"The Wrenched Boys"

* * * 

They sleep below the hillside

In earthen cots

'The Wrenched Boys'

But when they rise

Look upon their sullen faces; 

So dismal; unwashed, tear-streaked

For a Frenchman killed their father

And mourning, they wait to cry 

Their leaden tears in revenge.  

* * *

Hey Internet,

This time around, I present 'The Wrenched Boys'; a pair of 'retractable' gun cupolas.

The models are of a particularly nice type of turret that helped make up the Maginot Line back in the 1930's. They had the novel feature of being able to be lowered down into their concrete pits as a further protective measure, so that only their well-armoured roofs were exposed to enemy shells.

I've done a fair bit of rambling around old European military sites in my time, and always thought the things looked really rather 'cute' for fortifications. 'Alien Squad Leader' allows me to take some defective turrets as part of my Human Colonial force, so I took the opportunity to add a few to my collection.

I got these models a few months ago from "Last Man Last Bullet", and are really rather nice. The company makes a number of different WW2 era fortification works - and interestingly, they've chosen to duplicate the lion's share of their range in 6mm, 10mm, 15mm, 20mm and 28mm scales. And its not a matter of 3D printing each item re-sized either; they're casts from a traditional master.

Initially, I painted these up in no time at all using the same colours that I've been using for my British Armour. They looked good, but were quite boring - they looked like green bobbins on little grey coasters. So, I went at them with a little weathering.

I justify the totally-over-the-top amount of rust on account of their twofold 'pop-up' nature - I can quite imagine that, built in the mists of some Anglo-French war-scare, the plans for their subterranean drainage could have well fallen by the wayside, leaving them to stew in pits of groundwater whenever they are not in 'firing position'.

I also used some 'varnish weathering' effects on the roofs. It does not show very well in the photographs, but the idea is that they are sun-bleached compared to the rest of the turret facings.

Even the most Wreched Boys of the Empire 'll show those Frenchies what, eh?

MM.

His Majesties Land-Ship Minotaur

Hey Internet,

May I present His Majesties Land-Ship Minotaur.

* * *

Minotaur is the very image of the modern Land Destroyer - a novel fighting machine designed for the particular task of combating other Land-Ships. To the accomplishment of this new task every facet of the ship's design and equipage has been directed.

Forgoing the usual batteries of machine-guns and cannon, Minotaur's primary asset is her 3" high pressure gun of 55 calibres, who's 17lb shell is able to penetrate the protection of any known Land Ship currently operating in Europe or overseas.

Equally, she is protected with a sufficient thickness of plate to grant her practical immunity from rifle fire, and even from shells fired at all but the closest distances. This protection is granted by the hanging of 3" Harvy Steel plates about the hull and turret, reduced in thickness to 2" and 1" on the sides and rear of the hull respectively.

All of this comes at some expense however, for the thing displaces no less than 80 tons. Yet, by utilisation of modern advances in the field of electrical engineering it is able to keep pace with the advance. Her machinery consists of two electrical motors of new design, powered by an internal dynamo. This outfit is able to produce a constant locomotive force of six-hundred horse power, driving the whole assembly along at speeds approaching nine miles per hour, on level ground.

* * *

The model is a 1/100th (15mm) scale TOG II* tank produced by Battlefront/Flames of War. Its a reasonable offering from the company, though unlike their more recent kits it took some fitting and filling to get the parts to go together snugly. Makes for a fine finished piece though.

In terms of painting this peice was pretty standard, but for one respect. The huge flat surfaces of the hull gave me opertunity to experiment with some 'model railway' and 'large scale model' style varnish weathering techniques, which turned out okay.

The Minotaur decals are by Dom's Decals.

I have long been a great fan of the real-life version of this machine, having regularly visited Bovington Tank Museum as a boy and been awed by its sheer scale.

