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Author Topic: Captain Blood's Western Desert: P.125 - SdKfz10 half-track with 2cm Flak 30  (Read 276509 times)

Offline Michi

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Re: Captain Blood's Western Desert: P.76 - the whole blooming lot! (12 May)
« Reply #1155 on: May 16, 2018, 11:50:27 AM »
Pictures like from the WOCHENSCHAU...  :-*

Offline SteveBurt

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Re: Captain Blood's Western Desert: P.76 - the whole blooming lot! (12 May)
« Reply #1156 on: May 16, 2018, 01:33:43 PM »
Fabulous layout - that's by some way the best desert terrain I've ever seen.

Offline Bugsda

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Re: Captain Blood's Western Desert: P.76 - the whole blooming lot! (12 May)
« Reply #1157 on: May 16, 2018, 05:20:22 PM »
Absolutely brilliant Richard! If you ever sell it the war museum would take your hand off  :-*
Well I've lead an evil life, so they say, but I'll outrun the Devil on judgement day.

Offline Volleyfire!

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Re: Captain Blood's Western Desert: P.76 - the whole blooming lot! (12 May)
« Reply #1158 on: May 16, 2018, 07:30:05 PM »
Absolutely brilliant Richard! If you ever sell it the war museum would take your hand off  :-*

Hopefully not his painting hand  ;) :D

Offline Captain Blood

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Re: Captain Blood's Western Desert: P.76 - the whole blooming lot! (12 May)
« Reply #1159 on: May 16, 2018, 09:16:50 PM »
 :)  Thanks.

Dirk - oui to French, non to Italians  ;)

Offline aircav

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Re: Captain Blood's Western Desert: P.76 - the whole blooming lot! (12 May)
« Reply #1160 on: May 18, 2018, 05:37:46 AM »
WOW, that is absolutely stunning Richard  :o :o :o

Offline Captain Blood

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Re: Captain Blood's Western Desert: P.76 - the whole blooming lot! (12 May)
« Reply #1161 on: May 18, 2018, 10:15:53 AM »
 :) cheers Keith.

Offline gamer Mac

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Re: Captain Blood's Western Desert: P.76 - the whole blooming lot! (12 May)
« Reply #1162 on: May 18, 2018, 11:50:59 PM »
Stunning work :-* :-* :-* :-* :-* :-*
great to see it getting bigger and better

Offline archiduque

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Re: Captain Blood's Western Desert: P.76 - the whole blooming lot! (12 May)
« Reply #1163 on: May 21, 2018, 10:56:57 AM »
Stunning work Richard!! :-* :-*

Online Ragnar

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Re: Captain Blood's Western Desert: P.76 - the whole blooming lot! (12 May)
« Reply #1164 on: May 21, 2018, 11:01:44 AM »
Marvelous photos, Captain.
Gods, monsters and men,
Will die together in the end.

Offline Captain Blood

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Re: Captain Blood's Western Desert: P.76 - the whole blooming lot! (12 May)
« Reply #1165 on: May 21, 2018, 11:40:36 AM »
Thank you  :)
Plenty more to come in time, I hope.

Offline Exiledadmiral

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Re: Captain Blood's Western Desert: P.76 - the whole blooming lot! (12 May)
« Reply #1166 on: May 25, 2018, 10:34:58 PM »
That's an amazing table! It's so realistic I don't know how you do it, and your vehicles are brilliant too. I think I'm going to have to get on my laptop and trawl back through the thread to see the progress pics.

Offline NurgleHH

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Re: Captain Blood's Western Desert: P.76 - the whole blooming lot! (12 May)
« Reply #1167 on: May 28, 2018, 07:45:25 PM »
Ok, Captain, no italians  :'(
But next Salute you should make some advertisement for the rules a show your table (and offer some games). This is to good not to be shown. Maybe some guys from the BLAM may help you.

