Char B1 bis from Italeri

For my 1940 campaign, I may have the option of supporting my British platoon with some French armour, so I decided to add this Italeri/Warlord Char B1 bis to my collection.

The kit includes quite a selection of decals.  I chose to use the decals for 'Indochine' of the 2^e Division Cuirassée, aka the 2e DCR or 2nd Armoured Division.

The commander is removable.  He looks fine when he's in the turret, but a bit like a double amputee when he's out of it!

WWII Canadians on parade

 My Canadian forces for Operation Husky are sufficiently built up for now, so I can move on to work on other forces.  (for example, I need to add some German opposing forces to fight these Canucks!).  My original intent was to have just a single platoon of infantry, but as you can see, miniature megalomania set in and the force has grown.

The force is based around an infantry platoon.  I was inspired by Farley Mowat's memoir, And No Birds Sang as well as his WWII regimental history of the Hastings and Prince Edward Regiment, The Regiment.  While this platoon is inspired by the Hasty Pees, the only insignia that I added is the 1st Canadian Division's red patch, so these soldiers could represent any of the 9 battalions in the 1st Division.  I've added a 4th section to allow me to choose more soldiers as a support option.

I have four different PIAT teams, even though I'm unlikely to ever take more than one.

I have a recce section of the Princess Louise Dragoon Guards, consisting of 2 Otter LRC armoured cars and 2 universal carriers (with their dismounted Bren gun teams).  Also, another carrier with a .50 caliber MG!

 Some artillery pieces.  The 25-pounder is unlikely to appear in a CoC game, but could show up if I play a fantasy game like Bolt Action.  The 6-pdr anti-tank gun has seen action on the table, though!

I don't see any game purpose for my Pipes and Drums, but as a piper, I'm just pleased to have them in my collection.

My medical section, with half a dozen nurses and an ambulance jeep.  

From the 1st Canadian Army Tank Brigade, which became the 1st Canadian Armoured Brigade in August 1943, I have tanks from C Squadron of the Three Rivers Regiment, as well as a Dingo from the HQ Squadron.  The motorbikes are available to carry messages around the force as needed.

The army has a much bigger logistics section than most wargames armies.  In most wargames, the action starts after the forces have reached the table, so the details of how they got there are often unimportant.  Nonetheless, I can add a logistics element to my army, including both the lorries used on the roads as well as the mule-carried equipment that was able to carry supplies off road throughout Sicily and the Italian mainland.

And finally, my sappers!  For starters, I have three teams that can be Engineer Teams for CoC.  The teams are a wire cutting team with wire cutters, a demolition team with Bangalore torpedoes and a mine clearing team, with a Polish mine detector and two sappers probing for mines with bayonets, plus an engineer officer to serve as the Engineer Section's leader.

And the pride of my collection, my bridging platoon, with sappers building a Bailey bridge.

Next up, I'll have some photos of my BSC terrain with figures from a few different historical eras.

German Bunker

A little while back, I picked up this model of a WWII German bunker from Italeri and Warlord Games.  The kit comes in two variants, the 'coastal bunker' with a turf roof, and the variant I chose, the 'flak bunker' with a space to install an anti-aircraft gun.  

The assembly is pretty easy.  Unfortunately, when I glued it to an MDF base to make it a bit more durable, it was slightly warped, so the roof doesn't quite fit properly.  You can see the join line very clearly in the photo below.

On one side of the bunker there's the window for the gun.

There is a pair of doors at the rear, could be a sally port, or a weak point that an attacker can exploit.

The model is a bit small - this is an application of the wargaming theory that terrain should be a bit smaller than the figures.  Sometimes I buy into this, but I'm not sure it works for me this time.  It's probably ok, but the size difference is certainly visible compared to the models. 

The roof lifts off to allow access to the interior. 

Cute view from the inside!

And the man with the flak said "everyone attack!"

I must admit, this was mostly an impulse purchase.  However, the famous 88 mm flak gun shows up multiple times in the accounts I've read about Operation Husky, starting with the Hermann Goring Division's ambush at Grammichele.

So here it is, the Warlord Games/Bolt Action/Italeri Luftwaffe Field Division 8.8 cm Flak 37.  

This is a List 7 option for the Germans in Chain of Command - so I don't expect it to be selected very often.  It will be similar putting all the eggs in one basket.  It's a very powerful gun, and will punch a hole in any tank, or demolish any infantry it can see. However, it's effectively immobile, at least within the scope of the game, so an opponent will likely find a way to counteract it by flanking it. 

This model can rotate on its base. It's supposed to be able to elevate as well, but it turns out that was beyond my model-building skills!  

In game terms, the 88mm Flak has a crew of 10 (including the chap sitting in the firing seat).  The kit only came with 7 crewmen, so I made up the difference with three men from Perry Miniatures Afrika Korps.  The Perry men stand out, they are a bit slight compared to the Warlord figures.

This gun might never make it on the table, but it was a fun build!

Warlord Games Panzer IV - winterized

One more tank, then I think I'll take a break from vehicles and get back to painting infantry.  This one is a Panzer IV Ausf. F1.  The model is one of the Italeri plastic models resized to 1/56 scale and distributed by Warlord Games.  I built this as the F1 version to fit with the goal of gaming the December 1941 Battle of Moscow - other versions possible with this kit weren't deployed until 1942.

I initially block-painted the same German field-grey that I used for the P38(t).  I wasn't so keen on that look, so I decided to winterize this one a bit.  I'm still not completely satisfied but I figure it's good enough.  This tank is crewed by particularly nasty Nazis - it proudly displays the insignia of 2nd SS Panzer Division "Das Reich".  (boo, hiss!)

Gotta use those decals!  I copied the 623 number from a photo I saw, I've no idea whether it was an actual "Das Reich" tank!

Here are the bits.  Removable commander, but I chose not to have the turret hatch closeable.  The hatch ring fit very snug, whether open or closed, and I felt it likely snap off with more than one attempt to change from open to closed.

German tank forces to date.

Here they are with their Red Army opponents.

Life in plastic, it's fantastic

Last week, I was feeling a bit blue, so I ended up making a bit of an impulse purchase of three plastic kits:  one from Renedra, one from Italeri/Warlord Games and one from Rubicon.

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.

No recognition flash.  Well, I like it, anyway.

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!