October 2021 – Personal Painting Round-Up

November 21, 2021 by Azazel

It’s time for October’s monthly Round-Up. Sadly, in a lot of ways, my hard focus on painting 15mm WWII and the fact that I barely thought about blogging or blogs for some time in that period meant that I completely blanked on the community painting challenges of the month that I usually enjoy participating in. So no Zombtober, no Orktober or anything else in 2021. I’m sure I’ll still get some of each done before too long. I still owe Wudugast 5 more Orks from last year! I guess sometimes the hobby butterfly settles for a little while…

Regardless of all that, when I look at what I managed to get painted from built (in September) to completed and ready for anything on the tabletop, I can only consider the time spent to be worthwhile. Aside from just having painted a bunch of models, I now have a very respectable, historically and theeatre-appropriate opposing force to face off against my finally-painted Afrika Korps force that I started in the early oughties and then only finished painting – and then started to upgrade recently.

So while it’s not exactly a well-rounded force at this stage, in that there’s a complete lack of Infantry, Artillery and everything else (I’m wanting on my new desert mat, which I’ll set their bases to match) – it’s still a very decent and solid armoured force. And let’s face it – as I (re)learn how to play FoW, keeping it to one kind of unit (vehicles) is just going to make it easier, then with some more games under our belts, infantry and then artillery and then air power can be added in. I’ve got a bunch of 1:100 planes stashed away in boxes from those days as well that can finally see the light, regardless of what BF’s “official” aircraft scale happens to be.

These models also give me a versatile force that can also be used for any other WWII game, so that’s a nice thing as well. Of course, I’m not finished with Commonwealth armour, so there is more to come for the 8th Army for awhile yet. Not looking forward to those Universal/Bren carriers, though!

Time for the tally now – 9 Crusaders, 6 Shermans, 4 Priests with 8 individually painted full-model crewmen, 9 Churchills and 12 Grants. I don’t count any of the 14 extra turrets as additional models, though. In total that gives me 48 models for October, which helps to make up for the lack of completion in September – but then again – in September assembled and base coated so I could spend October painting. (November has been a more normal mix since I’ve not had to spend three weeks waiting for a spray paint order to arrive!)

Adding these 48 models to the 355 I had completed at the end of August/September gives me 403 so far for 2021. And you know, two newly playable armies that I didn’t have just a few short months ago – thanks to Dave Stone, I have to say!

Battlefront 15mm Lee/Grant Armoured Squadron – British 8th Army Desert Rats for Flames of War

November 19, 2021 by Azazel

Here are the Grants for my British 8th Army force. This time, I’ve skipped over including individual shots of each of the Tank Troops, and am just giving you the gist of them with these main pics. The only differences between all of them are the exact stowage I’ve glued down. These were the final models I painted in October, and as you can see above, I decided to paint both the Lee and Grant variant turrets for each of the models to give me further flexibility in how I use them. In my research, reading up and viewing videos on them, I found a note somewhere that talked about how while the majority of the lend-lease tanks had the Grant turret, some in British service did indeed still have the smaller Lee turret with the commander’s machinegun, though the British troops at the time tended to refer to them all as “Grant”. What this tells me is that much like all the “what exact shade is field grey/dunkelgelb/etc” discussions and arguments, the actual truth of the matter on the ground in the field at the time was much less perfectly uniform than we often tend to think about things today from our desks.

While looking for camouflague options to paint my tanks, I found the above boxcover for a model kit, which looked interesting and really piqued my interest.

A little more digging found the above colour plate, with some unit and date references. Looking at the placement of the brown blotches, it seems like they’re both based on the same photograph, which I wasn’t able to locate. I did adjust the unit markings from the photos – I originally tried using yellow circle decals, but the ones I was using (PSC) were almost invisible, so I carefully removed themn off the first couple of models before they were fully set and replaced them with blue squares.

After having completed these Lee/Grants, I actually found that the M3 Stuart at Bovington is painted in the same pattern. Seeing how different the shades are for the brown across the three images I’m not too upset about having chosen a more orangey shade – which was closer to a different image that I seem to not have forgotten to save into my reference folder…. but then again – what exact shade is field grey?

Yet again, a pic to show the four sides of the camouflage pattern applied…

…and the “aerial” shot.

And now we have all twelve completed Grants on the “Desert” flats, alongside their alternative Lee turrets. Yes, I decided to paint a full armoured Squadron of them. When will I use them all? I guess I’ll have to have a real big game sometime this coming summer! 😀

Azazel's Bitz Box.

Painting, Modelling, Miniatures, 1:6, Games… Whatever else I find interesting.

Monthly Archives: November 2021

October 2021 – Personal Painting Round-Up

Battlefront 15mm Lee/Grant Armoured Squadron – British 8th Army Desert Rats for Flames of War