Bits and Pieces

To give myself a break from painting Ottoman Turks I managed to finish off a couple more support units for my 28mm Africa Korps forces. First up was a Horch with a 20mm Flak 38 and the other is a Pak 38 50mm antitank gun.

At the same time I finished off a few “jump off” points for use in the western desert for “Chain of Command”.

Here is a collection of random figures that have been lurking on the painting desk for some time. The first three are from the Dark Ages (sorry can’t bring myself to use the Early Medieval that has suddenly emerged) which were a present a while ago. One I know is Uthred of Bebbanburg and his female companion and the last a druid or shaman. Unfortunately I cannot remember who the manufacturer is as I lost the original packaging.

The next three figures were all “specials” from Warlord I have acquired and will be added to my Very British War forces (I have way too many 20mm Soviets for WW2 and am not even tempted to go for a 28mm force ?). They are  Lydmila Paulichenko  – Lady Death,  Vasily Zaitsev and the one and only Churchill. Lydmila and Vasily will be added to my “Lancashire Reds” faction, while Churchill will be included in the “Royalist” forces.

The last of my recent completed figures was a refugee from my Infamy project that I found lurking at the back of my painting desk.

It was a Roman “medic” that I had not used when making up the various “ambush points” for the Roman forces.

It gave me the opportunity to paint him up and us him as the “Capsarius” support option within the game (basically a medic) to treat any wounded leader.

The figure is from Warlord and was painted in my normal, block, shade and highlight style.

The other unit I recently completed was another Infantry battalion for my French Peninsular forces, in the form of a Polish battalion I received as a present.

I decided that these were to be painted as the 1st Battalion, 1st Regiment of the Vistula Legion. I know there is a debate that they did not wear the Czapka in Spain but shako but they do look good. Also it was a struggle to identify the correct uniform details, some sources I have had them with yellow collars and cuffs, while others had them with blue collars lined yellow. There was also varying descriptions as to whether the pompom colour was white or black. In the end I decided to go with the uniform description I had in the old Almark French Infantry book I acquired in the late seventies when I had first started in the hobby.

The standard is from GMB Designs.

We recently swapped the rules we used for American Civil War to Picketts Charge and while it did not entail any rebasing it did mean a change from single model artillery batteries to multi model batteries.

So more guns were required ?

A quick search through the “pile of pride” revealed enough guns and crew for 2 Union 3 gun batteries and 2 Confederate 2 Gun batteries.

Basic paint jobs with block colour, army painter soft tone wash and a quick highlight got the guns ready for a game last Saturday.