Airfix 1/76 European corner house

Okay, so occasionally I succumb to curiosity, and also to having an easy life, i.e not scratch building scenery. I have passed these kits in model shops many times and thought, no, at 1/76 they are too small for 28mm figures. They are really, but I took a chance when I saw one cheap on ebay.

The building itself comes as a one piece resin kit, with separate windows. I have to say it's a pretty good little model, so the first thing I did when I took it out of the box was to start messing it up. 

I had one of those 'I must do this immediately' moments, and after about 2 minutes of thinking I started to 'jack' it up a bit. 

28mm Warlord Fallschirmäger for scale

Foamcore glued to the base of the walls didn't look too terrible, and actually the model doesn't lose its proportions. In 28mm terms its maybe gone up by around 18 inches, which helps. The interior is still tight but you could get a small squad inside it more or less, or a sniper team on the small upstairs floor area, which I might extend. I scraped back the moulding feature on the door and extended it with some card (if I may say Airfix, I thought the door looked a bit small anyway).

Milliput. Why is it you always blend what you think is just the right amount and end up with loads left? Door frames and the bottom of the walls got a bit of work, but nothing too involved or too precise. It's a ruined building and I will pile up lots of debris against the walls anyway. with a decent paint job it will look fine. I'm confident in my ability to bodge it.

Made some progress on the paint job. Quite enjoying just painting freely, rather than the close in, lip biting attention that painting a figure requires! I am following the colour scheme from the box art, as I couldn't be bothered to come up with anything else, and frankly, why bother? There is enough external wall on one side to stick up a couple of posters from www.tinytintroops.co.uk which will look cool. One from the sheet is in the Carentan episode of Band of Brothers, so it would be churlish not to use it!

I wasn't going to bother with the windows at all, but the little sheet metal frames and 'glass' are a perfect fit, and I think they add a lot to the look. I 'broke' a couple of the panes for effect. Glued the whole thing down on card, more for ease of working than anything else, but it let me paint a rudimentary flagstone floor and a pavement of sorts. I've still got to weather it and add some rubble, but it's looking okay I think.

Completed the painting on the building and the base, so it's just adding rubble and broken timbers, that sort of thing. 

Bolt Action (other rules are available)

The wargames thing goes back a long way to my childhood. I tried and failed to play proper games, and my mates and I played 'Battles for the Ardennes' which at the age of 12 seemed like a terribly serious game, map based, using counters. We probably weren't even playing it properly. The box was cool though.

Anything with models usually involved far too many tanks and no real plan. I loved to build and paint these tanks and was prolific in my output. The whole thing petered out as these things often do, when I entered my teenage years and felt that playing with models was perhaps a bit of a lame thing to admit to. Now at the age of 45 I don't bloody care what anyone thinks or says, and I'm determined to play a proper game of war with rules and everything.

I claim utter novice status here and so have done the obvious thing and gone for what looks like the highest profile rule set (argue if you want, dude) Bolt Action. I bought the first edition from ebay for next to nothing just after the second edition was released. Clever boy! They seem like good rules from the understanding point of view, and the book looks great. It's everything I wanted wargames rules to be when I was 10, but weren't. So well done @WarlordGames, that's how to get young gamers (and old gits like me) and keep them I reckon.

There of course are lots of other rule sets, and maybe I will try those too. If I can get a satisfactory game out of this I will probably be happy. At the moment I only have the basic rules, but there are lots of add-ons and supplements regarding army lists and actual WW2 campaigns, etc, etc. Also I find Warlord Games to be fairly generous with discount codes, free postage, sprue deals, percentage off deals and so on. I have bought most of my small collection at a fraction of the cost it should have been. The models are already reasonably priced anyway, and competitive with other manufacturers. And no I'm not on commission.

A Greyhound off the leash

This amazing looking vehicle was used by the US and British/Commonwealth forces during WW2 in an all round combat/recce role. It came into service in 1943 and was used as the M8 armoured car with a 37mm gun, or in reduced capacity as the M20 scout car which served more as a command vehicle, armed with a 50 cal. The British called it the Greyhound, due to its relatively high road speed of around 55mph.

This link shows one running. Posted on YouTube by Tauro.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YSlNld1xsXg

Like the Stug and other Bolt Action armoured vehicles, the kit is made by Italeri in 1/56 scale. Quality is high and detail is sharp, and there is a decal sheet included.

I am doing the M8 build as I haven't yet got any US armour and I want to give my paratroopers some sort of back up. The Germans have a Stug after all!

Fantastic detail on the underside! It would even look good upside down, which on a wargames table, is very likely!

It's a marvel of engineering when you look at it, I have a 4WD which seems complicated enough, never mind 6WD. It's not surprising that it would easily get bogged down in mud. This is more or less done now so moving on to the upper body...

It's had its first coat of olive drab, and a little bit done on the interior. Wasn't sure of the colour so I opted for white inside. In the YouTube vid the interior seemed to be white, or at least a light colour.
Once the turret is fitted there is very little on view anyway. Speaking of the turret, the parts are off the sprue and in various stages of daubing with paint. Certainly the most fiddly part of the build, and a wee bit of scraping required to get the barrel to fit through the housing.

Nicely detailed turret interior, I like the ammo racks.

You have to stop when it's done, but no doubt I will change my mind and tinker with the paintwork. I have however applied a modest amount of 'mud' made with flour and brown paint, so maybe that's a sign. A couple of small stars to paint and then the small decals.

Close to completion now, the turret parts are painted and awaiting final assembly.

Looks like the turret was pretty tight for space if you were a big fella! Also being open to the sky must have made it vulnerable to attacks by determined panzergrenadiers, if they felt like taking it on!

