An Airborne WiP

The heat-waves (and, to be honest, the World Cup) has played havoc with my ongoing 20mm Airborne platoon project.  With the weather cooling (and the matches fewer) I've managed to get back to it, albeit with a bit of modelling rather than painting.  To build on this, and reinforce my mojo, I thought I'd post an update of where I am and how far I still have to go.

The completed figures, except for final varnishing and base texturing, are shown in the two photos below.

Support platoon + Brens, snipers, PIATs, 2" mortars & medic 

Gun teams, casualties & tank crew

Some of these, including about half of the crews for the 75mm pack howitzer and 6-pounder anti-tank gun were completed in my last post, but now the crews are complete a couple of shots showing how I crew my guns.

75mm pack howitzer, junior leader & 5 gun crew

6-pdr ATG, junior leader & 5 gun crew

This leaves the core platoon still to do.  I left them to do last, as this way I can't play games without them so I can't put off support items and extras for another day if I want a game.  

Three sections of the core platoon + a few extras

Each section has a junior leader with a Sten submachinegun, 3-man Bren team and 5-man rifle group (1 equipped with a Sten).  In the above one junior leader is missing as he was painted earlier by mistake and in his place is one of the support flamethrower team whose place he took in an earlier batch.  Also included are a couple of extra casualty figures cut down to size from a different manufacturer.

And finally, the most recent bit of progress, the crews for the Jeeps.

Jeeps and crew + Tatra T-57K Kubelwagen & airborne supply canisters

The Jeep crews are by AB figures and sit in the SHQ Airborne Jeeps really nicely.  To make them removeable, yet secure, they have had magnets added to both the figures and their positions in the Jeeps.

A nonchalant Jeep passenger ...

... and the magnets holding him securely in place

The last photo also shows some greenstuff, tidying up the holes where the magnets were inserted and providing a footing for those Jeep crew whose feet didn't touch the floor.  

So, now I just have to paint up this lot and I'm there, well except for the Horsa glider kit still in its box - does it ever end?

Eindhoven Reached - But Not Taken

Painting an Airborne Platoon for Kampfgruppe von Luck

A Work-in-Progress (WiP) - 1st update

A few posts back I posted (here) the 20mm figures for my next project, an Airborne platoon (and supports).  At that point the figures had all been cleaned up and primed.

Since then, I've have made some progress and reckon I'm almost a third of the way through, excluding the vehicles and glider - hence the rather silly title for this post.  But enough for an excuse to post a few photos.

First, the two guns: a 75mm Pack Howitzer; and, an Airborne variant of the 6-Pounder Anti-Tank Gun.

Each should have a crew of 5 men plus a junior leader, but the other figures are not finished yet, and can be seen in some of the later batches below.  BTW, by 'finished', I mean they are fully painted but have yet to sprayed with matt varnish and their bases textured and painted.

Next up, a mixed bag of a medic and assorted casualties (most of whom look beyond his help) and a bailed-out tank crew.

I've had the tank crew for ages so thought I'd include them in this batch.  The set included 5 figures but I didn't like one of them with an MP40 so he didn't make it out of the tank.  

Now, a Vickers medium machine gun with its full 5-man crew (no junior leader).

These are Adler IIRC (most of the other figures are FAA) and slightly bigger, but not enough to show.  Firing the gun is 'Lofty', so called because he has oddly long legs, and if he were to stand up, would tower over most of his comrades in arms.

Last of the fully painted figures are three 2" mortar teams (two of them have a second figure in a different painting batch), a figure with a supply canister (to serve as a supply point), and three individual paras (not sure why they went into this batch).

And, coming up behind these, are three more batches.

They've all had their faces and hands done and outlined in black, and the batch (what I call a plastic container's worth of figures) on the left has had the Denison smock painted and the webbing picked out in black. 

The only other progress has been assembly of the three SHQ Airborne Jeep kits, shown with some more supply canisters that will be used for jump-off or supply points, or maybe just battlefield scatter.  

The Jeeps will have magnets counter-sunk into the seats, which will hold in some AB Jeep crews I have - they will have magnets inserted where the sun doesn't shine.

Compared to many others I've seen, this is slow progress, but I'm fairly pleased with it.  Unfortunately, we're just running into another week and a bit of hot weather (by UK standards).  Not only do I find painting unpleasant when a bit sweaty, but also the paints dry quickly, and trying to keep them a suitable consistency makes it even more trying.  In short, I expect progress to slow over the next ten days or so.  But I shall try and keep them ticking over.

Dragoons Go West

I finally finished my two new units of dragoons, and they are:

Sir William Waller's (guidon is for the 5th company, Sir Wiliam Turpin's), ...

