Rather old 5/6mm WW2

Or 1/300th or something.

There is more of this stuff lying around somewhere, like infantry, artillery and Russians, just not easy to get to. No idea who made any of this stuff...

Some of it is looking it's age.

British and American. These are plain green but there were lots painted a bit more ambitiously.

Germans showing early use of a 3 colour paint scheme by me.

Easy to give a rough date for these. Back then I worked as a Research Chemist and did a lot of TLC (Thin Layer Chromatography). The plates for this came in just the right size boxes. I left there in 1981...

Panzers and Tigers....

...And how my paint schemes have changed over the years...

These date back to the 1960s though have had a number of paint schemes. This scheme must be late 60s-early 70s.

Being repaired rather than replaced helps date this one. The 1980s were a time of unemployment, so the new gun and mantle suggests that era. Didn't have much money for new stuff. Not sure when the commander lost his head! Nor do I know where the rest of his Regiment is.

The 90s then up to  2007 was the next major 'expansion' - these are early ones, mainly Matchbox. Had a lot of Matchbox kits. 122 is a simple gun conversion - my original and long gone Pz3s were converted Stugs with carved balsa turrets. Think I saw one of those turrets a while back, not sure where.

Think these are Frontline figures - got a lot of them. Must get round to painting the hubcaps.

Stug and Hetzer. Probably first decade of the new century.

Pz4s from when I started the dappled colour scheme.

Continuing the dappled scheme - R04 is a Headquarters vehicle - had to allocate this thing somewhere.

Size comparison of Airfix and 'Deagostini' models - I originally matched the Deagostini tanks with Armourfast, they are slightly bigger than Airfix.

On the other hand, the Tiger is a lot bigger than Airfix!

Tiger Tiger

Back in April I mentioned buying some Panthers and Tigers in Norwich.

The original paintwork

 Since then I've been slowly painting these and the Tigers are finished.

Here passing a Sarissa church

20mm tanks are not something I paint all that well. For German Late War I decided that I liked the dappled colour scheme - sand with brown and green patches, sand dots covering the brown and green to give a dappled effect. Only seen a couple of pictures of German tanks using this scheme, most of mine do though not always with the dappling.

I usually hand paint markings and again have a 'standardised' method - red on white numbers, first digit 1-4 for company, they're all 1st Platoon so second number 1, 3 tanks per platoon numbered 1-3.

The Panthers represent the first two companies, the Tigers are the 3rd and 4th company. Twelve tanks, my standard for a '12 Tank Armoured Division'!

6mm Alien attack overview.

Garrison had quite a nice (if now old fashioned) range of sf tanks. The first lot I painted up were loosely based on German WW2 schemes, recently I started painting up more of these but in a more British scheme. Then I spotted a load of 15mm Stargrunt 'spider drones' on the Ground Zero stand at Salute and thought they would make good 6mm alien machines. The idea is that they are fast-moving lightly armoured swarms that like to swamp their enemies - a bit like fast zombies in zombie games.

The result is a very quickly painted set of sf models... more spider drones on order, human infantry there's a load of Brigade Models infantry on order, still thinking about a source for suitable alien infantry.

The 'British' armoured division as it stands at the moment.

It nominally harks back to WW2 so the first/Senior Regiment has red markings, first squadron triangle on turret, 2nd square and 3rd circle. However, the HQ I've gone for 'R' instead of a diamond - so closer to German WW2 in that respect. Vehicles are 'standard' grav tanks and I may add a second Regiment of these.

The second Regiment is a heavy regiment - 2 squadrons of tracked heavies and an 'anti-tank' squadron of grav tanks with missile capability.

Artillery support - lots of missiles on a grav chassis.

Scout Regiment but liable to be used as infantry carriers until I get that lot sorted.

The only non-Garrison element - some Ground Zero walkers. In 'this' universe they would have been designed and produced as a partial response to the swarms.

Two different swarms of Ground Zero Spider Drones. Each swarm includes 15 vehicles - not really drones of course, but might as well still call them that - quite simply painted.

This lot are quite weird - I'm using them as basically support/assault with an anti-infantry Gatling type gun plus a very short range weapon capable of taking out the heaviest armour - if it can get close enough.

 

General purpose swarm. Two guns with limited anti infantry capability and not really able to defeat the heavy tracked tanks... think Sherman 75 against Tiger...

(While typing this the post arrived bringing with it the next two swarms...)

Found in the attic

Over the years I must have had thousands of 1/76, 1/72 and 20mm tanks and things. In time, they have tended to be packed away in various places and more or less forgotten. So, there I was looking in the attic when I came across a box...

Mostly Russian.

 I thought that this lot are all Frontline models. In fact, I'm part way through painting a recent order from them now. However, Frontline don't have any KV85s in their catalogue so I must be at least partially mistaken.

 This one is an oddity.  I used to have a number of JS2s that were converted from Airfix Stalin 3s with balsa turrets. Looks like in later years I found one of the turrets and simply stuck it on a KV turret - don't remember doing that!

 Airfix Shermans I used to have in vast quantities - looks like a few survived. It is possibly (but perhaps unlikely) that some of these are 50 years old.

 Airfix also produced 'toy' versions - had a few of these but not many.

 They're quite easy to identify.

I'm sure that the attic will produce more MIA vehicles in future - sometime over the summer I might start sorting all all my WW2 stuff!

Panthers and Tigers

The same trip to Norwich that netted those 6mm trees also netted this lot!

Well, most of them anyway.

Looks expensive but they were £4.99 each and 3 for 2! So at about £3.30 each, a lot cheaper than anyone else's 1/72nd figures. I've compared them with other manufacturers and they are virtually identical size wise.

Already had one Tiger from a previous visit so only bought 5(?)

The Ferdinands are from the Italian campaign - they have machine guns. It also said that on the display box.

Already had a couple of Somuas so topped this up with a third.

There's no manufacturer's name name on the box, but the display case does tell you the actual model depicted. Some on EBay are described as being by Deagostini, others as Eaglemoss. Or they could be ixo / antyla!

The down side of these cases is that the vehicles are attached using a strange triangular tamper proof thread. In the past these have been a pain to undo - but I manged to find a set of screwdrivers that included one head that would undo them!

So result is a lot of good, detailed vehicles that will need repainting. Not sure when I'll get round to that...

Further thoughts... might use those spare display cases at some time as well...