Becker's Specials - The Genesis

Having been enjoying a lot of Chain of Command (CoC) games, I recently invested in figures for a British Paratroop platoon to give me a slightly different force to pitch against my Germans.  Then looking for a campaign to use them in I bought Too Fat Lardies' (TFL's) 'Kampfgruppe von Luck'.

In this the opposition is mainly the 21st Panzer Division with an eclectic collection of armoured vehicles modified from old French captured equipment, of which I have only a single UNIC P107 and that doesn't match the photos of the originals.  

As there was no rush (my British Paras are a long way down the painting queue) I did nothing, but as my interest in these makeshift AFVs had been piqued, I was tempted into buying Hans Hoeller's memoirs 'D-Day Tank Hunter'.

The main reason for buying these being that he commanded a troop of three Pak40 Somua MCG S307(f) tank destroyers in Normandy.  

I found this memoir to be one of the best I have read and it inspired me to get the necessary vehicles for the 'von Luck' campaign as these vehicles feature in the German arsenal in the TFL campaign guide.  The guide acknowledge that players may have to use similar vehicles as stand-ins as they are not produced by many manufacturers.

They were right, not helped by the fact that I game CoC in 20mm which seems a less-favoured scale.  Early War Miniatures (EWM) produce most of what is called for in the campaign but don't do a S307(f) ... but they said they would sell me bits from other kits from which it should be possible to scratch-build one.  So, I dived in and in addition to the bits for an S307(f), I bought two UNIC P107 U 304(F) troop carriers and an Sdkfz 135/1 150 SPG LS(f) self-propelled gun (SPG).  

The first step was to cut down the P107 body to leave just those bits needed for the S307(f) - as shown in the photos below alongside a standard P107 body.

As can be seen there's not much left and what there is will be largely covered up by the armour plates (plasticard) to form the S307(f); the radiator grill is just about the only part of the exterior that will remain visible.

Realising this was going to be a long drawn-out build, I thought I should assemble the other kits in parallel.  The first bit tackled was how to create a removable gun crew for the Sdkfz 135/1 SPG.  Magnets didn't seem an option with the crew figures provided so I decided I would try and attach them to a false floor that would sit on top of the fighting compartment's floor.

This seems to work well, but the figures are a little precarious, only having their feet (foot in the case of one figure) super-glued onto a piece of plasticard.  I intend to bodge up some used shell cases to scatter around their feet.  These will be secured with Araldite (epoxy-resin) and butting up against their feet should make them more secure.

More updates due very shortly, as the photos for this post were taken just over two weeks ago.  The post was delayed as I was distracted by getting my car rear-ended and written-off which, with the need to find and buy another car, has sucked up so much time I forgot to post this.

Odds and Ents

In parallel with preparing some plastic Lord of the Rings (LotR) figures to send off for painting by Fernando Enterprises in Sri Lanka, I had been working on a few LotR odds and ends from eBay.

The Ent, Treebeard, was purchased assembled but unpainted, so I can claim this one, at least, to be all my own work.

The dead figure, is one of a larger batch I bought painted from eBay.  While nicely painted, I felt the grey scheme made them look more like stone than the ethereal figures in the film who had a definite greenish tinge.  So, as a trial, I gave one a couple of coats of dry-brushing[1] and re-did the basing to match the other figures in my collection; the photo shows the test figure and one as purchased.

The troll however, is just a re-touch.  I did mean to paint him/her/it(?) to match my existing troll who is much paler (based on the appearance in the film of the cave-troll encountered in Moria).  But ... I really thought the darker paint job was nicer, so I re-attached the arm that had come loose in the post and re-touched the paint job which had also suffered.

So, what next?  Well, I'm hoping to try and kit bash an Early Wars Miniatures UNIC P107 U 304(F) troop carrier into a 7.5cm Pak 40 Somua MCG S307(f) inspired by the fantastic memoir 'D-Day tank Hunter' by Hans Hoeller (who took the photo below).

A quick comparison of the kit against a drawing of the desired article shows that only the weapon, radiator grill and running gear don't need fabricating from scratch.  So, it's quite possible this may be a conversion too far and something else will end up taking its place on the work bench.

We'll just have to try it and see ...

Notes:

[1.]  The first cost was a mix of Army Painter Malignant Green and Vallejo Yellow Green, and the second a mix of Vallejo Yellow Green and Vallejo White.  Yes, Gasp, Shock, Horror - I used acrylics and not enamels, maybe old dogs can learn a trick or two.

[2.]  The original base texturing was, to be honest, nicer than my method, but my incipient OCD wouldn't allow them to be different to all the others.

Dunlendings - new(?) style GW figures

So just a quick post to get 2026 under way.  The festive season has seen all my gaming, modelling and painting come to pretty much a dead-stop, but I have just managed to start getting some plastic figures prepped to send off for painting to Fernando Enterprises.

Most will be more Lord of the Rings (LotR) figures as recent games has shown the Legions of Saruman somewhat overmatched.  As I like my evil types to rely on quantity rather than quality this lot will include quite a few more orcs/goblins and for a bit of variety some Dunlendings (aka Wildmen of Dunland from GW).  When I started putting the latter together, I was surprised by the new style GW plastics, these now being multi-part figures with many fragile parts as shown by the example below.

As can be seen, the body comes in two parts, a front and back, with the latter also having the back of the head - the rest of the head, really just the face, is separate.  Each arm and leg is separate, as are the hands in many cases.  The hands just butt up to the wrists (there is no socket joint) and are fiddly to glue on and leave me worrying over how sturdy they will be.  That said body parts and limbs go together really well, they have no male-female sockets but interlock so well they are not needed.

The down-side of these individualised interlocking figure parts (each figure in the 12-figure set is unique) means that swapping parts is not feasible without a lot of remodelling.

The next problem was the prevalence of figures carrying torches and bows, four of each - I'm okay with a couple of torches but I didn't want any bow-armed figures.  The archers come with a sword in a hand as shown above, but these are in a right hand leaving the issue of the bow in the left.  

Anyway, to cut a long story short, after lots of fiddling I managed to the following.

Overall, I think they look pretty good, with the possible exception of the figure on the right, at the back, an archer in a shooting pose that didn't offer much scope for an easy fix.  Also, shown in the above is the abandonment of slotta-bases, the figures are now attached by glueing the soles of their feet directly to the base!  I never liked slotta-bases but this does not seem like an improvement, not helped by the fact that most of the figures only have one foot on the ground.

I now have to finish prepping some goblins and a few other trial figures before sending them off for painting.  Then I have a few more Tolkien figures - I enjoy painting the odd figure but not whole units of these.