CV-33 in 20mm by Frontline and a give-away at Wargaming Girl

A break in my French adventures - I’ve really had it with camo for a while. This time a suitable target for LRDG, an Italian CV-33 tankette.

I tried to weather it to look like a really run down piece of scrap metal.

The model is a resin 3-piece thing from Frontline Wargaming. Descent detailing, but a couple of bubbles here and there, so it needed some green-stuff.

Paints used

Overall Vallejo 916 Sand Yellow

Rubber rims on the wheels Vallejo Panzer Aces 306 Dark Rubber

Washed with Army Painter Quickshade Soft Tone ink and drybrushed Citadel Chainmail

Tracks Citadel Chainmail with a wash of AK enamel Track Wash (a new product I tried for the first time – I’m satisfied with the result, and will continue experimenting with it)

Applied some Vallejo Pigment 73108 Brown Iron Oxide and a generous dusting with AK Pigments AK-041 North Africa Dust.

Such a tiny little thing, here in front of a Panzer II

Soon some fantasy figures.

Wargaming Girl is a really nice site by one of the relatively few active females in the hobby. A very active painter, with mainly Ancients, ACW, 30YW and SF in 15 to 28mm.

Anyway, she has just reached 100 000 hits, and is celebrating big time with a give-away every day for five days.

Day one was a box of Warlord 28mm WWII British infantry

Day two saw two gift vouchers, one from Baccus the other from Ground Zero Games.

Day three: More Warlord plastics, this time a box of Pike & Shotte Royalist Infantry.

Day four – eight 28mm fantasy figures from Reapers’ Bones series.

Day five – today – we see another box from Warlord – Spartans this time.

I’m interested in the Reaper figures, and maybe the Spartans, hopefully I’m lucky. I really need a bigger plastics mountain…

So, go over to Wargaming Girl and check out the giveaway! There is still time to participate in all five competitions. And while you’re there, check out the rest of the site also. Well worth the time!

FT-17 in 1/76 from Revell/Matchbox

I’m not sure I should call this a reinforcement to the French forces, but anyway, here it is: a FT-17 from Revell’s remake of the classic Matchbox set with a Char B1 bis and a FT-17 and a scenic piece.

An easy build giving a decent enough little tank.

When I had started painting it, I remembered that the Finnish army had some in the Winter War. It was disliked, and most of them were emplaced as bunkers… It would have been fun to paint one up as a Finn, but that will be in the future.

I’m not sure about the paints use, as my oldest son came and painted some Space Marines and in the resulting chaos among my paints I forgot what I used for this one.

Welcome Grigork with The Magalomaniac (Mwaha), en excellent blog about wargaming with lots of nice terrain. Recommended.

Also a big welcome to sgt.steiner with the blog Sgt.Steiner's Wargaming Blog about wargames, both board, miniature and PC. With a nom de guerre like that, how could you not like him!

Char B1 bis in 1/76 from Revell/Matchbox

My French forces just got a substantial reinforcement with these two brutes.

They come from Revell’s remake of the classic Matchbox set with a Char B1 bis and a FT-17 with a scenic piece. A good set with two very different tanks, one puny WWI tank, still in service in 1940, and one monster, one of the really feared French tanks.

No problems assembling the tanks, great fit and clear instructions. The tracks are soft plastic, and with hindsight I would have glues them in place and shortened the track length a bit. Now they are a bit too long, and don’t fit tight.

When it comes to painting French armour I had a feeling that everything goes, but also had a feeling that that was not the case. Some research into Char B1 bis camouflage found a very interesting French site, chars-francais.net, with a lot of info on French tanks. The page on Char B1 camouflage gave some very helpful colour plates, and I based my tanks on one of those plates.

Paints used (Vallejo unless otherwise noted)

Dark Green: 979 German Camouflage Dark Green drybrushed with 850 Medium Olive

Brown: 984 Flat Brown drybrushed with 818 Red Leather

Exhaust: Panzer Aces 302 Dark Rust

Tracks: Gunmetal washed with black and Citadel Devlan Mud

Grille: washed with black.

Decals from Aleran Miniatures, France -40 set for H39 and H35 tanks.

Everything got a couple of coats of matte varnish, and a light dusting of MIG P234 Rubble Dust pigment.

Ready for action.

Welcome follower tomw with his brand new blog Hapless Plastic, about everything modelling in plastic. Well worth a look and it certainly looks promising.

Finland in WWII – 160 000 photos!

This Thursday the Finnish Defence Forces made public their war-time photo archive. The interest was enormous, so the site crashed rather immediately. Fixed now.

So, if you have any interest in the Winter War, the Continuation War or the Lapland War you will find something here. You've got some 160 000 photos!

Swedish troops in Kemi, January 1940. Source SA-Kuva.

More Swedes, with a Bofors ATG. Source SA-Kuva.

Fronline. Source SA-Kuva.

Raate road. Source SA-Kuva.

Suomussalmi. Source SA-Kuva.

