Tag Archives: Warlord Games

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.

Warlord Games Stone Bridge

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Warlord Games Stone Bridge

Another scenic post today – Warlord Games’ Stone Bridge.

I picked this up quite awhile ago in June 2017 with some other stuff (including some ruined houses, apparently.. I should find those!) – but only got around to assembling it about 2 weeks ago, quickly followed by painting it. It had been cut off the sprues and then put in a plastic tub and forgotten about. How often do you hear that phrase on this blog?

Warlord Games Stone Bridge

I wanted it to look weathered and worn, so after the first spray coats of dark grey followed by a lighter brown-grey, I drybrished with a couple of tones of increasingly light brown-grey, then played around with my custom mix Sepia-Black Vallejo Model Wash, then some washes made from two shades of green for the mossy tones towars the bottom of the arch, some browns and Pledge One Go floor wax and a couple of different weathering powders.

Warlord Games Stone Bridge

I also wanted to emphasise the direction of years of traffic on the bridge, so I used a tissue (hi-tech modelling tools, here!) to “pull” the half-dried grime along the length of the bridge, creating a directionally weathered effect. I don’t have any 28mm WWII guys painted yet, so this pair of Reiksgard will have to do for the “human scale” shot. They do serve to illustrate how well that the piece works with models from a variety of eras and genres outside of the WWII-modern, though.

Warlord Games Stone Bridge

Here’s a scale shot, so you can see roughly how big the thing is. It barely fits a modern Rhino hull – you could probably fit a Predator as well due to the ground clearance that the sponsons have. It’s another nice piece of multi-use scenery. I mean, it’s not exactly approriate for Necromunda, but it suits a wide variety of historical games through modern, post-apoc (not all bridges need to be broken!) and of course 40k. Unless you’re of the new-school of 40k that thinks everything needs to be festooned with skulls. 😀

At some stage (the month’s round-up and my personal round-up for Dave Stone’s Winter of Scenery Challenge as well) we’ll be able to see it from a “front-on” angle. As long as I remember to take a pic like that. It certainly didn’t properly fit in my makeshift lightbox on that orientation!