15mm WW1 French tanks

From my previous post showing comparisons and how I did conversions, these are the PSC Schneider CA1 and Saint Chamond, and the two Battlefront Schneider CA1s. I made up the camouflage based on other schemes, and am happy with the appearance. The colours were:

• Army Painter Ash Grey
• Vallejo Model Color 394 Russian Green
• Vallejo Model Color 984 Flat Brown
• Vallejo Game Color 72.097 Pale Yellow
• black

Then Army Painter Strong Tone wash and drybrush Vallejo Model Color 70884 Stone Grey, and add mud! (Vallejo Dark Earth paste drybrushed Vallejo US Tan)

PSC Schneider CA1 and Saint Chamond

PSC Schneider CA1

PSC Saint Chamond

Schneider CA1s: PSC on left, Battlefront centre and right.

Schneider CA1s: PSC on left, Battlefront on right

You can't really tell the Schneiders apart at a glance, I need to compare the rivets and MGs.

I'll put up my French infantry at the end of the week.

15mm Schneider CA1- PSC and Battlefront side-by-side comparison

PSC and Battlefront both make 1:100 models of this characterful early tank. I've compared them to each other, and made some minor additions.

The PSC model is pre-assembled and undercoated green straight out of the box. It comes in a pack with a Saint Chamond, and is available from PSC for £16.50 at time of writing. Neither model has machine guns, so I drilled 1mm holes with a pin vice and used some poly cement to add 1mm plastic rods which I then cut to length. I added a wire-cutter from some Evergreen H-column styrene. (This had been cannibalised by me from another project, so it is painted rather than the original white plastic.)

PSC Schneider CA1 with added wire cutter and MGs

PSC Schneider CA1 with added wire cutter

Battlefront's model is a resin hull with white metal tracks and MGs. The resin didn't need any clean-up, but the tracks needed work. (My trick is to cover flaws in mud post-painting). I added the wire-cutter in the same fashion. You get two for US$30.

Battlefront Schneider CA1 with added wire cutter

Side by side, the models are the same size. There are subtle differences in the placement of panels etc. The details are a little more exaggerated on the resin model- panel lines, front grill, and rivets. The white metal MGs are nicer than my plastic ones, but more fragile.

Watch this space for painted pictures!

(Here's the St Chamond with added plastic MGs)

What a Tanker- France '44

I had my first game of What a Tanker this week, in the heretical scale of 15mm. The models and scenery were provided by my friend Gorillamo, and I took a Tiger against three Shermans commanded by Gorillamo and Lims.

I'm not very good at my Sherman identification, but there was a 75mm, a 76mm, and an Easy Eight.

I've been playing with a new app on my phone, LensFX, which allows me to add explosions and dinosaurs etc. to my photos. I think it helps tell a story, but let me know if it is it a distraction?

The Tiger spots advancing Shermans.

 An overview of the battlefield.

75mm, 76mm, and Easy Eight Shermans

The Shermans spread out around the crossroads

The Tiger fails to hit

The Tiger's armour deflects all shots!

The Shermans outflank the Tiger...

...which manoeuvres down a lane...

...and jostles past the Easy Eight before spinning around.

The 75mm Sherman rams the Tiger and has to bail out!

Caught in a crossfire, the Tiger crew bails out!

A fun first game which lived up to my expectations. It was a delight to play on this terrain with these models. The Tiger only hit once, doing optics damage, but shrugged off over half a dozen hits. Being rammed reduced my command dice options, and I wasn't able to recover them before taking a hail of fire that convinced the crew to bail out and fight on later.

Plastic Soldier Company Great War Tanks

This collection of tanks are from PSC for their Great War game. They are single piece precoloured 1:100 models, and are very cleanly sculpted and casted. I highly recommend them.

The Mark IV comes in Male and Female varieties, with and without a pair of 6 Pdrs respectively.

Mark IVs

Mark IV Males

Mark IV Females

The British also get a Whippet.

Whippets

To make up for the scarcity of their A7V panzers (see last week's post), the Germans salvaged British Mark IVs and repainted them as Beutepanzers.

Mark IV Beutepanzers

These are all great sculpts and a pleasure to paint. I really like the asymmetry and oddball appearances of these early beasts, and I hope that PSC does a French range at some stage.

All the PSC WW1 tanks

I used Vallejo Dark Earth paste, drybrushed with US Tan, for the mud.

These were painted for AHPC VII.

A7V Mephisto

The A7V was introduced in the last year of WW1. Only twenty Sturmpanzerwagens were built, compared to the well over 1000 British tanks which fought.

These tracked and armoured fridges are 15mm A7Vs from PSC. They are very precisely sculpted pre-built models and I recommend them. I made up the camouflage and markings based on an amalgamation of historical vehicles. You can see the origins of the iconic Hinterhalt (ambush) colours. I stippled it on using an old brush. The crosses are decals I picked up from eBay- I would try to freehand one, but not a dozen!

Of the twenty A7Vs, only one survives- No. 506 Mephisto. It was stolen by Australian diggers (Aussie Aussie Aussie! Oi! Oi! Oi!) and is currently in our national war memorial (unmissable if you are in Canberra). Fellow Aussie blogger Kaptain Kobold has plenty of info and pics of his visit here- here's one showing the 'nose art'. The demon Mephisto is cheekily running off with a British tank! I tried to replicate this freehand, along with the name. Mephisto has a lot more green to it than mine, but I can live with that.

Photo by Kaptain Kobold

I confess I haven't seen Mephisto in the flesh, and I would love to do so someday.

[This post was my 'Armour' theme entry for AHPC VII]