Tactical Painter's Second World War in 20mm (updated 20 04 24)

[TacticalPainter]

Looking good. Whats the orange stuff you are using to build up the bases?

It’s Milliput, their cheap terracotta stuff.

[TacticalPainter]

When I bought the Foundry Australians I also included an order for the British NW Europe support weapon set. I was after a few more prone bren gun teams and a prone 2” mortar team. As much as I like the AB sets I have a few more standing bren and 2” mortar teams than I need. Invariably I'm looking for a prone team rather than one standing. The Foundry set also had a couple of Vickers teams which I intend to use for my Crossfire games as I was short of some of those. So a few birds killed with one stone. As always figures are nicely sculpted although I would have liked to see the helmets covered in scrim and camouflage (I tried making my own using Milliput but couldn't get them to look right and gave up).

[z1pp132002]

Excellent work always nice to see 20mm and especially your contributions to the hobby. It is sad to see so many abandoning the scale for 28mm. Keep up the good work.

[CapnJim]

Those lads look grand!

[TacticalPainter]

Wrecks always make for good scatter terrain but I also have a use for them when playing our pint sized campaigns for Chain of Command. It's not uncommon to fight over a map more than once if the attack has been unsuccessful and therefore not unusual that the battlefield shows signs of earlier fighting be it wrecked vehicles or buildings. It all adds to the narrative. It was with that in mind that I made up a kit of a PzIV from Dragon as a wreck. The kit included options for open hatches and so was ideal for showing a hastily abandoned tank.

I achieved the blistered paint effect by using AK's Worn Effects fluid (although a cheap hairspray will achieve exactly the same thing).

[BeneathALeadMountain]

That is an excellent burnt out tank - wrecked vehicles are rarely seen on the tabletop but dotted around in the background a lot of period photos of combat.

Andrew
BeneathALeadMountain

[Shahbahraz]

Great stuff. Very effective looking wreck.

And I see the next episode of Martlet is up on the blog. A cracking read.

[CapnJim]

Nice looking KO'ed tank.  Well done!

[has.been]

Lovely, but a decent recovery unit should get it running again.

[TacticalPainter]

A few more projects completed, mainly with the Far East in mind. First is a D7 Armoured Bulldozer from 172 Scale Miniatures. Overall this is a nice model, however the tracks are excessively chunky and let the model down. This can serve many uses from the 79th Armoured Division (Hobart's Funnies) on D-Day through to the US Marines.



Next is a CMP truck from the Plastic Soldier Company set. This is intended for the Far East but given the colours it could quite easily find itself somewhere in Europe (that said, the crew are in tropical uniform, however it's very hard to distinguish that unless you give it a very close inspection).



Last is an Indian Patter carrier, again from 172 Scale Miniatures.



And here they are for a group photo to give an indication of relative size:

[CapnJim]

I like that dozer.  When I was a kid, my next door neighbor told me he drove one of those things ashore in the first wave at Okinawa as a SeaBee...

[jon_1066]

Great work as always.  Can I ask a quick question?

What in game purpose would a truck have?  Sounds daft I know but isn't a truck to get you somewhere close to the start line and then you walk the rest of the way.  ie once bullets are flying that truck should be nowhere near the front line.  I see so many transport vehicles people build that by rights shouldn't be on the board but they presumably feature in various rulesets.  I could see some scenario specific use for it (eg ambush type scenario or someone got lost) but their shear ubiquity makes me think I'm missing something.

[TacticalPainter]

Great work as always.  Can I ask a quick question?

What in game purpose would a truck have?  Sounds daft I know but isn't a truck to get you somewhere close to the start line and then you walk the rest of the way.  ie once bullets are flying that truck should be nowhere near the front line.  I see so many transport vehicles people build that by rights shouldn't be on the board but they presumably feature in various rulesets.  I could see some scenario specific use for it (eg ambush type scenario or someone got lost) but their shear ubiquity makes me think I'm missing something.

Sorry for not replying sooner, I’ve just seen this. I’m with you to some degree, in a normal combat situation the trucks shouldn’t appear. For me the main purpose is scenario specific. In the case of the Far East I see potential use of British trucks for retreat/breakout scenarios during the retreats in Malaya and Burma. For the Japanese I see them as potential targets for Chindits.

We recently played the Ruckzug campaign for chain of command. The chances of a successful German withdrawal is greatly increased by their trucks. While they don’t need to actually appear on the table (their primary function is abstracted and determines how many units transition successfully to the next map) we placed them at the rear of the table as scatter terrain to add to the narrative.

[TacticalPainter]

Once we complete the Operation Martlet campaign for Chain of Command we will move onto the Scottish Corridor and for that campaign the British will be on the defensive. It made me realise that I don't have as many defensive poses for my British as I would like and it just so happens that when I was perusing the Eureka Miniatures stand at CanCon this year there were sets of AB British in defensive poses for sale. How could I resist?

Lovely figures as always and a useful addition that should see action in the coming weeks.

[has.been]

Lovely paint job, as usual. I look forward to seeing them in an AAR.