Vehicles - a learning experience!

My earlier WW2 vehicles were painted with lots of dry brushing and, for the British ones, using a olive green mixed by eye. Unfortunately this meant I had little confidence I could mix the same colour again and even within the earlier ones I have a lot of variation. Looking at those models now, I am not really satisfied with the effect. I would like to achieve a cleaner and more uniform appearance, as well as a more realistic (and repeatable) match for SCC15.

My first thought, having relied on the painting tutorials on the Crac des Chevaliers blog for my infantry was to continue with the "clean style" for vehicles. Although the results on there look great, when I made  a test I wasn't really happy with either my execution and thought it was a bit too clean on the larger canvas of a tank. Later vehicles on CdC are painted by airbrush with a panel high lighting style which I think I prefer. Although I have owned an airbrush for a few years, purchased to paint my 1:1250 / 1:1200 waterline ship models, I have never really learnt to use it for more than laying down a single uniform coat. With my wargames painting focussing on Italian Wars French and then Late Romans, there was little call for airbrushing! However I came across some great tutorials by Rubén Torregrosa on his HeresyBrush blog, applying this technique to 1:144 tanks so thought I'd give it a go.

I had some vehicles part complete by the dry-brush method but looking closely at these, the assembly wasn't that great and some detail was already obscured by the paint so I decided to strip them back to bare metal. I used a cheap paint stripper from Wilco, which worked well, followed up with a soak in Fairy Ultra and good scrub with a stiff nylon brush and a lighter brush with a brass wire brush to really clean up the surface. The brushes were from a set of 3, also from Wilco, for the bargain price of £1.00 - I'm not sure what I'll do with the miniature steel wire brush but it may come in handy for DIY.

To hold the vehicles for spraying, I attached short sections on dowel to the undersides and appropriate drilled holes in a piece of wood to hold them for drying. The Daimler AC turrets already had their magnets glued on so I just put them on top of round nails, relying on the strong magnet to hold them firmly enough.

I should at this point give a little shout out for a small model and paint shop near me in Coventry: the Paint Rack. I wanted to get the Mig Ammo filters and washes recommended on Heresy Brush and, after recent disappointing results with mat varnish, the Mig Ammo Ultra-Matt varnish that Chevalier de la Terre suggested. The paint rack was able to supply these as well as such much needed advise on airbrushing the primer and varnish.

I started with an airbrushed primer coat using Mig Ammo One Shot black. In hidsight, I think black was maybe a mistake as it was difficulty to see where the dark base coat was covering it - I'll probably use grey next time.

My SCC15 is a 50-50 of Vallejo Model Color 888 Olive Grey and 924 Russian Uniform. I started with a base of 50% SCC15 with 50% black then SCC15 applied from above and at 45° then a first highlight of three parts SCC15 to one part buff and final highlight of 50-50 SCC15 and buff. I picked out small details and some edges with a fine brush and painted details like tools and stowage normally.

The tutorial suggested Vallejo 304 Track Primer, appropriately enough, for the tracks. I didn't have that and figured any medium grey-brown would be OK so used a 50-50 mix of Olive Brown and Medium Grey.

With the painting done, I was looking forward to applying the decals then filters and washes to bring the whole thing together and add definition. To provide a smooth surface for the decals, I brushed on some Tamiya gloss varnish locally where the markings would go and over exposed details to provide a bit of extra protection. This was a huge mistake. The Tamiya varnish reacted with the Vallejo paint to produce a bubby, smeared mess and I didn't realise until I had done the last part of the last vehicle. 

So rather than a series of finished photos, here they are back in the paint stripper.

As a late addition, adding insult to injury, the paint stripper has turned the black primer into a tar-like goo that is insoluble in everything I’ve tried so far.

We (hopefully), learn from our mistakes and this is certainly providing a lot of learning opportunities!

15mm WW2 German Company HQ and another platoon.

As I've previously written, I started my WW2 15mm collection back in the early 1990s. I'd like to think my painting has improved since then but I didn't want to discard the effort I'd put into painting those earlier figures so my plan was to do a minimal update to blend them in with newly painted figures as I expended and re-based my collection to suit new rules.  However the reality was that my colours then were so far off that most details needed re-doing and even the uniform shadow colour was a poor match so by the time I'd given them a wash of Army Painter strong tone, new mid-tones and highlights for the uniforms and all the details repainted, I don't think I saved any time at all. 