... and, Lord Hopton's (guidon is conjectural but pretty)

The dismounted components of both units are new figures, freshly painted.  The coat colours for neither regiment is known, so I wanted something different to my other two regiments in red and blue.  I went with green for Waller's as suitably parliamentarian and functional for troops that spent so much time skulking around in hedges.  For Hopton's I plumped for yellow because, I like it, and there's a period reference to Hopton's yellow-coats that goes against most references that list his foot as blue-coats, so I rationalised that as a mistaken reference to his dragoons - well disprove it if you can.

Waller's mounted dragoons are all, with the exception of the ensign, old figures from my other two units with the coat colour repainted (just the sleeves really) and few other minor embellishments. 

The ensign, with the guidon for Sir Wiliam Turpin's, 5th company is a new figure but the ensign is a repainted one that was spare from the reorganisation of Wardlawe's dragoon unit.  Likewise, the horse-holder, and the horses, which seem to be giving him some trouble, are all new.

By comparison, Hopton's ensign and horse-holder (again all new apart from the re-painted guidon) seem to be having a more relaxed time of it.

Hopton's mounted dragoon figures are mostly re-used surplus figures from Washington's unit with sleeves repainted yellow (plus a few other touches), but with the need for mounted ensigns on the horse-holder bases, two new mounted figures had to be painted up to match.  Can you spot the new ones?

This took much longer than expected, but I am pleased I have finally got round to long planned refurbishment of my dragoons to give me two units a side in place of just one each.  Hopefully, some will get an outing soon in a planned refight of Second Newbury. 

Dragooned into Shape

With things flowing well I decided to stick with the current 're-visiting' theme and reorganise my Hinchliffe ECW dragoon units, Wardlawe's[1] and Washington's[2].  For some time I have wanted more than one unit a side and felt that the number of mounted figures tied up in these units is wasteful.  When dismounted, I represent my dragoon units with three bases of figures, two forming a firing line and one representing the horse-holders, thus ...

       Washington's    &       Wardlawe's          

... and when mounted they are each represented by twelve mounted figures.

    Wardlawe's      &     Washington's

As these units tend to spend most, if not all, of their time dismounted it seems wasteful to use so many mounted figures in this way, and on four bases as they only occupy three when dismounted.

The solution I came up with, was to reduce the mounted representation to just two bases of mounted figures but use them with same horse-holder base used with the two dismounted bases.  Furthermore, I decided I would have only one guidon per unit, and that would be with a mounted figure on the horse-holder base.  This would require some re-basing so into the paddling pool they went to soften up the PVA and sand basing.

This was watched, with some trepidation, by those elements of the units that did not require re-basing from the safety of a nearby window sill.

This all went pretty smoothly apart the need to replace the reins of the horses from Washington's horse-holder base as they broke when being de-based.   

So, here's the new-look Wardlawe's and Washington's, dismounted ...

 Wardlawe's       &    Washington's

... and mounted.

Wardlawe's     &    Washington's

I rather like the end-result.  The extra mounted figure on the horse-holder base makes the horses more prominent in the dismounted unit, and it blends in fairly well as part of the unit when mounted.

To complete each new unit using the surplus mounted figures, I have to paint: ten dismounted figures; a mounted ensign with guidon; a mounted dragoon, and a horse-holder with two horses.  Additionally, there will be some re-touching of the figures taken from the old units to give them different coat colours and their new regimental guidons.

The identities of the two new units will be revealed in a future post.

Notes:

[1.]  A Parliamentarian regiment of dragoons of the Earl of Essex’s army under Col. James Wardlawe, later reduced to an independent troop, commanded by Capt. George Dundas', and later by Capt. Jeremiah Abercromby (source: wiki.bcw-project.org.uk).

[2.]  A Royalist regiment of dragoons, originally under Col. James Ussher, and later Sir Henry Washington; also known as Prince Maurice’s Regiment of Dragoons.  It fought as part of the Oxford Army, and at Marston Moor, then converted to a foot regiment in the garrison of Worcester (source: wiki.bcw-project.org.uk).

Last of the Rings

The speed with which I finished off the figures in my last post left me feeling up for more quick retouching.  To this end I dug out two lots of Warhammer Lord of the Rings (LotR) figures I'd been intending to re-touch for some time.

First, the 'Dead' that I bought painted off eBay (for less than the cost of the basic figures) but wanted the paint job modified from a 'stone grey' to an 'ethereal green' and the basing changed to match the other figures in my collection.  I did an earlier trial 'touch-up' in an earlier post (Link) so this was a fairly quick bit of dry-brushing and re-basing on this bunch of 21 figures.

