Tag Archives: 8th Army

Battlefront 15mm M4A1 Sherman Armoured Squadron – British 8th Army Desert Rats for Flames of War

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Battlefront 15mm M4A1 Sherman Company - British 8th Army Desert Rats for Flames of War, 1:100, 1/100, Battlegroup, What a Tanker

Well, at least September’s models were quick to get through – and now we’re doing October. So with a table-functional set of Panzers for my DAK force set up, my choices when planning to add those Panzers was to paint those models, then shove the whole lot back into a figure case and forget about them again for several years, or spend the time to build up an opposing force for the Afrika Korps to battle. As you can see, I went with the latter. The tanks I started with were two platoons (well, A Company HQ and one platoon) of the ubiquitous Sherman tanks that saw extensive use across many updates and variants with the Allies throughout the second half of the war.

Battlefront 15mm M4A1 Sherman Company - British 8th Army Desert Rats for Flames of War, 1:100, 1/100, Battlegroup, What a Tanker

I did a bit of a look around for how to paint these. As I’ve written before, as much as I like the look, going for a plain desert sand colour for my 8th Army force(s) isn’t the best option for models that will be facing off against a broadly similarly toned opposition with the Gelbbraun/Desert Yellow German forces.

After quite a bit of looking at options and really being surprised at just how many different and varied camouflage schemes were used in The Desert War amongst different units and forces within the British and Commonwealth forces, I decided that I liked the look of this particular four-colour scheme. I wasn’t expecting how unpleasant the two-colour “lining” would be to actually paint over the course of a half-dozen tanks!

Battlefront 15mm M4A1 Sherman Company - British 8th Army Desert Rats for Flames of War, 1:100, 1/100, Battlegroup, What a Tanker

I thought it worth showing the different angles of the camouflage on the Shermans, including the overhead view.

Battlefront 15mm M4A1 Sherman Company - British 8th Army Desert Rats for Flames of War, 1:100, 1/100, Battlegroup, What a Tanker

Even though I’ve completed this batch of Shermans, I’ve now started building a third platoon to add on to these as opposed to my original plan of filling out the second platoon with a different type of tank. I now just need to complete adding the stowage and then I’ll be able to spray, and then start actually painting. So hopefully they’ll get painted in November?

Battlefront 15mm M4A1 Sherman Company - British 8th Army Desert Rats for Flames of War, 1:100, 1/100, Battlegroup, What a Tanker

To finish – here’s the HQ and 1st platoon together – my first batch of completed British 8th Army forces. More to come! 😀

 

Bolt Action! 28mm British Valentine Tank Platoon (Season of Scenery Challenge)

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Bolt Action! 28mm British Valentine Tank Platoon

Wow. It’s really been almost seven years since I painted my T-34 tank platoon for Bolt Action, and… nothing since. Damn, time is flying by and unfortunately not in a way that there’s no end in sight! Anyway, the point of this post is not to dwell on the depressing impending end of individual existence – it’s to celebrate the fact that Dave Stone’s Season of Scenery Challenge has finally motivated me to complete this trio of tanks that I bought during Warlord Games’ Valentine’s Day sale.

In 2016.

Don’t worry! I bought a ton of other stuff at the same time, none of which has been opened, let alone painted. Yay me!

Bolt Action! 28mm British Valentine Tank Platoon

The main reason these three took so long to be completed is actually because of the unit markings – I really wanted to get them “right”, which required more very specific knowledge than I have, or have been able to glean from the internet. In the end, it was indeed this month’s painting challenge that motivated me to just say “Screw it!” and get them painted in a “good enough for wargames” manner, so while the specific markings may equate to nonsense in specific terms, they look the part to the layperson like myself. I mean, it’s not like multimillion-dollar movies worry all that much about this sort of thing, so I think I just need to get over it in these terms and skip the analysis paralysis in future.

Originally, I wanted to go with the plain, “sandstone” colour on these, as depicted in the box art, since I think it looks bloody nice. However, the model does not come with decals for some reason. So that required sourcing some third-party ones from both Warlord and Rubicon, though with the unit marking issue noted above, they all sat in boxes while the tanks sat in a tub, all spray basecoated. Even so, the decals I had weren’t enough to use to fully mark a trio of tanks, and so the unit circles on them came from a Space Marine decal sheet (which is why they’re so thin) with the numbers freehanded in. Not the greatest, and it does annoy me still, but I guess they’re passable.

Bolt Action! 28mm British Valentine Tank Platoon

So in the end when I set to paint and finish these three – and in the interests of gameplay – I decided to go with the camo scheme in the end because I figure these models will mostly end up playing in games where I supply both sides – which means the main OpFor will tend to be DAK (Deutsches Afrikakorps, or Afrika Korps) – and those tanks will also be in a plain desert yellow/dunkelgelb. So to keep things more easily identifiable for anyone who might play – and might not know the difference betyween a PZIII and Valentine by sight (the heathens!) I went with the camo scheme for the British armour.

I’m not entirely happy with the finish on the desert yellow on these. It looks a little flat to me, so I may go back and “dab” some patchy lighter yellow on the panels to make it a bit less flat and uniform.