MOAR!! Flames of War 8th Army Tanks and Artillery

Cleaning up a few remnants of boxed sets I've bought for the Western Desert project. I'd already painted the Grants from the "Monty's Desert Rats" box but that left these three Crusaders and the two artillery pieces to do. First up, the armour...

Here are the three Crusaders, equipped with 6-pounder guns (I'm concentrating on "after-El-Alamein"). As usual I picked out one to have a commander sticking out of the hatch. Camo was two-colour in keeping with the rest of the force. 

The Battlefront material had limited images of the Crusader so I had to look on the web to see how the camo looked on the "other side" of the vehicle. Fortunately "Key Model World" came to the rescue with copious photos of a 1/32 Airfix build here. Thanks John Bonanni!

As with all of the British armour, the tanks were painted Light Earth as a base, with camo done in Castellan Green highlighted Deathworld Forest. The whole thing was washed Agrax Earthshade then re-highlighted in the base colours, and lastly chipped with German Camo Black-Brown on a sponge.

I also had one Honey built so I painted that too. It's a model from Plastic Soldier Company and don't be too hard on me if you see inaccuracies in the build... I basically wanted to replicate the sand-skirted model that Battlefront makes but I'm not sure I built exactly the right combo of top hatch and skirts... looks fine to me if I squint.

These are certainly iconic little desert tanks aren't they! I still have four more to build...

Now to the guns! The box set came with two sprues that could built as either 25-pounder field guns or 17/25-pounder antitank guns. But since we have the means, I figured why not make the tubes swappable and have both??

The accessories and crew for the models are great. Here we see a 25-pounder.

And here are the models with the 17-pounder tube swapped in for maximum anti-tank capability.

Easy to do, really - that's a small disc magnet in between the trunnion supports...

...and on the 17-pounder tube there's a 2mm spacer and another disc magnet. The 25-pounder tube didn't need a magnet and adding one would lower the muzzle too much anyway, so I just added a small piece of very thin sheet metal to stick to the magnet. Easy swapping and nothing is visible.

And there you go, some more models for Conscript Hugh to figure into the British army list for our next desert clash.

Toodles! 

8th Army Machinegun Platoon, Heavy Weapons and Company Command

Gearing up for a birthday Flames of War game on Thanksgiving weekend, I thought I'd better finish the Brits before moving on to painting the Afrika Korps infantry contingent. So this weekend I painted a machinegun platoon of four Vickers .303s and crew, the Boys AT rifle and 2' mortar teams from the second infantry platoon, and two stands to represent the company command.

 

First off - the machinegun platoon. These models are from Forged in Battle and are pretty nice. You get four machineguns and 12 crewmen for 10 GBP. As you might recall from my previous FiB post there was a bit of post-delivery followup required as I didn't get enough gunners for the MGs, but fortunately that was sorted.

 

They're pretty nice models. The guns and tripods are one piece which makes putting it all together quite easy.

There are two variations of the "third crewman" - one kneeling and one prone with binoculars.

These will come in handy in the desert if I can get some German infantry done!

Next up are some heavy weapons for the second infantry platoon. As you might recall the platoon was mostly from FiB, but they only supply one Boys AT rifle team and one 2" mortar team in their platoon pack, so I needed to go elsewhere for a second Boys team and mortar team. Where else but Peter Pig?

 

The Piggies supply the models in 8-figure packs - two moving teams and two prone. The prone models are too long to fit on a Flames of War small base (booo!) but the moving ones are great, so that's what I used. Above, Boys AT rifle team.

 

Here's the 2" mortar team. A little bit harder to determine how they're armed at first glance but the assistant is carrying a large box of mortar bombs.

Lastly we have the company command stands! These are also from Peter Pig.

Great character in these models, I love the officers gesticulating enthusiastically while the poor sod on the radio looks on with a bemused expression. Check out the mustache on the Major!

The second stand's models are also from Peter Pig. In fact I had to pinch a rifleman from the Boys AT pack - he is the assistant gunner from the second "moving" team and really came in handy.

I think I've discovered a repeatable basing technique for these Flames of War models - I paint the infantry on popsicle sticks, then superglue them down to the black-primed bases. Next I prepare a slurry of basing gel tinted with brown paint and apply it to the base. The groundwork is painted with Khaki and drybrushed Rakarth Flesh. Finally the static grass and tufts are applied.