Nothing else to do now apart from fitting the turret. It is one of my favourite WW2 vehicles and I think it will look great on the wargames table. I'm really enjoying these Italeri kits, can't wait for the next one!

Gallery 44: Figures for Bolt Action

German Heer:  

One of the units I've chosen is the 26th Volksgrenadier division, put together in 1944 with the remnants of the 26th Infanterie Division and the 582nd Volksgrenadier Division. 

Volksgrenadier units were supposed to be comprised of volunteers formed around a core of experienced NCO's. Their training was often insufficient however, no doubt due to the pressure on manpower. The intended role of the Volksgrenadiers was defensive, which meant they were well equipped for this late stage of the war, many being armed with the StG 44 assault rifle and Panzerfausts. There are more pics of these guys on How I paint... Volksgrenadiers.

Warlord metal Volksgrenadiers

Warlord plastic grenadiers

This photograph posted on Twitter by twitter.com/WWIIpix shows prisoners of the 26th division in Bastogne, 1944. They look both dejected and somewhat defiant, but I suppose you would. At least they survived.

Providing the opposition for my Volksgrenadiers will be the US airborne. Highly trained, motivated and well equipped, they have become the stuff of legend. These are the most recent ones off the bench. Once again from Warlord Games they are the 28mm US paratrooper squad of ten metal figures.

The command group and the bazooka an mortar teams are on the 'Tired Brushes' post, so these guys will keep them company.

Plastic possibilities

Metal figures are great, but they are what they are. The availability of plastic multipose figures in 28mm means you can have suit yourself and have all sorts of possibilities, including conversions. I got hold of a sprue of late war German grenadiers from Warlord.

I want a sniper team for the table so I've chosen one standing figure for the spotter and the kneeling figure for the sniper himself, who is going to be an officer.

The sniper will have a Gewehr 43 with a scope, and the spotter is there with his binoculars.

The scope is just a basic representation fashioned from stretched sprue and kind of carved and scraped into shape. And here is the finished figure. I had a go at erbsenmuster (pea dot)pattern on his trousers. I think this pattern was reserved for the SS, and this is not an SS figure, but maybe it's all they had in his size...
I always tend to mark knuckles out in a very obvious way when painting hands, which looks a bit OTT come to think of it. Must stop doing that.

I decided to do a very simple conversion on the spotter figure, so he can have both hands on his binoculars. There is a good selection of arms on the sprue with open hands in varying positions, so it was easy enough to come up with something acceptable. A bit of filler in there and Bob's yer uncle.

Just a few more bits to paint now; his other arm obviously, bread bag and water bottle, and a map case. The sniper is just carrying his side arm, separated from the MG42 toolkit pouch on the picture higher up. Plastic is great (except when it's floating in the sea) and so is the humble scalpel!

The sniper's mate is done. I know what you're thinking, neither of them have gone for the concealment thing which is traditional for snipers, but they will have some tall grass on the base.

Indirect fire

Adding a bit of punch to the Heer infantry capability, the 81mm medium mortar GrW34. Once again from Warlord Games. It's a nice little model. I hope I've done it justice! Slightly confusing this one, seems to be described as 8cm and 81mm bore, depending on where you look. There can't be two so I assume it's the same weapon.
For more information I looked around the web and found this -
 www.militaryfactory.com/smallarms/detail.asp?smallarms_id=301

I've got the Stug bug

Widely used throughout the war, and one of the classics of the German defence of the Normandy invasion, the Sturmgeschutz III, or Stug assault gun. Not technically a tank, if you want to be pedantic it's self propelled artillery. Anyway, it's one of the most recognizable German armoured fighting vehicles of WW2. I understand it scored more hits on enemy tanks and AFV's than any anything else fielded by the Germans.

This is a cracking kit, the first 1/56th vehicle I've built despite doing my fair share of Esci 1/72nd (remember those?) and of course those 'big beasts' 1/35th kits from Tamiya.

Nostalgia. I had one of these...

Dived straight in to this one, and once again an old skool approach, no airbrush. Did they paint real tanks with an airbrush? Brush, use a bristly stick dammit! Undercoated black and then layers of dry brushing in a lightish base green/stone. Sometimes using my phone camera, so colours might look weird due to the light bulb, sorry.

I try to replicate the hazy edges of air brushing by using very thin paint, almost wash thin. If necessary I build it up, almost like doing a watercolour picture.

Just realised I've gone to all that trouble painting the sides, and of course they won't even be seen once the armour skirts are fitted. Oh well. Tracks on. Crisp parts mean easy assembly and a straightforward build, thus far.

Painting on the hull is going quite well, got the basic camo scheme done.

Most of the heavy lifting is done in terms of painting and assembly of the hull, it's been quite a quick build. Next thing are the skirts. I'm going to do a bit of mangling on these, starting with scratching and roughening them up with sandpaper.

I took the scalpel to the skirts to separate one of the plates, so it can be hung at a slightly jaunty angle.
Also melted some scores and dents into them with a heated sculpting tool, and turned the edge of one of the plates out a bit. Looks like one of those nasty collisions with something large and immovable in Tesco car park. It's a lot of extra work, but the schürzen are taking the brunt of the incoming. It was always part of the plan on this build, so at least I can say I stug to the plan. Geddit?

A small photo because I'm handpainting markings instead of using decals and they're a bit shaky.

They nicked some plates off another Stug with a different scheme.

Okay,  the Stug is finished, and I did cave in and use some decals. I wasn't happy with my effort at the Lehr marking, it looked like a demented GBP sign minus something. Also used some numbers. Not absolutely sure if Lehr ever fielded a Stug numbered 153, I just like the numbers. Anyway, for what it's worth, here it is.