Big Guns Never Tire

Though my guards may sleep and ships may rest at anchor, 

our foes know full well that big guns never tire

 Warhammer 40,000 2nd Edition

Yeah, I know, it's a 40k quote for a Flames of War post but I've always loved it. Plus, todays post is about some really, really big guns...

These are British 17 pdr anti-tank guns. The 17 pdr was one of the best guns of the war and was fitted to some of the Sherman tanks used by the Brits to create the excellent Firefly variant. The most remarkable thing - for me at any rate - was that these monsters and the 15 cwt trucks that towed them and hauled the ammo were... airlanded. Yep, these monsterous machines were loaded into the massive Horsa gliders and dropped right into enemy held territory. These and the 6 pdr guns were an essential tool in preventing the panzer divisions from just rolling over the otherwise light paratroopers. Oh, and the difference between a 17 pdr and a 6 pdr? Check the next picture:

Same scale! Anyway, enough history, on with the painting. I've said quite a bit about painting the Flames of War lads in previous posts (just click on the Flames of War tag at the bottom of the post) so I won't go on about it in great depth. Instead I'll pick out the interesting bits from this one! The first, obvious, thing to note are the bushes at the front of the bases. These are almost insultingly easy to achieve. Just get a pinch of something called clump foliage and PVA it down to the groundwork. Then, to make it a bit more game-proof soak it in watered down PVA and leave it to dry. I use a dropper and sort of "inject" the bushes with the PVA. Really soaks it through.

One hazard of painting FoW stuff realistically is that they can sort of disapear into the groundwork in photos! You can avoid this by doing the very harsh Battlefront studios style highlighting but I don't like that. Note the red and white pole on the inside of the left trail. This is a ranging pole and was used to pre-spot artillery targets. They would be hidden from view of approaching troops but the gunners knew that once they reached the marker then the already dialled in elevation would hit the target perfectly. 

For the HQ I used some of the bits that came in the Paratrooper upgrade pack to give them a more measured look than the heroic advancing look of some of the others. While I was glueing the table down I thought how nice some tactical maps would look on it and had the foresight to take photos as I went. Thus I present the PVP guide to painting tiny wee maps!

First, cut a few tiny rectangles of just normal white paper. Just a few millimeters across. Using watered down PVA soak the maps and shape them to the table, try having one overlapping the edge of the table as it looks more plausible somehow! I then used Seraphim Sepia to put some initial shadowing along the overlapped edges. When you zoom in remember just how small these are! I then started adding some water features using Drakenhof Nightshade. I'll be using shading washes for all of these stages as the translucent quality makes it look like printed paper rather than painted paper.

Next come the woodlands marked out in Athonian Camoshade. Look at real world maps so as not to use too much or too little on your maps! Built up areas are marked in yellow so Casadora Yellow. Use straight lines here as the built up areas aren't natural features and will look better with a straight line or two. Roads are then added in red - Carroburg Crimson.

I used Agrax Earthshade to firm up the shadowing around the map edges and then used Nuln Oil to paint tiny thin lines of longitude and latitude to give it that "map" look. Do not use too many here, 4 or 5 are more than enough. And there you go! A bunch of guys standing around a map! Might have to add an enamel tea mug at some point...

So with that I am getting surprisingly close to finishing my first Flames of War army! I've got plans to expand this one with the transport jeeps and trucks, some hurricane typhoons and a small Commando contingent to represent the Royal Marines coming up from the beaches. It'll be groovy. For those expecting Titan updates today, it's now been washed of all its mold release agent and dried over the day. Tomorrow I'll be priming it and starting the painting process all over again!

TTFN

Small Soldiers

Greetings all, I realised recently that I hadn't shared any of the progress on my Flames of War paratroopers. I certainly haven't forgotten/abandoned them, I only paint 15mm when the yen takes me. But, having made some recent progress on the army I figured time to share!

These guys are the command HQ of my Paras, they're always something of a sod to photograph but you should just be able to make out a bugler and an officer with an umbrella on the nearmost base. The officer's sculpt is based on Carlyle from A Bridge too Far which along with The Longest Day was a major inspiration in choosing to do a parachute company. Carlyle in turn was based on the real life Maj. Digby Tatham-Warter who unlike Carlyle* survived the war umbrella and all.

Just to remind everyone how small these lads are, this is an older shot of Ms. Funnymoney with 3 Platoon.

The other recent addition is this platoon of 6lb anti-tank guns. I've got another two 17lb'ers on the way to really put the wind up Jerry's panzers! The fact that these huge limbers were glider transported at all amazes me.

I really enjoyed painting these, the guns are simplicity itself to paint. A basecoat of Russian Uniform Green provides the correct wartime British hue and then a wash of Athonian Camoshade provided the shading. Athonian Camoshade is a great brown-green and is perfect for a lot of wartime uses,

The artillery crews make good use of the ability of Flames of War bases to create little vignettes. There is a real sense of motion stilled with these guys, one of the better sculpts of this range.

