Airfix Atlantic wall

 Don't know if it's a bias in looking or what, but having picked up those Atlantic wall buildings with the Airfix figures, came across another (good condition) one so put in the minimum bid...

Good condition apart from a couple of the AA gun barrels snapped off. Easily replaced (anyone seriously believe I'll do it?) Like the colour scheme but I'll need to do the embankment green!

Quite nice detail on the kit.

Together with the ones from the figure purchase it makes a pretty good set. Can't do a photo of everything set out properly at the moment - Japanese are taking up space on my wargames ready for an eventual Review - still a few more things to do for that, though will still need to add things after the Review.

Vickers Medium MkII

 As part of my latest Frontline order I included 3 Vickers Medium Mk11s. These are now part of my not-really Interwar Lovecraftian style army - most of the 20mm buildings I'm collected are from Germany, so the obvious thing is to 'base' things in an Interwar Germany partially occupied by the Alllied Powers.

I've followed my previous tactic of giving them fictitious markings that are nominally for a Guards Armoured Division.

The idea being that all the pictures of these things I can find seem to have no markings at all which is pretty boring.

This is an interesting picture. A Vickers Medium next to an Independent of the same Division. The impression you get is that these tanks are not to the same scale, that in fact the Idependent should be a lot bigger. It's just not tall enough. Until you look up the specification and find that, in reality, the Independent is a couple of inches lower that the Vickers!

Tidying up?

Figures, that is.

It's a mix of things. Waiting for the moulds to arrive it seemed to be a good idea to start looking at outstanding items - unbased figures, figures needing a paint touch up, etc.

First off, started on doing some of the Prussian lancers. I haven't tried to add any other details, for example reins or buttons, etc, just kept them 'as was' and painted over areas of paint loss.

Bugler's a bit of a weird pose. Likewise, officer's sword a bit iffy. Other than that, they'll do.

And I haven't tried to look up if they are meant to be specific units. If I did, it would probably tempt me to add more detail!

Meanwhile, working on basing some more Egyptians, Assyrians and Indians...

German cavalry uniforms 1900-1914

It's always worth remembering that I was reading history books before I was buying Airfix figures and the two are probably of more-or-less equal importance to me. So a recent ebay search found two books that seemed ideal for the 42mm German army I had started building.

The books were published by Almark back in 1974/5 and give a lot of useful information about their subject. Plus some nice colour pictures that include things like standards and lance pennons.

By R.J.Marrion, this is the bigger volume with 128 pages. Short history of the units, uniform details, horse colous of trumpeters... a lot of information!

A bit slimmer at 96 pages but still full of information. Author D.H.Hagger.

There is a third volume to this series - Cuirassiers and Heavy Cavaly - which I haven't got yet. I intend to!

German 1st Hussars

Having finished the 3rd, really had to do the 1st!

Colour scheme is pretty spectacular

Horses cast well apart from the reins - not going to worry about that!

Almost didn't post this picture - it's not the most impressive view.

The 1st followed by the 3rd - think that should be enough German Hussars for now.

 At this point I'm really going to have to stop the 42mm figures and get down to finishing the 20mm Prussian Landwehr!

I've noticed that Tango has posted this in the Napoleonic Board on TMP so thought it would be a good idea to add a bit more to this.... the figure is based on a Knotel print of a Prussian unit in the German army  'Lieb-Husaren Regiment No. 1'  in 1903, homecast from a Berliner Zinnfiguren mould and part of my Great War in England 1897 collection that is based on the 1894 book by Le Queux - in that book, Germany was on our side, in his later book 'The Invasion of 1910' they were the enemy.

1897 German 3rd Hussars

Lots of hussars seem to have carried a lance around this time - but not sure about the 3rd. The uniform is taken from Das KLeine Buch vom Deutschen Heere published in 1901, though the horse furniture is actually from a picture of  the 3rd Hussars in a Knotel print showing the dress in 1861.

They paint up well and have a real 'toy soldier' feel about them. Couple of issues on vasting this first batch of horses - mainly bridles - but later horses coming out OK.

Must admit I found the scalloped edging to the saddlecloth hard. Time was I could do a lot better on 20mm figures! I didn't even try to do any of the fancy lacework...

But overall very pleased with these and can see quite a few hussar squadrons appearing in the future.

42mm 1897 German command group

Started painting these a bit after the hussars but finished first because there's less to paint.

However, before that I thought I'd just set up all the Prussian Zinnfiguren homecast figures I've got including the ones I bought off ebay - it's building up to a nice little army.

This is the command group from the newly-acquired moulds - the officer is actually an artillery officer.

The light blue cross on the standard doesn't show up very well on this picture.

Bit better here. They've turned out really well though to get the standard to cast I had to use the mould with very little pressure on it - which meant a lot of flash.

The natives are a bit hostile.

So the Roman cavalry are just going ballistic and the infantry marching along quite happily thinking of burgers... meanwhile, I'm going through the rules and had forgotten or not realised something - all those Germanic (OK, Gauls pretending to be Germans) warbands.... are also on a -2 in the forest... so, instead of Romans down to 3, Warband on 3 with lots of overlaps... suddenly it's 3 v 1... And my recollection of pushbacks being fatal... not as much...

Perhaps not going to be such a foregone conclusion after all.

Well, yeah, OK, probably still foregone, just slower.

So here are the Roman cavalry being reckless.

Those cavalry on the Roman left were having a great time - took out a cavalry element, then a psiloi element, then a warband. Got swamped eventually though. Meanwhile on the other side of the action look at the cavalry hitting those 3 warbands head on...

They died. I took the element off and realised.... they were Gauls. It had been a couple of days since I put them there and I sort of forgot they weren't Romans and didn't notice it? Could have just ignored the result but - well, if they want charge their own people and die as a result - let them.

So eventually the infantry catch up to the action - cavalry all dead by then.

Lots of fighting, but slow to kill as the Romans had quite a good factor advantage.

Gradually whittled down though until finally...

The last lot went. And not a burger in sight.

I enjoyed that. Fun encounter, easily set up, helped me re familiarise myself with some parts of the rules I'd forgotten and lots of dead Romans. That's a one that goes back to my days wargaming in Bradford back in 72-73 - it was Pete's fault.

Anyone fancy a Teuter Burger?

I mean, we're in Germany and it makes a change from Pizza.

Supposed to a good place other side of these woods...

Think it's left... OK, off we go.

Hello, few of the locals...

On yer bike...

Oi! Leave some for us!

Don't worry, plenty to go round.



As an aside - this part written before my hospital visit, scenario built on previous because of the pulp scenario and still to do last part. So 'burger' just evolved as a natural theme. So, to hospital - the name of one of my 'afflictions' is IgA nephritis, otherwise known as Berger's Disease - that's close enough to Burger's Disease for me to say something...

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'!