The officer, panzerfaust team and a few others are painted from bare metal whilst others, including the riflemen in the three squads are the refurbs. It should be obvious which was which from the faces. All the figures are from PeterPig.

The new figures, including the panzerfaust team above, were painted and varnished after the refurbed figures and didn't suffer the satin varnish drama of my previous German platoon. Although there is a bit of sheen in the photos, this isn't apparent on the models.

With two platoons done and a third well along, I thought I thought I'd better get a company command base done. As with my British infantry, this is three figures, including a radio, on a 30 mm square base.

I've tried various materials to represent aerials. Bristles from brushes - relatively in-scale but too fragile and too much variation. Very fine piano wire - too many puncture wounds and too much blood dripped onto the miniatures. I did briefly consider cat's whiskers but he is now hiding under the spare bed so this one uses fishing line. It looks way over-scale and a bit curved but it should be tough and safe.

I'm now most of the way through another platoon. After that I plan to do a couple of MG42s on tripods then I'll be back to the British 4 KSLI for another company and the carrier platoon. 5 platoons down, only another 11 to go, plus vehicles!

First German Platoon

For this first platoon, I used all new figures and tried to follow the clean painting style and colour choices on the excellent Crac des Chevaliers blog.

I'm pleased with the result and it is certainly an improvement on my earlier WW2 Germans, painted with lots of dry brushing and with a far too blue field grey, but inevitably it falls a bit short of what I was aiming for. Not quite as clean as I wanted and the varnish has gone satin - not sufficiently mat varnish really is my Achilles heel! 

These took quite a long time. A combination of  trying to follow somebody else’s methods and a strictly defined colour scheme with much less space for making it up as you go compared with my Romans or Italian Wars collection. Ah well - practice makes perfect.

One issue from using a single base for a section, including the LMG team is that you can’t really use prone figures firing a bipod MG42 mixed with upright figures. It looks ok with advancing figures, as below, but I’m not 100% convinced by the standing firing figures. 

I especially pity the loader here, being used as a rest for the MG42. Really hope he has some good ear plugs!

Back to Normandy in 1944

4th King's Shropshire Light Infantry, A Company. 4 KSLI were part of 11th Armoured Division, landing on Juno Beach on D+7 and playing an important role in the division's battles through Normandy to taking Antwerp, liberating the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp and ending the war on the Baltic coast of Germany to block a feared Soviet advance into Denmark.

After a sustained effort painting a Late Roman army, I have turned my attention back to World War 2 gaming in 15mm

My British and German forces were based for "Overlord" by Barrie Lovell / Firebase Games. Whilst these are very detailed and have the feel of being realistic and grounded in personal experience of military practice, they don't give a very quick game and max out at an infantry company plus support per player. It seems to me that most identifiable actions in this period were battalion sized so I would like to be able to depict that on the table top with a reasonably playable game and a satisfying sense of scale. 

The question then is: which rules? Convincingly depicting scale seems one of the hardest challenges for WW2 rules. Having two or three infantry figures on a base seems common then different rules use a base as an sub-component of a squad, a whole platoon or a company and sometimes there is no easy way to tell from looking at the game whether you are seeing a company or a brigade.

Overlord has an infantry section as three bases - two rifle groups and an LMG team. A British late war platoon is 14 bases, 45 (independently moving) bases plus support for a company. It is easy to see why it bogs down beyond a company per player! I've just bought the new "O Group" rules from Reisswitz Press which look really promising but has just three bases - as few as 9 figures for a platoon and that just seems too few to to me to look like a platoon. 

A regular opponent and I have been trying to write our own rules with one base per section and separately depicted platoon command and support. I'm therefore expanding and rebasing my collection for these potential new rules or O Group, with 5 figures on an infantry section  base - enough for an NCO, LMG and three riflemen so three bases looks a bit more like a platoon of three squads.

Different platoon representationss. Left to right: three bases of three figures; three bases of my new five figure section bases; three sections plus command, PIAT and 2" mortar and an Overlord German platoon - a British platoon would have an additional base for the 2" mortar. 