En-masse they look good, but up close the basic nature of the paint-job is more apparent.

Second, I had a unit of 12 Rangers of Ithilien painted by Fernando Enterprises.

While I like the green used for their cloaks, it is the same as that used on all my Rohirrim figures and I wanted to differentiate them.  To this end I re-painted the cloaks in more muted colours, better suited for Rangers seeking to blend into the woods.

While they make a coherent looking unit, I did them in two groups of 6, one lot with paler 'greyer' cloaks as Rangers of the North (Dunedain) ...

... and one lot in darker green/brown cloaks as Rangers of Ithilien.

This gives me some flexibility with these figures as they could all be used as the same troop type / unit, but they can also separated into two smaller units that can be distinguished visually.

Apart from a few metal personality figures, this effectively completes my LotR collection ...  

...  for now?

More Legions of the White Hand

Saruman had taken a drubbing in recent games, and so I felt I needed to give him the sort of numerical advantage that he sought to overthrow Rohan.  To this end I rooted out all the odd spare figures I had laying around plus a few very cheap eBay lots and sent them off to get painted by Fernando Enterprises.  One of the eBay lots was a sprue of 12 Dunlendings (link) as these would add another troop type.

Well, they all came back from Sri Lanka while I was tarting up the Uruk Hai reported in the last post.  But I managed to quickly do the required minimal retouching and basing (texturing and painting) for them to join the Uruks from the previous post to make an imposing reinforcement for the Army of Orthanc.

Added to my existing units, they bring Saruman's forces up to:

 

103 Orcs (aka Goblins)

47 Uruk Hai

12 Dunlendings

8 Wargs (unridden)

7 Warg Riders

2 Trolls

The Orcs were painted by Fernando to match previous batches and required no touching up at all, except the tips of their spears were painted red so I redid these with  gunmetal (but that was dead easy and very quick).  The Dunlendings needed a little bit more, but nothing a quick spot of paint wouldn't fix.  On the subject of fixing I had to mend two of the Dunlendings' weapons.  I can't fault Fernando for this as the figures were superbly packaged, and any blame is down to Games Workshop for the incredibly spindly weapons on these figures.  Anyway, I was very pleased with the Dunlendings and they deserve their own photo to show off the brushwork.

Also included in the batch of figures were five odd Riders Rohan figures I put together from spare bits and broken figures.  These were painted by Fernando to match the previous batch they did for me.

These figures are a very good match to the earlier batch but did require a little bit more tidying up.  I think that's because these are less detailed sculpts than the Dunlendings, and Fernando's painters do better when there's a clear feature to paint rather than one that requires a bit of interpretation.  I added and hand-painted the flag myself based on a design I foud online.  I'm rather pleased with it, especially the horse, which is clearly influenced by the White Horse at Uffington.  Hiding in the back of the above photo is a spare horse I decided to use as a casualty marker, complete with embedded arrow (the latter also had broken off so was replaced by another provided by a friend at my local club).

These, combined with my existing figures, give me a total of 20 mounted Rohirrim, more than enough for a skirmish.

Caveat on Fernando painting: I also sent some small batches of Blue Moon Miniatures 15mm US Cavalry ...

... and Plains Indians with a view to starting a new project.  

I was not pleased with the photos sent back, and in the end, Fernando said they had done all they could to fulfil my requests for changes and returned the figures at no charge.  While it was very reasonable to not charge me for these figures, I was surprised that some of the changes, like painting the moccasins a brown leather colour rather than black was considered too technically challenging.  

It seems that 15mm castings might not be their strength, especially fairly rough castings like Blue Moon.  OTOH their handling of the Dunlendings suggest that 

any modern range of 28mm plastic figures will turn out rather well.

WiP Packed Away

 Just for once it seems a quick job, turned out to be just that - a quick job.

The small batch of 13 painted Uruk Hai that I bought of eBay (see previous post) to quickly retouch to boost Saruman's forces is complete.

After the drubbings Saruman received in the last couple of games he needs something like this to put some fear into eth hearts of men.

 And if this isn't enough, I've also finished touching up the batch of painted figures from Fernando Enterprises that arrived while I was working on these.  They will provide an even bigger uplift to the Army of Orthanc but that will have await another post.

All Coated Up and Ready to Go

The mojo seems to have returned with the good weather, as I have finally finished off the latest, long drawn out, WiP batch, the 121ème régiment d'infanterie with a supporting unit of voltigeur skirmishers, and all overseen by Général de Division Jean-Marie-Pierre-François Lepaige Dorsenne.

So, after going through their paces in the field, a quick trip to the local photographic studio was called for.