all of the ones that were provided for "Defiance". This was because there was already stowage and junk stuck on the turret where the decals were supposed to go. Anyway it's a nice model and I think it turned out OK. 

The other models for this week are from Perry Miniatures - the German Zug/Platoon Command pack. Really nice models just as you'd expect from the twins. They're painted just like the other Perry Germans I've done thus far. If you're interested you can have a look at some here.
 

You get an MG-34 gunner and assistant...

An officer in some rather casual clothing and a runner...

And an anti-tank rifleman enjoying a drink with an NCO. I made the sign for our recent game, it's from a 1/35 Italeri kit. I used a 0.1mm technical pen for the lettering and skull and crossbones. I love stuff like this as it adds so much to the gaming battlefield.

For this one I'm gonna head over to the World Cinema for 20 bonus points, add that to 20 for the Matilda and 30 for five 28mm infantry, and you get 70 total.

Tally ho and Heia Safari!

Love the Matilda, really great job on that. Impressed with the wafer biscuits named after the good Lady Sarah, hope they are nice or she will be insulted that her name is being applied to shoddy mechandise

From DallasE: 1:50 Afrika Korps Sdkfz. 7 Prime Mover (Historical Drama, 40 points)

For my second post today, we've been dropped off by Lady Sarah's limo at the Historical Drama Studio, where our subject is this 1:50 Sdkfz. 7 prime mover. Suits the studio of course because it's a model to be used in an historical game.

This model was originally a prepainted diecast from Corgi. I thought when I bought this model that it could enter service with my Afrika Korps force as-is, but I really wasn't feeling the paint job... that's OK, they're easy enough to repaint.

After masking off the windshield with tape, I primed the model black and painted the metalwork with Zandri Dust, washed with Agrax Earthshade. The interior is Mechanicus Standard Grey highlighted with Dawnstone and lightly washed with Nuln Oil. The upholstery and top are Mournfang Brown highlighted Steel Legion Drab. 

As was typical on DAK vehicles, a small spot was left in original Panzer Grey and the DAK insignia applied (you'll see another such spot on the front offside fender). The paintwork was sponge-chipped with Vallejo German Camo Black Brown.

Of course I added a bunch of stowage from Value Gear. I've almost exhausted my stock of that so will soon need to order more. The stowage really adds a lot to this DAK model.

Here's a better view of the DAK insignia and number plate.

I thought I would include a pic of the 8-ton prime mover in its natural environment - they were often used as tow vehicles for the 88mm Flak 36. Painting this prime mover also motivated me to repaint the 88 - I lightened the colour somewhat as the original colour I painted it was kind of dark. No points for that though of course.

Painting this Sdkfz. 7 has prompted me to place another order with Perry Miniatures for some crew and passengers to use with this vehicle. You're welcome, Perry twins :-)

Anyway the points break down like this:

28mm vehicle: 20 points

Historical Drama Studio bonus: 20 points

Total: 40 points

 Love this, Corgi vehicles do paint up so well, I have many in my collection. Normally I would like a specific film to go with this vehicle, I'm sure someone has made a movie about WW2. I'll say it's from the Dirty Dozen