Wargaming in 20mm

“Small-Scale Armour Modelling” by Alex Clark Osprey Publishing

~ Colonel Mustard ~ 6 Comments

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Another great little purchase i found at Book Depository for a crazy price delivered to my door step! Books in Australia are little on the pricey side so i am amazed at the low cost of on line books that are shipped for free to the Southern hemisphere. I think most of the time i enjoy the building, modelling and painting parts of our hobby more than any of the playing. But then i guess some of the time my opinion changes. This book definitely inspires me in the building and modelling section, and will do the same for you too.

Alex Clark is a very talented and skillful model maker and he does his best in the book to pass some of his knowledge onto the rest of us to help us improve and learn in our own missions, whatever they may be. The first thing that caught my eye is the awesome number of brilliant models illustrated throughout the book. There are also many excellent photos detailing all the tips and tricks that Alex writes about. Aimed totally at modellers in 1/72 or 20mm scale this was perfect for me. Everything is covered from building, converting, and detailing all the way through to painting, weathering, finishing and basing. So whether you are making models for wargaming, display or just for fun there will be something in here for you. Definitely inspiring stuff and a volume that you will go back to again and again. Some of Alex’s finished models are so good you will be surprised they are not bigger than 1/72 scale. I would highly recommend anyone with an interest in World War Two or later vehicles to pick a copy up!

 

 

AB Figures British Infantry WW2

~ Colonel Mustard ~ 3 Comments

I finished another squad of the fantastic AB Figures British Infantry. I get these from Eureka Miniatures in Melbourne and what fine figures they are. Easily my favourite metal World War Two range out there. They have a wide selection which covers infantry, support, artillery and tank crews. Everything you could possibly need. The sculpting and detail are just amazing. It makes them very easy and a great pleasure to paint.

I have two more squads of these guys to paint up. Plus some other British i bought from CP Models and SHQ miniatures. Slowly phasing out my plastic squads as i am leaning towards metal being a better choice for painting and wargaming. Will do a comparison on those figures when i get to painting them up.

Country Roads

~ Colonel Mustard ~ 1 Comment

The Colonel has been on the road, traveling overseas the past few weeks, and only just returned to blog land. I had been working on some country roads as an alternative to my tarmac versions, and this week i finally got them finished. No Normandy battlefield would be complete without some good looking dirt roads.

Roads are one of the more simple terrain pieces to make, so i am not sure why anyone would buy any commercially made, expensive items, when you can make good looking roads for next to nothing. I am planning on playing a scenario from the “I Aint Been Shot Mum” rules so made enough roads for the map in the rulebook.

Its a very simple process. I drew my roads onto a sheet of 3mm MDF and then cut them out using a stanley knife and a handsaw. I made sure every horizontal cut was 8cm wide so all the road sections would fit together. I tried to avoid any straight lines as nothing is ever straight. Then a quick sand of all the rough edges and we are ready to decorate. I used a mix of PVA glue and a paint thickening medium to cover the road surface, and then a decent sprinkling of fine and coarse sand and some grit all mixed up. This gives the road a random texture. When this was dry i did add another round of the gritty mix down the middle of the roads as that is where the bigger stones etc could settle. The sand colours are pretty good but i did give them all a quick spray with a cream colour which blended everything together. The finishing touch was two different flocks along the edge and some random tufts. Check them out, you will see them in an after action report i plan on doing soon!

Metcalfe Models Coaching Inn HO/OO Scale (1/72)

~ Colonel Mustard ~ 2 Comments

I have slowly been expanding my Normandy village with a mixture of buildings from various sources. I much prefer to try and build all my own stuff but it does tend to be very time consuming, so i do like to boost my output with some purchased structures too. The good thing about building your own is that you can create whatever you like and to size with your other scenery. I have found a big difference in heights of purchased houses, making some products unusable. For example i did buy a house from Loic Neveu but it was more like a 15mm building and looked silly with my other buildings. Shame as they are really nice models.

Anyway this Coaching Inn is a card model from the English company Metcalfe Models. They do not ship to Australia so i had to buy it through Antics On Line in the UK. Size wise this is over 120mm tall and fits beautifully with my existing buildings. Its a well designed tough card model. Not too much cutting is involved and the instructions are clear and easy to follow. The acetate windows with details printed on are particular nice. Its not really a French looking building, but i think it fits well enough. They give you a choice of signs, of which i chose The Swan Inn, but i think i will print out something French to put over the top. I mounted my finished model onto 3mm MDF for extra strength. The edges of some of the card and also the building corners need a little touch up with a black marker pen just to tidy it up.

For around ten pounds i think this is great value for a really nice kit. I have a couple more other kits from Metcalfe which i will be making in the coming weeks. If you are looking for something other than resin, plastic or MDF for your table look no further. Some pictures below with the Inn flanked by a home made red brick building on one side and an MDF bought kit on the right. Then some shots of all my buildings quickly laid out.