As well as rebasing, I needed some additional figures. I painted the earlier figures with a lot of dry-brushing and washes but my painting style has moved on since then and I'm trying to use the clean three layer technique, taking advice on paint choices from the excellent Crac des Chevaliers blog. I started off with a lot of enthusiasm for updating the older figures with webbing and packs to match as well as new high-lights and helmets. After the first platoon though I slacked off to just the helmets and a few high-lights on the battledress. Without the closeup lens you only notice the hats and bases anyway.

Another dilemma is basing style. I've stuck with the same style as for my Late Romans and (more importantly) all my scenery, with one small difference. The sand to provide texture for my British bases was picked up off the beach at Arromanches, so Gold Beach, a few miles to the West of where 11th Armoured actually landed on Juno. 

Late Roman Army for Mortem et Gloriam

 

One of the invariable rules of wargaming with a competition/points based set of rules is that there are never quite enough points for what you would like to do and choices have to be made. Late Romans seem particularly expensive so this restriction bites especially tightly - a good thing for us slow painters as it reduces the number of figures needed!

To field the figures I have painted so far as an army under the Mortem et Gloriam rules, my draft army list is below. I'd welcome criticism of this from MeG players and suggestions for improvement, both with the figures I have already painted and the additions and alternatives I have further down.

I still have some figures left over, some which I am planning to paint, to give me some more alternatives. 

 
Top left is three Legio Heroica Ballista so three bases of light artillery, either as a stand-alone unit or as an option for the three Legions, replacing an infantry base.

Below them some lance and bow armed heavily armoured cavalry with half armoured horses. I have 12 of these and was originally thinking of an extra unit of lance and bow armed loose order cavalry but these don't exist in MeG for the Romans so I thought I'd swap in a couple of fully armoured horses and paint up 8 of them as two bases of close order cavalry to give the option of a 6-base unit of Cataphracts. I can't see me ever having enough spare points to field this however.

Bottom left are some heavy cavalry which I want to use to increase the Honoriani Taifali Iuniores to 6 bases. Unfortunately I only have 5 riders so some creativity will be needed to avoid having to pay a minimum order postage charge on a single 15mm rider!

Top right are 4 groups to expand my 3 Legions and the Petulantes Seniores Auxillia to 8 bases, including one with integral archers. Another option is to buy another pack of legionaries and/or auxiliaries and paint one or two more infantry units for an infantry-heavy army.

Finally, bottom right, 4 more archers to give the option of expanding the Sagittarii Venatores skirmishers to 8 bases.

Late Romans - my original inspiration

In my early days of wargaming I was given the PSL Guide to Wargaming, published in 1980 and long out of print. This contained chapters on various periods, each written by a different person. The chapter on the ancient period was written by Phil Barker, of the WRG, and amongst the illustrations were some photos of his Late Roman army using Minifigs 25mm figures:

'Late Roman artillery with stone-throwing heavy engines and bolt-shooting light engines deployed behind a screen provided by the Batavi. Pack animals and draught oxen wait in rear. The engines are by Hinchcliffe Models.'

'Late Romans in action against their most dangerous traditional enemies, the Sassanid Persians. Persian super heavy and extra heavy cavalry advancing supported by elephants have been countercharged by Roman cavalry. The Persian infantry huddle miserably in the rear, while their light cavalry attempt an outflanking move. The Sassanid figures are obsolete (and that was in 1980!) Miniature Figurines.'

Phil Barker summed the Late Roman Army up with these words: 'Gibbon would have described these as decadent. They would probably have described themselves as up-to-date! Compared with the earlier army described above, they use much more cavalry including super-heavies and horse archers. The infantry have lost their metal armour in favour of moulded leather or none at all, but carry big oval shields painted in colourful regimental patterns, and have added a variety of light throwing darts of very long range to their earlier weapons. Each unit includes a proportion of archers. High quality regular troops can be combined with a variety of barbarian irregulars. A good all-round army and my personal favourite.'

The combination of the rather grainy black and white photos, the captions and Phil Barkers positive comments and personal endorsement had me convinced - I wanted one just like that. The Nottingham Wargames Club, where I was a member, had largely gone for 15mm so I followed suit and started collecting my own Late Roman army but my slow painting, exacerbated by the demands of 'O' and 'A' levels meant that it was still unfinished when I went to University, where other pursuits took over, so it sat in suspended animation for almost 40 years before I picked it up again in late 2018.