If your interested in the history of armoured development, then the TOG makes for good reading. A contemporary of the WWII Churchill and Valentine tanks, it was designed by the same men who designed the worlds first tanks during the Great War. Known themselves as "The Old Gang", their machine too adopted the jestful title, becoming known as the TOG.

Minotaur is soon to be pressed into service as part of my 15mm British Empire project, more of which I will be posting shortly.

Think she will do King Edward proud?

MM.

Pax Britannica - The Cannon and Artillery-Men [5]

* * *

"At Byfleet we came upon an Inn, but it was deserted."

"Is everybody dead?"

"Not everybody. Look! Six cannons with gunners standing by."

"It's bows and arrows against the lightning. They haven't seen the Heat Ray yet."

- The Artillery-Man and the Fighting Machine, 
Jeff Wayne's The War of the Worlds 

* * *

Hey Internet, 

Today we have the last of my 'Martian Empires' British figures - four guns, with gunners standing by.

With my enthusiasm for this project somewhat ebbing, these guys took much longer than they should have to get done - about 3 weeks from start to finish. 

That said, they were nowhere near as painful as the Infantry were. The castings required far less 'clean up', and with no rifles or webbing they painted up rather quickly. 

One oddity is the gunner 'pulling the lanyard'. This figure is supposed to have a turnpike, but for some reason the tool is far too short, being about 2mm off the 'ground'. Given that it would have looked rather strange to have a gunner just sort of holding a stick on each base (and with me being unwilling to bore-out and convert the bloody things myself) I opted to fashion them into 'lanyard pullers'.

I mean, yeah, I know that even a heavy gun's lanyard would be scarcely over an inch thick, and these guys look like they are pulling on a 3" Naval Rope, but - bah! - it was either that or leave them off all-together and have two man gun teams, which would have looked even worse.

With these done, I have only to paint the Expeditionary Force's armoured support and this project will be at an end. Well, at least for the time being.

***

The Lead Tally - 2014

Acquired: +91       Painted: +126          Total: +35

Pax Britannica - Command Stand [4]

Hey Internet,

This week we have what should be the last of the British Riflemen. One of the stands is the Commander of the force, and features an Officer and Flag bearer.

click to enlarge

The Officer was a pig of a model to 'clean up'. It had the some of the worst flash I've ever seen on a model. All of the castings of this 'pose' are just as bad - if I hadn't got these figures off a friend, I'd have asked in strong terms for some replacements!

That said, with more than a little effort with a set of needle files he's ended up looking pretty all-right. He even has a bright white Pith on to mark him out.

The 'Flag Bearer' is a conversion - I snipped and ground away the rifle of a standard infantryman and replaced it with a shortened steel spear. Black Hat do do a British Standard Bearer figure as part of the Martian Empires range, but the flagpole/lance is cast in white metal and so thin that a stiff breeze would destroy it, and despite my best efforts I couldn't find a way to substitute it for one made of stronger stuff. I think it looks rather neat considering. Oh! - and the flag is printed; I'm not nearly that good a painter.

This is the last of the 'basic infantry' for this project, and to be honest it fills me with joy to type those words. They have been absolute pigs to get done; I mean, I did enjoy doing it and all, but I'd have liked it a whole lot more if they had been cast better to start with.

I think that I've ended up with a decent 'finished product', but the pain it took to get them done has left me to glaring at them spitefully now they are done.

Eh!....do you like them?

Four guns, with gunners, and I'm done with bloody Martian Empires! Hurrah!

MM.

***

The Lead Tally - 2014

Acquired: +91       Painted: +106          Total: +15

Pax Britannica - Re-basing [3]

Hey Internet,

Bit of a boring one this time. After feeling no small amount of discontentment with the final product of my recent labours, I decided to do a U-turn and re-base the whole lot.

This proved to be no fun at all. But its done now. And no figures were destroyed in the process.