Dragon Churchill Mk.IV NA75

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This classic British tank was on sale at BNA Model World for $12.50 a few months back so could not resist but pick up a couple of them. That’s just too good a bargain to pass up for a couple of Dragon kits. I needed some more Churchills to add to my Plastic Soldier Company versions and make up a full troop. Now i have four including the large calibre AVRE for support.

These are excellent kits and pretty easy to put together compared to some Dragon kits which can be fiddly. The best thing about them is the running gear which comes in a few pieces for each side but with the wheels already connected in two halves. So you don’t spend hours making and gluing individual wheels and then trying to align them. As we all know the Churchill has as many wheels as a centipede has legs. Well nearly as many. The detail is better and more delicate than the PSC Churchills. You can model the hatches open or closed, which allows you to add some tank crew. In my case i added a couple of excellent fellow from AB Figures, one relaxing against his hatch, the other carrying some kind of map case ready to get on the CB radio.

The only real problem i faced with this kit (both times i made it) was trying to get the upper hull to fit on the bottom hull straight at the back. Either side at the back remained at a funny angle. Not the end of the world and i probably need to get some clamps or something to keep it glued in place for longer. You get some decals with the kit but i used some other PSC decals i had. This gives me plenty of Churchills now. The only ones i had as a kid were from Airfix, and these Dragon models are certainly a great improvement on them. There is an Esci model Churchill out there which i will try and get my hands on too sometime.

AB Figures SS Tank Killers

~ Colonel Mustard ~ 2 Comments

Its always total fun painting any figures from AB. The details are so clear and sharp that they really paint themselves. Once you get the paint on in the right places the rest really looks after itself. They really are the best 20mm figures out there, and even though significantly more expensive than any plastic figures i think its well worth it for the difference in quality. I did recently pick up some more British from CP Models, which look really good, Wartime Miniatures and also SHQ, so i will do a comparison of all them sometime.

But back to these SS troops packing Panzerfausts and Panzershrecks. I did my usual German camo scheme in greens and  browns the only difference was i had some cool new grassy tufts to try out on the bases. The poses from AB are just great, looking natural and realistic. I still have some loading crew, a trooper carrying the Panzershreck rounds and a couple more Panzerfaust firers, to paint next. But i am going to do a more Autumn camo scheme with them for a change. Anyway if you dont have any AB figures run out and get some, they are just brilliant!

Some photos of my tank killing team out on the Farm looking for Shermans.

Teddy Bear Fur Fields

~ Colonel Mustard ~ 5 Comments

My terrain projects continued with some more fields and hedges for my Normandy landscape. In recent weeks i have read a lot of excellent blogs and book articles on the use of Teddy Bear or faux fur so i was very keen to try it out for myself. One of the railway modelling books i have been reading goes into detail about how to use the fur in lots of different ways. The first one i wanted to try was just an open grassy wild field and also one enclosed by hedges with a dirt path running through it.

I picked up a large bit of beige faux fur from Spotlight for about $25. This should be enough for plenty of applications! I then cut out the size i wanted and glued each bit to 3mm MDF bases as usual with PVA glue. Then its attack the fur with a pair of sharp scissors and cut it to the length you want. For the wild grass fields i went pretty hard with a short back and sides and reduced the fur to 3-5mm long. You will see through experiment how long or short looks right for you. I tried using my beard trimmers on it too but they didn’t work. So stick to scissors! If i owned a comb i would have combed the fur to get all the cut bits out and also get it all pointing upright. I dont have a comb so i used my fingers which worked ok. For the path i just cut as close to the base fabric as i could removing all the fur where i wanted the track to go.

Then you can paint the fur using green, yellow and brown acrylics. Make sure you use as little paint as possible and use lots of different shades to get a natural look. The less paint you can use the quicker things will dry. I used a big paint brush (ie for painting walls) to blend all the paints throughout the fur and get a good covering so no original fur colour is left. That’s about as tricky as it gets. The path i just used PVA glue and sand and then some paint. I added little shrubs and weeds and tufts around the place. The hedges were made from horsehair and flock just like my bocage and trees. This fake fur is really handy and i was very happy with the results considering how cheap and easy the process was. I am planning to use it on some country road sides and also a canola field.

Check out my pictures below including the Sherman Firefly crossing the field (of Glory hopefully).

Trumpeter Sturmtiger (Late) 1/72 Scale

~ Colonel Mustard ~ 1 Comment

My last slightly obscure German vehicle I had in my pile of kits came out and was built this last week. The Sturmtiger was a support tank based on the Tiger chassis. Its not a vehicle I would get to use a lot but a lot of fun to have and build anyway. Trumpeter kits are excellent and this one did not disappoint.