Victory Decision Vietnam here: leadadventureforum.com/index.php?topic=43264.0

Victory Decision Spacelords here: leadadventureforum.com/index.php?topic=68939.0

My pictures: http://pictures.dirknet.de/

Offline Captain Blood

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Re: Captain Blood's Western Desert: P.76 - the whole blooming lot! (12 May)
« Reply #1168 on: June 22, 2018, 10:35:27 AM »
Thanks all :)

Here goes with the next stage of the project…

I have finally got around to making a start on expanding eastward to Syria and the Levant, with a Vichy French force.
It’s going to be 1/56 scale and Perry-Centric, to fit with my British/Commonwealth and DAK forces.
To start however, the initial vehicle pool…

1 x Renault R35 light infantry tank, 1 x Hotchkiss H39 light tank, 1 x Citroen Traction Avant 11CV staff car (all Rubicon – ex-Neucraft)
1 x FT17 tank, 1 AMC Schneider P16 armoured car-cum-half-track, 1 x Panhard 178 armoured car (all Warlord Games)
1 x Dodge Tanake armoured truck, 1 x 75mm field gun (both Perry)



All the vehicles so far are resin with some metal parts. I haven’t yet seen any suitable or appealing 1/56 scale plastic kits for this force (although I’m sure there are some out there).

Now, before going any further, it’s almost certainly the case that not all these vehicles actually saw action with Vichy French forces in the near East. So, for the button counters, please note i/ I know this - and I don’t care;  and ii/ that impeccable source, Wikipedia, suggests that most of these AFVs (albeit often in small numbers) served with French colonial forces in North Africa - so it seems perfectly plausible to me that a few could have also found their way to Syria and the Levant… That’s my story and I’m sticking to it  :D

Onto the models…

The Rubicon models are absolutely sublime. I cannot praise them highly enough. They are simply the best resin vehicles I’ve ever seen. If you didn’t know otherwise, you’d swear they were plastic. Totally lightweight; super fine, clean, sharp detail; zero cleaning up required; beautifully moulded; simple to assemble – and they fit together beautifully and perfectly; different options included; and simply wonderful little models all round.

How much of this brilliance is down to the original manufacturer, and how much to Rubicon, I don’t know. Rubicon acquired these (and various other) models from Neucraft a while back, remastered them and used their expertise to rework how they are packaged as a set of components for easy assembly. They released them at Salute.

The two tanks are both surprisingly titchy. But then both were light, two-man tanks (with a gunner-commander and driver only). In both cases, you have the option to go with different model turrets and / or guns, and various hatches, open or closed. They are such gorgeous clean little models, and with such lovely detailing, that I couldn’t actually bring myself to add any stowage which would have obscured the moulded detail. I want them unadulterated!

I did though model the rear turret hatch on the Hotchkiss H39 as open, and have added a commander. He’s a quick conversion from an unused Perry DAK kneeling Marder crewman, with lower legs amputated, a head swap for a Vichy head in forage cap, plus a sand scarf bodged from Green Stuff.



The 11CV is similarly perfect. I was going to add a roof-rack piled high with stowage, Paris-Dakkar Rally style, but then decided to keep this model clean too.
Like all Rubicon Models kits, the instructions that come with each model are impeccable and super easy to follow.


 
All three models also come with the same generous and well-designed early war French decal sheet, which contains all the necessary decals (and many more) for all three models. I now have enough French decals to field a force of about 20 vehicles and AFVs! (Compare and contrast the mingy little decal sheet supplied with the Warlord Panhard A/C – although not, for some reason, with either of the other two models from that manufacturer. Poor really).



However I do have to say that the Warlord Games AFV models are also surprisingly good.
Surprising because I was expecting (from the website photos) them to be a bit clunky. But while it’s true that the detail isn't as fine as the Rubicon models, and some of the metal components lack finesse, the casting of the main resin bodies and turrets is a LOT cleaner than the many of the much-vaunted Blitzkrieg Miniatures models I’ve had. There’s little cleaning up to do on the Warlord resin - except for the removal of a few substantial ‘pouring plug’ nubs here and there. That’s a bit annoying - but I’d rather that than finding great lumps of resin clag occluding the details of the models themselves and needing to be laboriously carved away. There’s none of that thankfully, nor any air bubbles requiring filling.

The FT17 is a spiffing little model. Super easy to assemble. Not much to say about it really. The Schneider is a delightfully Heath-Robinson interwar concoction. I don’t know why Warlord decided to mould the tracks in white metal rather than resin – but they are pretty clunky. There is a total absence of instructions, and the metal tracks don’t fit at all well or obviously onto the resin hull - there are hardly any points of contact to glue to at all. Not good :(  So I’ve had to reinforce them underneath using bands of Green Stuff to weld the tracks to the hull.

The other thing that bothers me about this model is that it somehow looks too large to me. I think they’ve made it a bit outsized. Compared to photographs of the real vehicle, it looks too tall and too broad. I guess that won’t notice too much on the tabletop though.



