Volley Fire Painting : Operation Sand dune

Showing posts with label Operation Sand dune. Show all posts

Monday, 24 April 2017

The Brit, The Yank and the Hobby Episode 20, Battlegroup Tobruk

This week Piers from Battlegroup fame joins us to discuss the new Tobruk supplement and talk about all things Italy in the desert.
You can join the discussion at our facebook group, or listen directly to the show at the links below.

Libysyn feed

RSS Feed

iTunes

Monday, 19 September 2016

Warlord Games 1/56 Churchill

As part of the on going operation Sand Dune project with Carl Titterington, Sam Phillips and myself, and with my DAK army nearly done now, I've decided to start branching out into the British forces. Warlord Games were kind enough to supply me with some of their new plastic Churchill tanks to form the core of my Tunisian forces. Today I shall be reviewing the kit and describing the options included.

Warlords Churchill is another collaboration with Italian model kit manufacturer Italeri, and looking at the parts break down I suspect it's lineage goes back to the Dragon 1/72 scale kits of this impressive tank.

The kit is supplied in dark grey plastic with each frame packaged in it's own bag, and a decal sheet is included (And which I forgot to photograph). Also included is an instruction sheet, and I recommend going through this first and marking all the parts you want to use for the version you are building, so as to avoid any confusion later. The instructions I felt are pretty clear, though care should be taken when following them. I didn't pay too much attention to them and managed to somehow assemble the tracks wrongly.

The decal sheet is nicely done, with a good selection of regimental markings and flashes, and also includes a Soviet guards badge for making a lend lease vehicle. Only three things jump out at me from the sheet, it includes a number jumble for making the vehicles registration code, but doesn't come with the 'T' prefix, the squadron flashes have a black filler inside of the geometric shape, I'd have much preferred this to be open so that it can be blackened later if desired. Finally, some names would have been welcome, though that may be pushing the limits of what is possible with a small sheet.

Assembly is actually very straight forwards (When you bother to read the instructions...), I glued some pennies into mine to give it a little more weight and heft, and also replaced the antennae with fuse wire but that was it. Building mine as the MKIII the use of slide moulding was evident, as the gun (as will all of them), is pre drilled and in scale. The only small, fiddly parts are the head lights at the front of the vehicle, the rest is made up of large panels that fit nicely. I do really recommend using a proper plastic glue or solvent, and dry fitting though as going straight in with super glue will make for a bad day.

Warlords Churchill allows you to build one of the following versions, MKIII, with welded turret and 6 pounder gun. The MKIV with a welded turret and 6 pdr. MKV with 95mm howitzer, Mk VI with 75mm gun, this has a particularly nice muzzle brake too. There is also an option to build the NA75mm version. Eavh of these looks good and is pretty accurate. If you are someone who likes swapping variants this could be a problem, however if you made judicious use of magnets it may be possible.

Also possible in this kit is the option to build the AVRE, the Petard mortar is well done, however quite a few of the hull fittings are missing so it's hard to build an accurate model of the vehicle straight from the box if that is what you require.

Luckily S&S models are coming to the rescue, and will be bringing out a series of update and conversion kits for the AVRE, that will also allow you to build a few of the different options. I'll be getting myself one of the bridge layers when it comes out.

To paint my Churchill I primed black, and then airbrushed Vallejo USA Olive Drab. I then mixed some Vallejo Pale sand in, applied the transfers, then let the paint dry for 3-4 days. I then came back to the tank, painting AK4062 Light Dust Deposit over the entire vehicle, before using a broad brush lightly dipped in white spirit to work most of the Light dust off the model. I then repeated this process a few times until the dust had built up to a level I was happy with.

After placing the Churchill to one side to dry for another day, I came back to it and did the same thing using AK4063 Brown Earth Deposit, concentrating this onto the tracks and working parts, as well as the lower hull and anywhere dirt may accumulate in thicker quantities.

Again, the tank was left for a few days to dry, before I painted MIG 1000 wash for Dark Yellow into the darkest recesses and deepest panels.

Finally, I used a selection of artists oils to add some streaking to the sides, and some MIG Oil and Grease to some of the drive wheels and engine deck. A quick drybrush of the tracks with a dark steel colour I mixed up and the Churchill was complete.

The crewman is the one included with the kit, and very nice he is too.

I'd sum this kit up by saying it was an excellent build, but one must exercise some caution to ensure you are building the correct version you want, and also to get the tracks together correctly. at £20 the kit is good value, and is quite sizeable too. Warlord also sell the Churchill in a platoon set, with 3 vehicles for £50. My thanks to Warlord Games for providing the kit, and you can see more of my work or contact me regarding commissions at Volley Fire Painting Service.

Sunday, 24 April 2016

Operation Sand Dune Part II

Been a month since my last update on this project, so here's a heads up!

Carl, Sam and I have filmed another update that's already out on Youtube, and you can see that here.

In that vid I'm actually building one of my Panzer III's, and now have put together the Panzer IV's for the force too bringing me up to a total of 2 Panzer IV F1's, and 3 Panzer III Ausf J which were very kindly provided by Warlord Games. On the subject of Warlord, I've produced a quick and easy painting guide for DAK armour. This isn't the sexiest paint finish, but it will give you a nice and quick force without too much effort, and I've also just produced a follow up article on adding stowage to models too, which should be available before too long.

Onto my own stuff. As I've mentioned so far I've got 5 tanks in total and have spent quite a bit of time scouring my boxes and spares bins for stowage for them, as well as pondering images of vehicles in use by the Afrika Korp.

The most common theme is piles of gubbins on the rear decks, and hanging off turrets, with the occasional damaged fender appearing once in a while too.

Replicating the stowage was relatively simple, and I delved into the extensive range of Warlord stowage I've acquired over the years, probably too many to actually list which ones I've used as I'm not 100% sure where some of them even came from.

With hind sight I do wish I had weighted my vehicles with some pennies or lead shot, however I did completely forget to do this in my enthusiasm to get the models done... Lesson learned for next time (probably not).

Adding the battle damage couldn't have been simpler, as I simple used some sprue cutters to trim off the parts I wanted gone ( I do love the track detail on the Panzer III especially and I've wanted to show this off for a while now on a model).

Doing the chipping was just as easy, I again used my clippers, in this case an old Citadel pair and lightly gripped the fender in the jaws and lightly twisted the part until it bet and twisted using pictures of the real thing as a guide on how far to go with it. The whole thing took maybe 10 minutes to do for all 5 vehicles (4 really as the first Panzer IV was undamaged...).

I've reviewed both the plastic Panzer III and Panzer IV on my blog previously and I'm a fan of both kits. As I'm loosely tying my force to 1942 I'm relatively limited to which vehicles I can use in the force, and these will form the core of my army in a tank wars force, with the addition of a few squads of infantry. The Panzer IV's will fulfil their role of supressing infantry and gun teams, whilst the Panzer III's rove around hunting armour and machine gunning soft skins... at least that's the plan for now.

I'll be getting these painted up in the next week or two, and will do a step by step guild to how I airbrush them, and after this I'm tempted to expand the army now to cover the entire desert period as I really, really want to add at least a Tiger... Next time I'll be adding some recce 222 armoured cars, and maybe a Panzer II if I can find it in the stash, as well as a Tiger to form the centrepiece of the collection.

Thanks again to Warlord Games for their support in bringing this project to life, and as ever you can see more of my work at Volley Fire Painting Service

Finally, along with my friends Carl and Rob, we have started a historical gaming podcast named the Brit, the Yank and the Hobby, and episode one covers the history and gaming of the early part of the desert campaign, you can find us on Facebook, iTunes and for android or PC users