Its a very easy kit to build as its mainly a box on a chassis with quite simple running gear. So it didn’t take too long to build. Everything fits together nicely as usual with Trumpeter. The instructions for the gun were a bit vague in parts and then didn’t match the picture on the front of the box. This was confusing. The picture on the box also misses off the MG gun in the hull which is weird. I had to consult some internet pictures and places to try and work out the main gun. I still think I got it a bit wrong, but the box art has missed a bit off totally (its the part that goes around the end of the main gun).

I realise after painting that I am not that happy with this Tiger’s paint job. My camo scheme went a bit screwy and needs more contrast. Also I added too much sand and dirt and it all came out looking a bit the same. I need to cut back on the dirt as with a Dunkelb yellow vehicle you need some contrast otherwise it all just looks a bit boring. The tracks would have looked better left the rusty colour I did prior to all the muck. Also this tank is very boxy and doesn’t have a huge amount of surface detail so I needed to spend more time picking out details with dark washes. Next time I will do a better job! I should also glue down bits of the top of the tracks to signify their weight.

For some reason there are no decals supplied. Not sure why, so you will need to dig up some spares.

Overall this is another wicked little kit from Trumpeter, not sure if anyone else actually makes a 1/72 scale Sturmtiger, but if you want one look no further!

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Making my own trees

~ Colonel Mustard ~ 9 Comments

You always need trees and plenty of them. I have been reading up on more tree making techniques, after the Chinese eBay technique was wearing a bit thin. Looking at railway modelling books and the internet i have seen many ways of using wire to make trees and thought i would give it a go. Starting with anywhere from 15 to 30 pieces of wire up to 15 cm in length i just put some masking tape around the bottom of the whole bundle to create a trunk. Make sure the tape is good and tight to stop the wires from separating. Then its just a question of twisting a number of wires together (3 or more depending on how thick you want the branches to be and how many of them you want). You need to try and create as random a look as possible. I tried lots of different ways of twisting wires together before i got a look that i was happy with. There is a bunch of Youtube stuff out there on this subject, with some people using drills and other devices. I found it easy enough by hand to create some good looking results. I then covered as much of the wire with masking tape nice and tightly, except for the end bits which if only 1 wire thick do not matter. The great thing is wire and masking tape cost very little and you can churn out some really good looking trees for a small outlay. Chinese eBay trees are nice and cheap too but these home made ones look far more natural (in my opinion).

After the tape i give the trees a good coat of a paint thickening medium, but could use PVA glue or filler or something similar. When thats dry i painted them with a mixture of raw umber, burnt umber and white. Tree trunks are a brown grey sort of colour. I did some highlights in a light grey and light brown too to pick out the gnarly details. For the foliage i had sourced some rubberized horsehair from the UK and used that with bits of coconut fibre. The coconut fibre is dirt cheap from Bunnings, while the rubberized horsehair is expensive, so i wanted to stretch the use of the horsehair. I am thinking maybe i could soak coconut fibre in PVA glue and compress it and make my own rubberized fibre. Once the foliage is glued to the wire armatures i used three different kinds of flock sprinkled over PVA glue. Other people use spray adhesive for this step but i found just brushing PVA glue onto the foliage and then sprinkling works well.

All the trees were mounted into MDF bases which are decorated and flocked. You can see with the bigger tree the wires at the base of the trunk can be splayed out and twisted to make big roots. Next up i need to make an apple orchard for my Normandy battlefields….. Tiny apples out of modelling clay. Golden Delicious anyone??

Hasegawa Sdkfz 251/1 Halftrack with AB Crew

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I continued working through my backlog of German vehicles and troops. My buddy Jim from Combat HQ had mentioned German hanomags so i thought i would finish off a Hasegawa kit i had lying around. I have already reviewed this kit in a previous post, but this time wanted to put some grenadiers in the back making a fight of it. The kit itself is a good one, simple to build but more detailed than anything the Plastic Soldier Company do. The only poor thing about is the funny ribber tracks which are a bit crap. If i had some spares i would swap them.

The more exciting bit was choosing the crew and how they would fit in the back. I used some awesome AB figures as usual. This particular pack was made for fighting out of a half track. I also cut the top half off an Esci/Italeri side car machine gunner and glued him to someone else’s standing legs. He makes a nice cap wearing machine gunner at the front. For their camo i tried using a dark yellow instead of a light brown on one round of dots. This worked out well as it provides a better contrast to the other colours. I find with any German SS camo scheme i am doing it does not really matter which three colours i use. A base coat of green or khaki, with darker brown/black patches and red brown patches works nicely. Followed by layers of dots of lighter shades on the darker patches and darker dots on the lighter patches all work well. Its the contrasting colours that create the effect. From my research the range of colours and patterns was so wide it you can basically do whatever you like and it will turn out OK.

Following photos of my finished half track, plus him as part of a Panzer Grenadier unit with other half  tracks, a Kubelwagen and a Marder as support.