With that, the infantry company is ready for a game. Next up 'll paint the Afrika Korps infantry - but looking at the Flames of War army list there aren't nearly as many of 'em, which is fine by me. Stay tuned for that in the next two weeks.

Toodles! 
 

Forged in Battle 15mm 8th Army Infantry

I've now (mostly) finished the infantry company for my 8th Army in the Western Desert project. I do have some Vickers MMG teams and 3" mortars, as well as a couple stands of Boys AT rifles and 2" mortars, yet to complete but I wanted to post these models up.

 

The great majority of the models are from Forged in Battle, a UK manufacturer you might know better as West Wind - why the name change I'm not sure. I say "the great majority" because a couple Peter Pig models have snuck into the company (the pistol-armed platoon commanders). More on this later.

 

You'll notice that the models are based for Flames of War... so you might well wonder why I didn't just use Battlefront infantry. I sure would have liked to do that - but they are unavailable. From anywhere. I even emailed BF directly to ask when they would be back, and I was told that there were no plans but my request would be "passed on to the production team." Take that for what you will, but my experience with BF is that they're a hot mess.

 

There are a couple other options for 15mm 8th Army infantry - Peter Pig, Command Decision - but I chose FiB because the painted models on their website looked absolutely gorgeous. I was happy to paint these models, I think they look pretty great, but while it came good in the end, getting this order from FiB wasn't exactly straightforward.

I put in a large order of both British and Germans - a large infantry "platoon pack", a pack of MMGs, a pack of mortars, and a pack of two AT guns, for each side. The FiB shipping caluclator led me to a workaround as adding one more pack doubled the shipping... so I ordered one pack of AT guns as a separate order. That's additional hassle for the retailer for sure but a poor customer experience when the shipping doubles by adding one pack of models. Anyway...

  

The models arrived in "reasonable time" (I followed up with them once IIRC) and while many of the castings looked quite nice (including these 8th Army infantry) some of the castings were absolutely appalling (the German infantry and MMGs). I did communicate this back to FiB and their representative was very apologetic (apparently the molds were worn out and due for replacement). She offered to replace the bad castings and I heartily accepted that offer.

I also requested some missing poses from the British MMG packs (I only received one gunner figure for the four MGs) and the reply was somewhat puzzling... basically I was told that packs contained a random assortment of models. I get that in an infantry pack you might not get identical numbers of every pose (I didn't), but surely you need to include four actual gunner models in a four-machinegun pack!

In due course the replacement Germans arrived but FiB had forgotten to send the machinegunners. They eventually did send them but from start to finish the order took several months.

ANYWAY... I really like the British infantry (with a couple exceptions - the Thompson sub-machinegun carried by the NCO (photo below) is terrible-looking, and the Christ-like officer (all he's missing is a cross) is just strange and was left unpainted - hence the Piggie replacements. However the rest of the infantry models are all quite good, the equipment looks great, and the poses are all really useful. There are three prone Bren-gunners and number twos included, plus a prone Boys AT team and 2" mortar team. All really good stuff. 

Painting: helmet and uniforms AK Light Earth, washed Agrax and re-highlighted. Flesh Doombull Brown highlighted Cadian Flesh, socks Steel Legion Drab, rifles Leadbelcher, AK brown, highlighted New Wood. The webbing was left LE with the Agrax wash and the contrast obtained by highlighting the uniform around it, if that makes sense. Rifle slings are Deck Tan which I may tone down a bit as it's pretty light. For the groundwork I mixed Medium Brown into the basing gel and wet-brushed it up with AK Khaki and finished with a Deck Tan drybrush.

So my goal now is to get the rest of the infantry painted in the next month, with a target of having a game on Thanksgiving weekend. I'll keep you posted on progress. As for Forged in Battle... well it was an experience. The models I got were pretty nice but it took a lot of effort to get them - something I'm not really used to as a customer of an established business. The FiB representative was very friendly, responsive and accommodating of requests but honestly, most of the requests shouldn't have had to have been made in the first place. Worn out molds should be identified and replaced before miscast figures are sent to customers, and packs of special weapons should contain all the figures needed to crew them. Thankfully it all worked out in the end.

Toodles!

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!  

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.