'Right wing of Late Roman army formed for battle. Light cavalry of the Promoti and Scutarii on the extreme right, then Catafractarii guard the outer flank of the infantry with the Alani in support behind. Two Palatine Auxilia units, the Cornuti and Victores, form the first infantry line with the Legions of the Lanciarii and Herculiani in support. The Emperor and his bodyguard wait behind the junction of the cavalry and infantry. Figures by Miniature Figurines.'

As I haven't painted my bolt-shooters yet and have neither stone-throwing heavy engines nor Sassanid Persian Super Heavy Cavalry to pose for a photograph, here are some of my Late Romans in more or less the same formation:

Right wing of my Late Roman army formed for photography. Light Cavalry of the Secundo Sagittarii and Promoti Seniori on the extreme right, then Catafractarii guard the outer flank of the infantry with the Honoriani Taifali Iuniores in support behind. Two Palaitine Auxilia units, the Celtae Seniores and Leones Iuniores (probably) form the first infantry line with the Legions of the Lanciarii Galliency Honoriani and Secunda Britanica in support. The Emperor and his bodyguard wait behind the junction of the cavalry and infantry. Figures by Miniature Figurines, Asgard/Table Top Games/Alternative Armies' Isarus, Gladiator Miniatures and Legio Heroica.

More Late Roman Sub-generals

 

These two additional sub-generals are the final elements I needed to field a 10,000pt army for Mortem et Gloriam. 

I wanted to have all three horses in each group with the same gait - either walking or galloping and with all the horses different.

As before, the quality level of the general is shown by the shield colour - the MeG standards of red for 'Legendary', yellow for 'Talented', green for 'Competent' and white for 'Mediocre'. For the army commander and first sub-general, I used a rare earth magnet glued into the base and made the shields out of washers. That gave a really strong attractive force - so strong that the snap as the magnet grabs the washer risked chipping the paint! For these I used the same rare earth magnets but made the shields from a circle of plasticard, backed with steel paper and the dome and boss made from Milliput. This gives a weaker attraction but I think it will still be enough and it is much easier to swap the shields around as needed.

In common with my Late Roman army commander and previous sub-general, the guards have the shield pattern of the Scola Scutariorum Secunda.

The first sub-general is a Gladiator Games rider from their armoured cavalry command group on a Minifigs Byzantine half-armoured horse. Strangely, for a commander of cataphracts or clibanarii, he was modelled with knee-length breeches and open-toed sandals so I covered his legs and feet with a bit of Milliput to give him trousers and shoes / late Roman military sandals. 

The vexillum bearer is a Minifigs heavy cavalryman mounted on a spare horse of unknown origin. I made the vexillum from soldering two pieces of brass rod the glueing on a piece of aluminium foil and a circle of plastic. The design is hand painted and based on a surviving 3rd century vexillum from Egypt, depicted in the Osprey book 'Roman Standards & Standard-Bearers (2)'. For the earlier sub-general's vexillum, I used metallic paint but I found that quite hard to control and achieve the depth and subtlety of tone that I wanted so used shades of brown-yellow this time. I think I prefer the non-metallic metal style for standards.

The vexillum bearer for the second, galloping, group is a Minifigs figure on an Asgard horse. Again the vexillum design is based on one in the Osprey book, with the inscription 'soli invicto' - the unconquered sun.

The vexillum bearer's shield was much smaller than the other heavy cavalry figures. I'd used one of these figures before (Heavy Cavalry: Equites Honoriani Taifali Iuniores) and let it go but afterwards regretted it as it stood out a bit compared to the rest of the unit. This time I made a new shield from plasticard and Milliput. The figure was cast with a mail coat and bare arms but the definition on the mail was very soft and looked quite different to the two Asgard figures so I smoothed it right off and used more Miliput to add sleeves for an un-armoured look.

The sub-general is an Asgard cavalry officer with a spear replacing his mace. The horse is Minifigs - I had two like this but have no idea what pack they came in. His shield is based on a pattern of unknown colour (taken from carved ivory showing 4th/5th C guardsmen) in the old WRG Armies and Enemies book. I chose the colours to pick up on the unconquered sun theme. 

The escorting heavy cavalryman is an Asgard rider and horse, unmodified apart from replacing the cast spear with brass rod and making a new shield boss to match the smaller ones of the other vexillum bearers and guards.

Although I have a few additions and alternatives still to complete, now I have a usable Late Roman army, I'm going to have a break from Romans and switch over to painting WW2 models and making scenery for a while.