Tank Destroyer!

Just eye candy for this post, no history. I finally got the crew for my Rubicon M36. Painted them and fit them in the turret.

Romans!

Okay, a couple of quick posts to show my reasonably recent work.

First a small 12 men unit of Ceasarian Roman legionaries from Warlord. I bought them sprue by sprue in one of their sprues sale. Shields are LBMS.  I like them, and painting them was quite nice, but the annoying part was for the gladius armed ones removing the gladiuses (gladia, if my latin has not gone completely downstair...) from the scabbards. Now it was not that difficutl (advantage of plastic, easy to cut!) but when the manufacturer as pila and gladia armed ones on different sprues (and sold separately...)  you expect the the bodies are different. Instead only the arms are...

Anyway here are the chaps ready for combat:

I like the shields, I had to get used to a decent method to apply the LBMS transfer on the big spine shields but after a couple of different approaches I found the easy going one... I trimmed the whole shape carefully, did the hole for the boss, and then applied the transfer. Then when it was dried, I used microsol solution to soften it. It was much better than going with the two halves separately.  Then usual retouching with a fine brush. 

It is Battles time, again

Well,

the new issue if Battles, issue #13 to be exact, is coming next month. Game will be Solferino 1859 (from Vae Victis) in a new edition (oh well it is the trend of the day, second editions). Articles will be as usual aplenty, two of them mine. Here is a quick run down of the components provided by the publisher:

• Reviews: Montelimar: The Anvil Of Fate, Holland'44, Helsinki 1918, Mike Force, Radetzky's March, Albuera 1811, At Any Cost: Metz 1870, The Battle Of Blenheim 1704, '65, D-Day At Iwo Jima, Nemesis, Fortress Sevastopol...

• Back to: Empire Of The Sun, War Of The Suns...

• History: A Memory Of Many Solferinos

• Most Wanted: The designers talk about their coming games, Root...

• General articles by Charles Vasey, Elias Nordling, Tom Russel, Philip Sabin...And more... 132 pages!

IT sounds quite packed. I am looking forward to Metz (now that it is more difficult to get hold of it, I am getting interested!), and Blenheim. Not very impressed by the word 'root'... 

I know Battles has never been published with a steady schedule, but the reviews are usually (if we except the crap David Hughes writes...) top notch, on average better than Vae Victis' (the other French wargaming magazine) average. 

This is not to say that Vae Victis is bad, or that their reviews are bad, just that I found Battles one usually deeper. 

Jagpanzers! (of the IV kind!)

Sunny days manes good pictures, hopefully...

Last year I have shown my little Peter Pig Jagdpanzer IV Lang, and also discussed a bit of the history behind the vehicles. In the fall I discovered a new French company, Normandy Miniatures, producing plastic kits in my beloved 15mm scale. A M8/M20 and a Jagdpanzer IV. I ordered a Jagdpanzer set to try. They are sold in 5 vehicles 'boxes' (it is a pattern?). Of course my order arrived without a box... but 5 vehicles (two sprues per vehicle) were there.

Good thing is the fact you can build L48 and L70 Vomag version and an L70 Alkett version. Bad thing is that the kit is not on par with PSC, Zvezda or Battlefront current release. Of course it is the first effort of a new company so maybe I am just hypercritical and spoiled.  The vehicle itself is well designed, even if the plastic is a bit shiny and the detail is not on par with the more established companies. No crew figures are provided, and the hatches are quite thick and do not fit well. Also the 'mantlet' (I know it is not a mantlet, it is more like a covered mount...) assembly could benefit from a better design, and a better connection with the hull. The main gun also tend to unnaturally elevate, and you have to be careful during the build stage. Instructions could be better too! 

Said that Normandy Miniatures' Guderian's duck rendition is good. I also had spare crews and storage to add.  The assembly itself was quite nice, excpet for gun and hatched. The tracks are well done on the other hand.

Not overly persuaded by the schurzen, but, hey... they work.

Okay, not the greatest plastic 15mm kit, a a bit overpriced for the quality, but still a good addition to my giant German collection. also it is a very useful addition to 1955-45 German forces. I have now 4 L70, two L48 and two Alketts.  I can cover different situations quite easily. And when painted they are nice little tank destroyers.  

A couple of words on the Alkett, it is ugly, basically a Panzer IV hull with a welded on box. It looks like a driver training tank, but it was a quick conversion (less elaborate than the Vomag, redesigning part of the hull) to get a 75mm L70 gun on the field quickly. They also appeared in several units up until the end of the war. So... ugly or not, it is something you can find quite useful in your arsenal. I will threw them on the table soon and tell you how they fare!

A new(renovated) crusader force

Okay,

spring time here at the Forward HQ, and with spring come the seasons of cleaning and renovation... okay we must clean every season...

Anyway, jokes aside, let's come straight to the point of this blog, mainly miniatures and wargames. When I started painting 15mm chaps (ages ago, last century!) I painted two Essex DBA (version 1!) prepackages crusader armies, one with knights on horses, one with dismounted knights. Let's be frank, the panting was awful, despite my being proud of it at the time. So awful that they ended up in a box and had been almost forgotten for years... until...

sometime I got bitten by a strange bug... the saving man bug. Why buying new miniatures when I have perfectly usable ones that I can salvage? Here is the result...

Ended up adding troops from another old painting effort, some anglo-norman chaps. I have imagined them for Lion Rampant, bbut can also form the core of a bigger force for battle rules like Ironbow or impetus. Some sculpts are a bit old (Essex regraved the line), but they still work well once painted. 

I have three units of knights, three of serjeants, one of bidowers, and a general (from Gladiator). 

Every shield has been hand painted. I am not 100% sure I can handle 15mm transfers... and I was on the cheap.

Maybe they are not perfect, but the mass effect is here, and I like the final result.

Considering I was just saving soldiers from the forgotten dump box, I am very happy.  now I have a decent crusader force ready for action. Maybe I will add some crossbowmen, they were a stable of crusader armies after all!  I have plenty from gladiator still in their baggies!

Something dangeorus... a XV century bombard...

Okay,

well delayed first post of the year... this really highlights  how unreliable I am in my posting.

Anyway last week I was rummaging in the assorted bits boxes. I found these lovely Foundry chaps in one of the boxes of primed miniatures. Basically I forgot to have primed them!  This is the downside of going back and forth from two countries, sometime I start a project have to go away, forgot that the project has started and the miniatures had been primed...).  You can even retort this is the downside of having kilos of unpainted miniatures. 

Anyway I decided to reduce the amount of primed white metal. I like paint the old Perry sculpts from foundry, and I am slowly building a second War of the Roses retinue, mainly for Lion Rampant.  I also wanted to try round bases instead of my usual rectangular ones for artillery.  



Considering I did everything (painting the gunners and the guns, putting them on the base and gluing the sand) yesterday morning and today I painted the base... well I am satisfied of the quick project. 

It will be a nice objective for Lion Rampant scenarios, or something more dangerous (for the enemy or for its owner it is still to determine!).  The gun does not look very safe at close distance, but it will be nice as a siege weapon. I really like the master gunner figure. It is full of character and was fun to paint.