Realising that I simply couldn't use the urban rubble bases on the artillery I just picked out the larger chunks of sand with brick red and grey and to my delight they work quite well alongside the moulded plastic bases. A relief as the urban bases, as mentioned before, are not all they could be and are overpriced for such soft, out of scale castings. I won't be using any more after I've run out of the current crop (which I will in the next platoon) as the simple sand basing looks ace with these guys.

And so here is the whole company so far, essentially it is just the Company HQ, 3 and 4 Platoons and the 6lb'er sections. I've got 5 Platoon on their painting sticks and have ordered the rest of the army. The workometer stands as follows:

So I'm well over half way on this project. I'll have to decide whether I want to expand the army or just sit at 1500 points and do another force, possibly some German forces as an opposing force at Arnham. Possibly carrying on the Canadian XXX corps to relieve them! Anyhow, there will doubtless be more 15mm shenanigans in my future. Might even get a game one of these days!

TTFN

*Oh and Spoiler Alert, but frankly the film was out in 1977, really should have seen it by now!

Flames of War Paratroopers

In a new venture for me I present the first models in my Flames of War British WW2 Paratroopers army:

I've been toying with the idea of Flames of War for a while but a recent conversation with an old friend (Gareth, better known as Dice Jesus of the blog It's Game Over Man) galvanised my interest into action. Of all the forces in WW2 it has always been the paratroopers that fascinated me the most so it was pretty much inevitable that a 6th Airborne Division army would be my choice. For those unfamiliar with Flames of War it is a platoon based wargame played with stands of 15mm models. That is roughly half the size of the models I usually paint as the next image will demonstrate:

Thank you Ms. Funnymoney, that'll be all. Obviously models of this size present their own challenges. Not least of which is the fact that the Denison smock they all wear is camouflaged... Checking the painting guide in the Turning Tide reassured me though. The only change I made to the recommended colours was to swop out Green Ochre for Khaki as it seemed to me to be a better match for the pale colour on the smock.

The overall effect is surprisingly effective for such a small scale. I deliberately did not use Battlefront Studio's highlighting style as it was far too stark for my tastes and went instead with Devlan Mud washes to add shading. As you can see I decided to push it and went for as much facial detail as I could on those models that had crisp enough casting to make it worthwhile.

I also made use of the plastic urban rubble bases. These are almost more trouble than they are worth. You have to trim the bases of the figures to fit as they are not the standard size indicated by the holes in the bases. You have to then fill the holes to level them off. Really frustrating. I won't be using them for any future Flames of War armies I do but I am kinda locked in for this army now! The extras are nice (like the wall in this one) but some of the details are really soft and poorly scaled (the umbrella for one is almost the size of a full grown man).

I like the way you can create little vignettes with the bases, the mortar crew taking cover behind a pile of rubble for instance. I didn't paint them in situ as the models would have got in the way of painting some of the details. Instead I superglued them to sticks to paint and then sliced them off when finished. Oh and my wounded left index finger would like to warn you all to use not very much superglue at all as if you glue them on seriously then you can slip and put quite a slash in your fingertip. Anyone would think I was a professional or something...

Well that's all the shots I've got this time, that was just one platoon though so I have got quite a long way to go before I have an army of these airbourne nutters. I've included the army list below to show the journey. I will of course keep you updated! For now though...

TTFN

WW2 Tommy on Patrol

Greetings all, as a gentle warm up after a week off (I had been off LRPing and had damaged my wrist a little and didn't want to mess up a client model) I thought I would paint the first of a new venture for me. Large scale military models:

The model is one of five from the Tamiya "British Infantry on Parade" set. It is 1:35 scale (54mm in our wargaming parlance) and as such is somewhat larger than the usual I work on, enter Ms Funnymoney to demonstrate:

I've recently got the Vallejo military paint set so working on this fellow was a breeze. Starting with the jacket and trousers I basecoated the model in English Uniform, washed it in Devlan Mud for shading the uniform. Highlighting started with English Uniform and then continued with adding Bleached Bone to the English Uniform. The webbing was painted in the same way just swopping English Uniform for Khaki.

Picking out the other equipment helped to make the model more visually interesting, grey blanket, wooden entrenching tool and the ubiquitous enamel mug.

I enjoyed this model more than I expected! I thought the colour scheme would be a little monotonous but the simplicity of the paint job was half of its charm. 1:35 is large enough to do nice things like adding wood grain to the rifle furniture and for the sculptors to make the weapons etc realistically scaled. It is of interest to me that the muzzle of the lee enfield rifle on this model is smaller than a lasrifle on a guardsman. This guy is twice the size of the guardsman. Take a moment and think how ridiculous that would look scaled up...

Anyway, back to Harlequins, should have some finished and up on the web for you all soon.

TTFN