The Panhard A/C is another very nice model and much easier to put together. It’s a damned big armoured car - bigger all round than the R35 light tank. There again, the Panhard had four crew, so must have been a pretty substantial beast.
You can model the turret hatch open or closed. I haven’t used the commander figure that came with the model, as his pose doesn’t remotely fit this model (he's a weird inclusion – he’s obviously intended for a different vehicle with his arms resting on split hatch covers to either side of him. Unfortunately, on the Panhard, there’s a single hatch that flaps open to the front. In which the commander figure would look like he’s dancing to the Birdy Song… I’ve used his head though, in its distinctive French tanker’s helmet, but grafted onto a plastic Rubicon British tank commander’s body and arms.

The A/C itself is a very clean casting with sharp detail. The only thing that bothers me is that it looks excessively riveted. If these were real rivets, they’d be about the size of golf balls. Yes, you can see the rivets on surviving museum examples of the real vehicle, but nowhere near as prominently as this. They’re overdone. Still, they’ll make painting it easy...

I also had to drill out one of the four metal wheels, which didn’t have its axle hole. Quality control absent...  ::)



Finally, onto the Perry models...

The Dodge Tanake is another Heath-Robinson / Frankenstein vehicle - although apparently both Vichy and the Free French used them in significant numbers. It’s a nice model – the resin casting is very clean for the most part, and the few metal parts aren’t too bad. It’s a bit of a fiddle to put it together and work out where to fit the crew though. Also, because the standing crew have no bases I’ve had to drill their feet and insert steel pins, and then drill corresponding holes into the floor of the vehicle, where I will eventually mount them once painted. (My experience with the Perry Marder crew on the Blitzkrieg Marder, is that even with superglue on the soles of their boots, they will just pop off as soon as they are knocked in a game, unless you drill and pin them).



The crew figures themselves are good. Well up to Michael Perry’s usual standard, and with a  choice of separate heads in kepis, forage caps or Adrian helmets. That said, having offered up all the figures and components in different combinations, there is absolutely no way that the machine gunner figure can actually attach his hands to the butt end of the machine gun (or is it a cannon – it’s hard to tell?) There’s a gap which cannot be bridged as far as I can see. A design flaw I fear.



Still, the overall model – 9 out of 10. Can’t wait to paint it.

The Perry 75mm field gun on the other hand is a minor nightmare. As with the Dodge Tanake (and all these Perry WW2 vehicles and guns) there are no instructions - you just have to look at the (not very instructive) pics on the Perry website and try to make the best of it. The moulding wasn’t great. Bent components and a veritable forest of casting worms, pimples and jags of metal requiring a LOT of prep and cleaning up. Similarly two of the four crew figures – huge mould lines, and various areas of extraneous clag needing to be carved away.

I am indisputably one of Perry Miniatures’ biggest fans and cheerleaders. I love just about everything they do (apart from all those endless bloody Nappies). But I’m afraid their reputation for poor casting on some of their metal figures is well deserved. It’s a great pity and I wish they’d address it. Spotting and eradicting the plethora of ‘worms’ is nothing less than a massive pain in the butt. (It makes me laugh when people whinge about how terribly long it takes to put together plastic figures… Properly cleaning up and prepping an individual Perry metal figure, using a scalpel and wire brush on the Dremel takes a good 10 minutes every time).
Anyway… The end result – the 75mm gun model is good enough in this scale, but compared to pictures of the real thing it seems to be missing rather a lot of detail, notably on the gun shield itself. Well, it’ll do.

Overall, on several of the AFVs I’ve added a few extraneous bits and pieces of stowage from Rubicon, Green Stuff, plus some tow chains here and there.
Next, I’m moving onto the painting.

That’s going to be interesting, since the French appear to have used a huge range of different and often quite fanciful styles and colours of camouflage (evidently it was often left to the discretion of the unit commander). Furthermore, while Google Images throws up thousands of examples of exotic camo schemes for WW2 French vehicles in France, there are hardly any for Vichy forces in Syria and the Levant.

It would be easy just to paint them all a kind of sand colour (which is probably what actually happened). But that would be rather boring. So I’m looking for advice and recommendations for possible near Eastern camo schemes for this little collection... (Lou Passejaire. I’m looking at you! :D) Merci! 





Offline aircav

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Great stuff Richard, really looking forward to seeing how this next stage pans out  :D
« Last Edit: June 22, 2018, 05:55:51 PM by aircav »

 

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