Just 15995 to go. Enjoy!

Battle Report - Berlin 1945 revisited

The other week my family was away on a skiing vacation, and we took the chance to get a whopping big game in.

Daniel was umpire and stayed close to Berlin, just as last year. As usual based on a real battle, in this case the battle of Wriezen, April 17 1945.

The board from the Russian edge

Daniel and I set up the gaming board the night before, and were ready for action in the morning. Small houses, a woods and some fields, a factory complex, a town, railwaystation and a canal with bridge.

The road leading to the bridge and city centre

The woods, we see the factory in the background

First to come was Jonas, and he and I got the German force. We had some limitations as to where we could set up and knew there were Volksturm somewhere, but we would not know where until we had set up. Mostly hastily set up defences with a wide variety of troops. All our troops were set up hidden, mainly a thin line defending the outskirts of the town. We had some mobile reserves in the town square and a depleted battery of 81mm mortars near the bridge.

Last bread served

One concern was the limbered 88 that we desperately wanted to move back through the main road and emplace in the town centre.

The road to Wriezen

Roos, Fredrik and Mikael dropped in and were given command of the Russians.

The battle starts slowly with Russian smoke and cautious advance.  A short fire fight between recce forces leaves one Italian made Autoblinda 41 in flames and one BA 64 immobilised.

You're supposed to find stuff with your recce troops, but this.... This photo is taken a second before a panzerfaust takes out the BA-64.

Two SU-76 advances, and one is lost while trying to cross a road. Bad die rolls followed by a Hetzer shot. They really got flimsy armour…The other one meets the same destiny later.

The hordes advancing, but all armour in flames

Bad rolls (and more than a bit stupidity on my part) killed a Hetzer in an infantry assault.

Our mortars get into action placing some well-aimed shots in the middle of the bunched up Russian infantry. We also get requests from units on our flank for mortar support, and we give them the most of our fire missions.

Do you notice the lone Russian Big Man. Our sniper noted him...

We have two snipers on the board and they manage to take out two of the scarce Russian Big Men, and another falls from a mortar round. With only one Big Man left, they are in big trouble.

A flanking force of scouts suddenly appears behind the German lines, but they are cut down by cross-fire.

We get radio messages from the units on our right flank that it looks really bad there (it later turns out that our mortar support buys us some time on our right flank, something that probably saved our day). We make the decision to immediately draw back all of our troops into the town, to be able to defend the bridge.

That withdrawal works rather smoothly, but we lose some infantry to machineguns and artillery.

We get frantic calls from our flank that the defences there have broken. The Russians are coming!

 Out of ammo, the mortar crew picks up their rifles.

One squad vs an 88, a StuG, a Stummel and assorted infantry. 

Stummel lost to artillery fire 

And they come rushing over the bridge, but as we have redeployed they are cut to pieces. T-34:s materialize on the other side of the river, starting a fire-fight with my hull down Hetzer.

About here most all players have left hours before, only Daniel and I fight it out, just to see what happens. We call it a night. A very late night…

 A Hetzer retrea... eh, redeploying

Pictures by Daniel as my camera and family were on the same vacation.

Willys Jeep - a 20 mm comparison

I’ve built two different Jeeps, one Revell/Matchbox in 1/76 scale and one from Skytrex sold as 20 mm.

The Revell one is specified as a CJ-2A on the box, meaning Civilian Jeep, and that one was produced from 1945 according to Wikipedia.

I assume that is a mistake, and classify it as a Willys MB.

Revell vs Skytrex - they do look different…

Let’s look at the dimensions (according to Wikipedia):

The real thing: length 3327mm (I assume that includes the bumper), width 1575 mm

The real thing in 1/76 scale: length 44 mm, width 21 mm

Revell: 41 x 19 (approximately scale 1/82)

Skytrex: 46 x 23 (approximately scale 1/70)

One far to small, and the other one approximately right for 1/72

As to the looks, the Skytrex one does have a strange hood.

Better details on the plastic Revell compared to the metal Skytrex

Finally, a big welcome to two new Followers:

Carl with the blog Hitting on a double 1. This and that on gaming and modelling. Nice!

Mauther with Papermau, a blog on paper models. Good!

Civilian cars in 1/76 from Oxford Diecast

In our games we like to have small details on the gaming board. Some furniture in the ruins, a piano in the streets, a couple of pigs running about or whatnot. A couple of civilian cars parked by a house is always nice.

I bought these and a couple of other cars a while ago from Oxford Diecast. They’ve got a lot of very nice cars, trucks, buses and even some military vehicles, from the twenties to now.

They are pre-painted with a very shiny finish, so the only thing I did was to give them a couple of coats of Vallejo Satin Varnish, and a black wash for the radiator of the Morris.

Minimum fuss and very nice ‘details’ on the battlefield, be it France 1940 or NWE 1944-45. Highly recommended.

A 1/72 nun showing off the Bishop's new wheels…

A Morris Eight Saloon Green & Black and a Standard Fly 12 Maroon