The Rubicon kit is a T-34/85. The model came together very easily, and ended up looking quite nice. I went for a basic green, hopefully approximating the right shade for a Russian tank. I may have gone a little overboard with the red stars.
At least I didn't add any slogans...
Kit No. 2 is the Warlord Games Churchill Tank. The kit shows its origins as an Italeri modelling kit rather than a wargaming kit as it's a bit more work to assemble, but not much more. I chose the Churchill as I wanted to make one of the Calgary Tanks that saw action at Dieppe - and this is where I fell into the trap of research. The 14th Canadian Army Tank Battalion (Calgary Regiment) took a combination of Churchill I, II and III. The kit allows one to make any of around 7 variants, including the III (welded turret, armed with 6-pdr gun).
My original plan was to paint the tank an olive drab/greenish colour. But then, research. Checking out a few sites, I realised that the Churchills at Dieppe were something called SCC-2 Brown, colloquially referred to as "dogsh!t brown" on one of the sites I found. I hope my final colour is something close.
The kit included a great decal sheet:
It's a great selection of decals, including (hallelujah!) the blue-over-brown 175 for the Calgary Tanks, and the black ram on maple leaf of the Canadian 1st Armoured Brigade. So far so good. There are red-white-red recognition flashes, but only three, so I left off the one that should have been at the rear of the tank. The sheet includes three pairs of tactical markings - yellow circles, red squares and blue triangles. For the Calgary Tanks, the markings should be blue (junior regiment of the brigade) but triangles aren't accurate for Dieppe - I could use blue squares, blue circles or blue diamonds, but not blue triangles. So close, but not quite there! I'd have to see if I could fake it with paint.
So I kept digging and decided that I'd recreate tank Bert of B Squadron. I even found the serial number (T68560R). And then I got to painting.
Here's an image of Bert after Dieppe:
And here is my version:
No serial number, left off the tank name. Slacker.
Recognition flash in the wrong place (should be further forward, under the cable, but it was too hard for my meager decal-applying skillz). Also, after I'd finished gluing the model together, I found out that the Dieppe tanks didn't have the guards over the tracks, but I wasn't about to attempt to cut them off. (i.e., upper track should be exposed like in this photo:
And here's the rear.
but since I have no WWII miniatures, I'll need to put them away and avoid being drawn into collecting and painting miniatures for yet another era.
Anyway, here are the two tanks together:
Third kit was the Renedra Ramshackle Barn. A nice kit, I'd wanted this one for quite a while, and finally picked one up. It's a nice generic piece that can fit into many different places - for me, most likely to show up for an Old West game.
The kit also has some nice little bits, including a couple of ladders, pitchforks and a wagon wheel that will end up gracing other projects.
And finally, here are the three kits together:
Thanks for reading!
No comments:
Post a Comment