Month: March 2020

OTP Terrain Houses in 20mm

~ Colonel Mustard ~ 10 Comments

I think I am totally addicted to making buildings and creating a tiny world, rather than actually playing a game in that tiny world! I found OTP Terrain while looking for the great designs by Jens Najewitz. So they make a whole heap of Printed 3D terrain in a hard plastic. I bought three houses, the Normandy Hotel, Small Building and Town House. They each have removable roofs and floors perfect for your wargames. The detail is excellent and easy to paint. The only additions I made were chopping off the chimney stacks and adding my own metal ones. It has become a thing, I need to replace every chimney pot on any bought building model. I get mine from S&D Models in the UK. They do not cost much and are way better than any of the attempts at chimney pots you get with kits or ones you can make yourself.

These houses are not cheap compared to their MDF counterparts, but they paint up really nicely, have good detail, and they have a huge range. Check them out at OTP Terrain

Photos below. Check out the French Boulangere called Brien. Weird.

I have my eyes on a farm house and barn and bridge. But so much else to get painted first.…….. Good thing we are locked up at home………

Superquick Card Model Houses HO Scale

~ Colonel Mustard ~ 4 Comments

I figured I would need some more houses to build while the world goes into lockdown. These card kits from Superquick are just pure nostalgia. My big brother had built some for his railways in the 1980s and they were swiftly borrowed to be used on my ping pong table for battles. After 35 years they have not changed. I will get to build them this time. I am sure I can make them look a little more French and a bit less cardboardy this time around. My aim is to have enough buildings to have a full town on a 6 x 4 sized table.

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Heller Somua Tank in 1/72 scale

~ Colonel Mustard ~ 4 Comments

Boxart Somua 79875 Heller

I didn’t really need any French tanks, as I do not have any French forces, but I do like these Somua tanks. They were captured and used by the Germans later in the war and so I thought I would build a troop of them anyway. I think the only plastic model kit in this scale of the Somua is made by Heller, so I bought three of them on eBay from someone, somewhere. Loved the box art and attempted to base my camo scheme on the front action shot.

It’s a tiny tank and the kit is easy to put together. Detail is nice and there were zero construction issues. By the third build I was doing it with my eyes shut! Tracks are like a soft vinyl that fitted perfectly which made a nice change. I think I drilled out the gun barrels with a very tiny drill, but did not do much else. Camo scheme was applied using the blutack masking technique, which ended up coming out very nicely. The decals were a mixture of the supplied ones plus some other spares. I really liked the French red white and blue insignia and white numbers so I sourced some similar stuff from my decal files. I figure I can use these for either side, early war French or late war Germans.

Here is le Troop just wandering through a village.