As it turns out, 100x20mm bases are rather unique to 'All Quiet on the Martian Front', making it quite awkward to use figures based this way for other war games.

click to enlarge

After a rather obsessive and agonising period of soul searching and deep existential meditation, I decided to re-base them, four to a stand, on 40x40x2mm MDF (from Warbases). This makes them quite compatible with Alien Squad Leader, Future War Commander and Space 1889: The Soldiers Companion, as well as All Quiet On The Martian Front.

With a good number of guys at the gaming club interested in 15mm sci-fi, but totally uninterested in goofy Tripods, I hope that they might actually get to see a fair bit of use.

Plus, they make a much better firing line. Wouldn't be British if they couldn't do a good firing line.

***

The Lead Tally - 2014

Acquired: +91       Painted: +106          Total: +15

Honsby-Armstrong Artillery Locomotives

This week the Royal Garison Artillery have taken delivery of the first of a new type of machine, the Honsby-Armstrong Artillery Locomotive! Running on endless tracks, and with the power of no less than twenty-four good horses, these fine machines have the capacity to manoeuvre even the heaviest of our guns into position.

Hey Internet,

I do present two Honsby-Armstrong Artillery Locomotives...

The eagle eyed amongst you will, of course, recognise the models to be Soviet WWII era 'Stalinets Tractors'. However, I have cunningly painted the radiator casing, headlamps and doorhandles a brassy-coloured metal colour, flawlessly transporting the machines back in time to turn-of-the-century England!

A gift from a friend who had no use for them, these models had been an unloved part of a Soviet Flames of War force for five years or so. Interestingly, this force had no artillery in need of towing, so they never got used. Not even once.

Coming across them quite by chance recently, I thought they'd be just the ticket for the late-Victorian / Great War-ish project that I am currently working on.

I've had a bit of a play around painting them. Being the first vehicles in this project, I wanted to tie down a number of painting techniques and effects that can then be rolled out across all of the British vehicles for the project.

I had to get the green just right. I wanted that particular shade of pale green used on some British equipment around the time of the Great War.

The colour had to be fairly easy to achieve so that I could paint up a dozen or so tanks and other vehicles in a uniform matter. It took three attempts, but I think that the one that I settled on looks about right.

This was the colour that I was going for.

Other than that, it was the smaller details, but in particular, I wanted to try something different with the windows and headlamps. For a long time I've been painting both in the same way, going for a sort of 'blue gem' effect, but recently I've noticed that, while pretty, the effect is totally overblown and utterly unrealistic.

Instead, the windowpanes have been painted flat black and lightly gloss varnished. I'm quite sold on this look for medium scale models like this.

Hopefully the headlamps are looking more realistic too. With them, I've just done highlighted circles of silver. Looking at the photo above, I can't help but feel that its the way to go, particularly with the big lamps of the first quarter of the century.

Some Blue Moon Mark I Tanks and a pair of Flames of War Tog IIs should be on their way before too long. I'm quite looking forward to giving them the same treatment.

Do let me know what you think, eh?

Mr. Marx.

The Lead Tally - 2014

Acquired: +59       Painted: +69          Total: +9

TOG 1 or 2 ?

Hey Internet,

Today a package finally arrived in the post - yay!

Within it was a Flames of War TOG 2 tank model that I ordered about two weeks ago, and have been looking forward to receiving with childlike excitement.

For you that don't know, this magnificent beast is a TOG.

Irritatingly, I ordered two, the other one has been placed on 'back order', whatever that means.

More to the point, as soon as the postman was gone, I of course got out my new toy for a bit of a play.

As fate would have it, I recently took delivery of some Blue Moon Mark I tanks. The Blue Moon kits come with both 'Male' and 'Female' sponsons....and I'm building them as gun tanks....and the 'spare' machine gun sponsons just so happen to perfectly fit my pretty little TOG....

....so.....why shouldn't I build the model as The Old Gang of the Royal Navy Landships Commitee originally intended?

These drawings gives a fairly good impression of the original design. 

