The next of my Commonwealth 8th Army units, we have my Brethren from across the ditch – some models representing the 4th New Zealand Armoured Brigade in Africa.

The Kiwis also notably ran quite a few Shermans in WWII, though I’d already painted a half-dozen Shermans as my first models for the 8th Army. Also from my research, it seems that the NZ forces didn’t begin using their mud grey/blue-black camouflage until they hit Italy, before that time period their tanks were simply painted in the pale desert buff shade – so essentially what I’d been using as my base for the British Commonwealth forces to this point. Since using Honeys and leaving them bare of camouflage appeared to be the only way I could include the Kiwis with a reasonable accuracy for the late ’41-mid-’43 time period my force is set in.

Being rather light tanks for this period of the war, they’ve been given diamond decals (well, squares applied on an angle) to represent the Recce vehicles being part of the Regimental HQ. NZ decals aren’t exactly easy to come by, if they do happen to actually exist, so I spent a few hours in Photoshop one afternoon putting some Silver Fern regiment decals together so I could run them through my printer.

These tanks also represented a bit of a first for me – the first time I’ve used milliput to add stowage to models. Bedrolls and tarps and duffel bags. Basically with these tanks being smaller than any of the other British tanks I’d done to this point, the official clip-and-glue stowage (aside from jerry cans) seemed a bit large and awkward. I did nick a couple of small crates from another kit, but if I wanted to add any more differentiation to what is otherwise a pretty samey group of tanks, it would have to be via milliput! I also used a mixture of the two upper hulls provided in the kits – I couldn’t really find a specific difference in my limited research on the additional stowage, though I did make sure to use the turret variant associated with British use – though most sources I found online don’t really distinguish between the M3 “Honey” in British/Commonwealth service and the M3 Stewart in U.S service.

Finally, I realised last night that two of the three commander models for these tank troops have moustaches! Possibly a bit of a stretch, but I’m thinking this might qualify those two tanks models at least as something for Roger’s “Mo’vember” painting challenge!