Critters and Beasties.

 I've had these critters on my painting table for quite a while, but it's taken a long time to get the confidence to figure out how best to paint them.  Anyway, after a bit of faffing about I guess I'm satisfied with these.

A cockatoo and an owl from Pulp Figures.

And a penguin and a raven.

Originally from the Honorable Lead Boiler Suit Company but now available from North Star.  I fussed with this for a while trying to get water effects to work before finally giving up, but there is a bit of water effect left at the base of the rocks.

Doug gave me this 3D print of an animal skull.  It will likely be a useful marker in a game sometime!

Pulp Figures fox, bobcat and otter.  These took me a while to figure out how to paint, but I'm content with how they turned out.

Rabbit, squirrel and two beavers.  Mostly Pulp, but the middle beaver is one of the missing from the HLBS colony I painted up a while ago.

And three werewolves and a regular wolf.  The werewolves are 3D prints that were a gift from Fletch, and should fit into a future horror game.

Arctic/Antarctic Explorers

 I originally bought these figures more than 15 years ago, and they have moved around the painting queue ever since.  These are originally from the Honourable Lead Boiler Suit, but I think they've been sold on to Tiger Miniatures.

I figured out the reason why it has taken me this long to get around to them:  drilling holes in the mittens for the ski poles took hours, and I ended up breaking one of my drill bits!  Anyway, finally got them ready for painting.

I took painting inspiration from Captain Robert Scott's Antarctic expedition.

So here is the result.  No idea if I will ever find a role for them in a game, but am happy that I finally got them finished!

 

Vickers Medium Mk II

 Many moons ago, I purchased a model of a Vickers Medium Mk II from the venerable Honourable Lead Boiler Suit Company*, aka the HLBS, intending to use it to support my Back of Beyond armies.  I was never quite content with it in that role, however, as the army was theoretically supposed to represent forces in 1919-1920 or thereabouts, just after the Great War, while the Vickers Medium Mk II didn't appear until about 1924.

*(Note that HLBS have since sold this model on.  I believe it went to Copplestone Castings, but they don't have it anymore either as far as I can tell.  Empress Miniatures has one now, but I don't know whether it's the old HLBS model or a completely new one)

Nonetheless, I painted it up in a basic sand colour, suitable for the dusty plains of Afghanistan or elsewhere in Central Asia, without any particular justification for how one of these vehicles could get there.  Here is how it looked for many years, with a Copplestone Castings officer alongside for scale.

Interestingly, I managed to take some photos of a real Vickers Medium Mk II at the Australian Armour Museum at Puckapunyal in 2006.

As I have been painting up my Pulp Figures Highlanders for a somewhat fantasy-inspired 1940 platoon, it occurred to me that I still have this old veteran in my collection.  While not suitable for a 1920 Back of Beyond adventure, there were still a number of Vickers Medium Mk II tanks in the UK in 1940.  They were well and truly obsolete by that time, but in the event of a successful German Operation Seelowe or Sea Lion, they would no doubt have been pressed into service.  Similarly, if my Highlanders get moblised for a Very British Civil War in 1937, there would be another opportunity to bring the Vickers Medium Mk II into action.  With that in mind, I decided to repaint the old warrior in colours that roughly approximate the bronze green of pre-war British armour.  I almost went glossy, but then toned it down just a touch!

In terms of game performance, it is very slow, with a speed of 15 mph, comparable to Infantry Tanks such as the Churchill.  Armour is quite thin, but the 3-pdr (47mm) gun has a bit of kick, and was comparable to guns mounted on other early war tanks.  It also mounts several machine guns around the vehicle.  The side mounted MG have long since snapped off and I haven't replaced them.  For CoC, I understand that this should work out to Armour 2, and AT5/HE3 and Slow.

So here is the repainted Vickers Medium Mk II with a couple of fat old men for scale.  Markings are pretty much just made up, but slightly inspired by photos I found on line of the Vickers Medium at the Bovington Tank Museum.

The tracks on the original model were a bit crap, so I smeared some brown goop on them to represent mud, hoping to hide how smooth they were!  

Just for fun, here are some comparison shots of the tank with some early war contemporaries, such as the Czechoslovak CKD LT vz 38 (aka Panzerkampfwagen 38(t)) and a Panzer IV.

And here with a Churchill III.  So it's not tiny.  No giant, of course, but compared to some other early war tanks it's a decent size.

If you're Canadian, show me your beaver!

This was a fun little project.  I've had this set of tiny beavers for years. I got them from the Honorable Lead Boiler Suit Company, but they are currently marketed by North Star.  I see that North Star has them in a set of 8, but I've only got 6 so it's likely that a couple of the beavers have disappeared sometime in the decade or so they've been banging around my lead mountain.

It's tough to take good photos, these beavers are so small it's hard to get proper focus on them with my simple little camera!

My original plan was to have the bases removable, so the beaver bases could be used as markers of some sort, but that ended up being too much of a hassle.  So the ground the beavers are on ended up looking a bit unrealistically round.

This is also the first time I've used water effects.  I used Vallejo Water Effects.  The water itself is clear, just applied over a green-blue base.  Although I mixed in some static grass.

I've no plans to use this in any game, it was just a fun little model making exercise.  I like the Vallejo water stuff, so I'll be looking for an excuse to add water to a future exercise.  Hmm, maybe Ukrainian wetlands for Eastern front?