I mean, the sponsons are not *100%* historically accurate as they are from a Mk.I, rather than a Mk.V tank, but on the other hand, the machine guns contained within would be being used to mow down Martians in revenge for the 1899 'Rape of London', so, I'm not all too fussed on that front.

I'd need to get some Matilda II turrets to complete the transformation, but that is no problem really.

Feeling really jazzed about doing this.

Let me know what you think!

MM.

Black Hat British Infantry [2]

Hey Internet,

I've finally gotten around to finishing my two platoons of Black Hat British Infantry.

All in all, its taken me two weeks to get the thirty of them painted up and based. To be honest, it was quite a chore to get them done.

The painting itself was not bad at all, but the clean-up of the flash and mold lines was really quite arduous.

I got these figures from a friend* who had them around collecting dust, so they are quite old, and given that fact, I have no idea if they are reflective of Black Hat's casting quality nowadays.

That said - and I am loathed to give a bad review - but the casting quality really was awful.

Almost every figure had prominent mold lines - sometimes two sets of mold lines per figure! Some of them also had major 'mold misalignment' issues. There was one 'pose' of figure that was so systematic in the poorness of its casting that every last one of the 'pose' had to be discarded.

After many hours filing and cutting, I got around to painting them. The figures are 'really big 15mm' or 18mm/HO scale, and as such they possess a pleasing level of detail and paint up rather nicely.

After a good deal of 'umm-ing' and 'ah-ing' I decided to go with turn of the century Khaki uniforms rather than the more stereotypical scarlet Redcoat. This made painting them a far speedier process, which was rather a good thing as, to be honest, the whole 'casting' issue had soured the whole modelling project for me, and enthusiasm was in short supply.

I've got some more Black Hat Commanders, Artillery and Gatling guns yet to do, but I think I need a rest before getting back into painting them.

I've got the first of the 'Tanks' on the way, so I'll probably do some of them before boomeranging back into the rest.

Mr. Marx.

* cheers Neil :)

The Lead Tally - 2014

Acquired: +59       Painted: +67          Total: +7

AQotMF British Infantry [1]

Hey Internet,

This week I've painted up a stand of British riflemen for 'All Quiet on the Martian Front'.

"But - what?!" I hear you say. 

"I'm quite sure sure that you said at the beginning of this year that you were not starting any new projects!" you continue.

But "ha!" say I, "I am not breaking my self-set rule! I said only that I would buy new figures for new projects - to put figures I already own to good use is the very intention of the ban!"

"...ah..." you must succeed, "...that's probably all-right then".

So, yeah...

I've painted up five British riflemen for 'All Quiet on the Martian Front'. 

The War of the Worlds has always been one of my favourite books, and something that I've always wanted to game. 

Yet, ''All Quiet" was not a game that I had previously given a second look, as on first glance. I found the tripods goofy and the tanks uninspired, but after a friend bought into it, I strayed onto the games webpage, and soon saw the new models for the BEF faction.

I'm not crazy about the 'official' miniatures - but luckily a friend of mine gave me a huge pile of Black Hat Martian Empires figures. They are the same strange '18mm' scale as AQotMF, so should do nicely.

I've plenty of infantry and a good battery of guns. The uniforms and weapons go against the 'cannon' of the game, but I'm really not too fussed about that. To this little force I'll add probably add some of the Heavy Infantry and a fair bit of armour.

Fortunately, most of the tanks I want don't exist in this scale yet - but between the centenary of the Great War, and Flames of War's new foray into the period, I only expect a short reprieve for my bank balance.

Oh, and one more thing -

Something that all my wargaming friends mock me for is my habit of writing down exactly how I paint everything.

I have a good reason for doing it though - firstly, my memory is a bit 'iffi' nowadays, and secondly, I tend to jump between projects a heck of a lot, and being able to settle back into a project at will is an incredible luxury.

On the off chance that you really like these figures, here is how I painted them;

MM.