Old School WiP

With my 20mm British Airborne, and accompanying bits and pieces, off the painting table I could finally get back to some 20mm Shiny Napoleonics.  And this time it's the Spanish Walloon Guard, inspired by this image.

The figures for this, as usual, are courtesy of some early French in 'bicorns' from eBay.  I doubt these are original Hinton Hunt (HH) figures as I've not seen these in any old catalogue.  If they are then they're conversions as they had unusually thick bases, which I had to shave down to a more reasonable thickness.

The figure on the left in the above image shows how thick the bases were, alongside one whose base I have shaved down using a sharp craft-knife.  It also shows how figures respond differently to the bleach bath (to remove the paint), the one on the right coming out looking almost new, that on the left still having much paint that needs to picked off with a knife.   Typically, only about four figures came out clean, the rest looking more like that on the left.

It's possible these are just pirate casts of an HH figure with thicker bases, as one of the figures had thin base like a genuine HH.

Since cleaning them off, I have added knee-high gaiters with modelling putty and dug out an officer, colour bearer and drummer (all Falcata and donated by fellow old school devotee) and an Alberken pioneer who only need a bit of modification to his bearskin.  And they are now all being painted - I think this will take a while.

The two mounted figures in the above are the command figures for a composite Imperial Guard cavalry unit - see below.  

A friend guessed that it was this unit I had started and it tempted me to add these two to the batch - not sure it's good idea to make this batch even larger but it's done now, we'll see how it goes.

Needed - Somewhere to Land

Now my Airborne platoon, supports and scatter terrain are complete it will soon be time to start the TooFatLardies' pint-sized campaign, 'Kampfgruppe von Luck'.  But while perusing the campaign I noticed that the first scenario is almost entirely made up of wheatfields, and I have none!

So, not wanting to just go with plain cloth and imagine the wheatfields I found some coir matting going cheap on eBay; £6.68 for a 60cm x 40cm section, including p&p.  I bought all they had left and started cutting them up into sections and laying them alongside the scenario road network (the diagonal trail through one field is just to add visual interest, but in the game will be treated like part of the wheatfields.

I have tried to make the sections standard sizes so they can be re-purposed for different field layouts.  I have cut some smaller pieces and clumps that can fill in the sections removed to accommodate troops.  I'm not sure if this will work but I plan to give it a go.

All that now remains is to give them a light spray with a pale sand colour to make them look less obviously like coir matting.  Also, I have a brown acrylic paint pen to retouch the black rubber matting around the edges.

Airborne Scatter - All Things Must End

At times it seemed like I'd never get there, but at long last I've finally completed all the items I acquired for my Airborne platoon, and here's the last of them.

It's all scenic scatter, so not really necessary for the campaign, but I knew if didn't do it now they'd never find their way to the front of the painting queue.

The Airspeed Horsa was of course the biggest drain on my time, and, at times, my enthusiasm, but I'm happy with the finished item.  I must admit that when I bought the kit[1] I had no idea how big the Horsa glider was.  It's as big as a four-engine bomber; I'd imagined something smaller that takes up less space.  It took ages carefully scoring out the control surfaces[2] to separate them from the wings and tail to get that sagged wreck look but I like a modelling challenge now and then, it increases the sense of 'ownership' in the finished product.

My agonising over my poor attempt at invasion stripes was greatly eased when I discovered this photo of the real thing - makes mine look rather good.

The intent was to reduce the footprint of the wreck by having the tail unit separated and one wing torn off by one of Rommel's Asparagus.

Rommelspargel

I don't have an answer as to why there's just this one lonely 'asparagus' that my glider has come a cropper on; in reality they filled entire fields with them. 

The three parts of the glider have all been put on ferro-bases to hold it securely in the magnetised box-file being used for storage ...

... along with the parachute canopies (paracord added using 'invisble' quilting thread courtesy of my better half).

The canopies are from Empress Miniatures, as are most of the supply containers; the unopened ones being intended for use as jump-off points (JOPs).

The out of focus empty basket by the canister in the foreground of the above image will be used to indicate it has been tested for as a Replen[ishment] Point but failed i.e., there are no munitions there.  Open canisters with weapons etc. inside will indicate one that has become a Replen Point.

And finally, as a nod to 'that film', an alternative marker for a failed Replen Point.

 

Notes:

[1.] It's a very old kit and quiet crude compared to current Airfix products; many parts don't even have locating lugs to hold them in place while glued.  Even worse, some of the bits are just wrong e.g. the passengers doors on the real thing slide up inside the glider and don't, as modelled in the kit, swing down with in-built steps. 

[2.] The wings and tail surface were solid one-piece mouldings.