BEF – A9 and A10 from SHQ

These tanks are the latest addition to my now growing force of BEF vehicles. I bought them years ago, and they got totally wrong colours then. A bath in acetone made short work of the paint (and super glue).
The kits are of descent quality. It's quite a lot of work to get them presentable, and there are some prominent mould missmatches and partly destroyed moulds making for less than perfect detail. 

Painted as my other BEF-vehicles; camouflage Dark Green G4 and Khaki Green G3 from DOA. Tracks Vallejo Panzer Aces 304 drybrushed with Vallejo 865 Oily Steel. Rubber GW Black. Everything washed with a dilute wash of Army Painter Quickshade Dark Tone.

Decals from ‘BEF – set 2 AFVs’ from Dan Taylor, and ‘UK – Tactical Markings UK-4’ from Aleran Miniatures.

A dusting with pigments to make them a bit dirty.

BEF – Scout cars, trucks and ugly guns

First batch of 20mm BEF vehicles painted and ready for action.

First two Daimler Scout Cars from Skytrex. Really nice metal kits (They have been re-launched by 20mm Zone/Early War Miniatures with new moulds and all).

Bedford OYD 3 ton Lorries from Frontline (number B16)

Morris Commercial 15cwt Platoon Truck from Frontline (B1) and Bedford 15cwt light truck from Brittania (RVM24)

Finally three 2pdrs. They were ugly when I built them a long time ago, and they are still ugly. But they were my test-cases for the new paints. I have a couple of Zvezda ones that I plan to build shortly. They are much, much nicer.

So, what about paints then? British vehicle colours are a tricky issue, and Mike Starmer did a great job at figuring out the exact shades of the colours used.

DOA is a new company, specialising in WWII paints. They’ve used Mike Starmer's results and has produced a great set of paints for everyone interested in British armour. I bought mine from Trackpads. Highly recommended.

I used Dark Green G4 and Khaki Green G3.

The gas-indication colour patches on the bonnets are Vallejo 923 Japan Uniform WWII.

As if colours were not enough, we have the markings of the vehicles to take into consideration. The soft skins were relatively easy, as I used the excellent ‘BEF 1940 Softskins (1)’ sheet from Dan Taylor Modelworks for most of the decals. Also 'British Arm of Service Markings AD38' from Skytrex Decals and a little bit of free-hand painting.

The scout cars were a mix of ‘UK – BEF 1940 Markings’ from Aleran Miniatures and ‘BEF – set 2 AFVs’ from Dan Taylor and some free-hand painting.

All decals applied on gloss varnished surfaces, and were coated with Vallejo Decal Medium and Decal Fix, and a final coat of Matt Varnish.

The vehicles finally got a dusting with pigments.

Welcome follower Sanguemarcio with the blog Miniature Warfare, a really nice site on wargames, miniatures and terrain – beautiful stuff.

28mm furniture from 4Ground

I’ve bought some stuff for my growing 28mm Wild West collection. Easiest to get table-ready were these counters from 4Ground. I wanted to try their new MDF furniture, and the counters looked useful.

Straight Counter in light wood – this is a set with 12 pieces that glues together easily. It took me less than 10 minutes to finish.

Corner Counter in light wood – 22 pieces makes this corner counter. It bit harder to build. I recommend that you dry-fit the pieces, as some are mirror images of each other but they have the same identifying letter. I noticed that when I had glued some pieces together, but before the glue had set. Took a bit longer, but still just slightly more than 10 minutes.
I used white glue as you have time to make adjustments (and have a chance to rescue your failures)

Highly useful pieces of furniture this. Relatively easy to assemble, and ready to game with as soon as the glue sets.

She’s drunk, that’s the reason for the blurry picture. But you'll get an idea of the size of these things. 

4Ground recommends that you coat these furniture with a matt varnish. I haven’t yet, but might.

Hangar in 1/72 scale

I got this kit last winter, started building it and put it away as I needed to spray-paint the components and that is best done outside when the weather is decent. So, off course, I forgot it.

During my big drive to tidy up and organise my gaming stuff, the hangar surfaced. As one of my goals this year is to finish all my half-made stuff, this got a bit of priority.

It’s a laser-cut cardboard kit and produced by GPM, a Polish company. It is cleverly done with corrugated cardboard for all the walls and the roof.

Construction of the kit is a bit fiddly, and especially the beams are prone to bend when you put them together and when you place the beams onto the walls. I used a good trick I learned from Battle Systems; I coated the fragile ends with super glue, turning them rock-hard.

A good advice is to dry-fit everything before gluing (I used superglue gel) as the instruction sheet isn’t very clear. I assembled the individual walls first and then put them together as an open box. Attached the girders for the roof after that, and when dry attached the corrugated roof. I then glued the hangar onto the ground-sheet and finally attached the doors.

I attached the windows in a different way that the instructions said, as I thought that looked better. So, do try everything out beforehand.

The end result is an enormous hangar. Really good-looking and a very useful addition to our Italian desert airfield. Soon to be raided by LRDG.

Recommended!

British vehicle colours and markings - reference library

I’ve read up quite a lot on BEF and the colours used. I started with Mike Starmer’s books quite a long time ago, and there I learned a lot about the camouflage schemes used and how the colours looked like.

After that I’ve got a great series of books that really goes in-depth on British AFV:s and their colours and markings.

The books are really good if you want to penetrate this very tricky subject.

Volume 1 – 'Colours and the interpretation of photos (very interesting this), ‘Vehicle paint and camouflage schemes up to 1939’, ‘Registrations, war department numbers and census marks 1903-2003’ (never again give your Churchill the registration number of a Universal Carrier)

Volume 2 – ‘Paint and camouflage 1939-1945’ (After reading this you’ll feel a bit less confused about when to use what), ‘Sub-unit markings and callsign systems’ (get a feel for those geometric company markings, and more. Lots more.)

Volume 3 – ‘Paint and camouflage post WWII’, ‘Arm of service markings’ (those squares with different colours – they actually mean something…), ‘Formation signs’ (the marking of the different divisions, and when they were used)

Volume 4 – ‘Recognition markings’ (white squares, allied stars etc), ‘Vehicle names’ and finally ‘Miscellaneous markings’.
All published by MMP Books.

All in all a must buy if you want to penetrate the tricky subject of British vehicle camouflage and markings. I give these books a rating of five of five possible.

In the next couple of weeks you’ll see my fleet of BEF vehicles. I’m painting furiously. You’ll get tips on which colours to use, and decal manufacturers.

I’m back in WWII-mode.

Wooden pipeline still in use

I visited Gävle for a birthday party the other week, and whilst walking to the party from the cabin where we slept over I saw this:

It is a wooden pipeline, still in use, transporting 10 000 m³ of water an hour. Built in 1952 to supply fresh water to a paper mill close by.

Fascinating to see something like this in these days.

Skeletons and Revenants from Mantic

Inspired by the Dungeon Saga Kickstarter I brought out some Mantic figures from the plastics and metal mountain. 

Ten of these skeletons come from the Skeleton Command sprue and five from the Undead Revenant sprue. The latter also have 10 figures on the sprue, but I’m not overly fond of some of them, so they stayed on the sprue for the time being.

Colours used: Citadel Scab Red, Formula P3 Bootstrap Leather, Humbrol 63 Leather, Vallejo 034 Bone White, 912 Tan Yellow, 894 Cam. Olive Green, 881 Yellow Green, 921 English Uniform, 886 Green grey, 885 Stone Grey, 863 Gunmetal Grey, 843 Cork Brown and 874 Tan Earth. Everything washed with Army Painter Strong Tone.

Comparison between Mantic and old GW skeleton 

Now I will focus more on 20mm WWII Early War. British troops are first in the painting queue.

Finally, the Heretic Kickstarter unlocked some more fabulous new minis.

Madame Ner’Gabba (work in progress)

Maggotmen (3 different for £6)

The Angel of Righteous Anger

B’Hakoth the Fallen One

Hurry, it closes on September 3.