Felix, Author at Felix's Gaming Pages

Basecoating the Maus Super Heavy Tanks

The Maus was a German World War Two super heavy tank that was completed in late 1944. Five were ordered, but only two hulls and one turret were completed before the testing grounds were captured by advancing Soviet forces It is the heaviest fully enclosed armoured fighting vehicle ever built at 188 metric tons. It was armed with a 128mm gun and a coaxial 75mm gun. The Maus was intended to punch holes through enemy defences in the manner of an immense “breakthrough tank”, whilst taking almost no damage to any components.

I have been constructing two 15mm models of the Maus Super Heavy Tank. One from Zvezda and the other from Clash of Steel. Having given both models a white undercoat I gave them a base coat of Army Painter Desert Yellow Spray.

This is the Zvezda model.

This is the Clash of Steel model.

I sprayed the tracks with Mechanicus Standard Grey Spray, though I think they will be painted a dark brown colour eventually.

The next stage will be painting the tracks and the camouflage. I am going to go for the similar pattern as on the GF9 Clash of Steel model.

Though as I don’t have an airbrush I am going to have to do this by hand with a paintbrush.

Field Ordnance Battery

The Imperial Guard field a range of human-portable weapons. Crewed by ordnance teams they provide a range of choices for the Astra Militarum in supporting combined arms assault with infantry and tanks. They use bombast field guns, malleus rocket launchers and heavy lascannons.

Basecoating the Legions Imperialis Rhino Transport Detachment

I got the Legions Imperialis: Rhino Transport boxed set as a present last Christmas.

The Rhino is the most widely used armoured personnel carrier in the Imperium. Based upon ancient STC technology, the fundamental design is robust, reliable, and easy to maintain, with an adaptive power plant that can run off a wide variety of fuels. Within the Space Marine Legions, the Deimos pattern was the most widespread, serving as the basic armoured transport available to the Legiones Astartes and the foundation on which a number of other war machines were based.

In the box you get two sprues that can be used to construct ten models. I made up five of the models and gave them a white undercoat.

I then gave the models a spray of Army Painter Demonic Yellow.

The next stage will be painting the tracks and other details on the models.

Solar Auxilia Shadowsword

The Shadowsword is the sister tank to the Baneblade, a super-heavy vehicle employed by Solar Auxilia cohorts to engage and destroy enemy macro-engines with its volcano cannon. The same chassis has also been adapted to mount different primary weapons suited to their own modes of destruction, like the bunker-busting Stormsword siege cannon or the versatile plasma blastgun of the Stormblade.

Constructing the Space Hobbits

On the cover of a recent Miniature Wargames magazine was a free sprue of SneakFeet from Wargames Atlantic. Of course in any other place these would be space hobbits or halflings. Another place calls them Ratlings.

I borrowed some spare round bases I had and constructed the four models.

They were a little challenging to put together for me. You certainly get a wide choice of arms and heads, I wasn’t always sure about the best arms to use. However quite pleased with the end result.

Taurox Prime

When the Militarum Tempestu need to transport their soldiers into the heart of battle, they use the Taurox Prime. It is a well armed and armoured infantry assault vehicle. It is usually armed with an array of heavy weapons. It is the ideal support vehicle for the Militarum Tempestus on the battlefield.

The Forge World Ork Shanty Town diorama was changed to have the Militarum Tempestu driving in to the town in their Taurox Prime armoured vehicles to rescue a downed Valkyrie flyer.

More photographs of the Shanty Town.

When the Taurox was released back in 2014, I said back then.

The Taurox Prime is a new model from Games Workshop, and I really don’t like it. I think it’s too tall and the tracked “wheels” fail to work for me.

I wasn’t alone in that though as the comments show in that post.

Another Maus

This Maus came in the Operation Unthinkable starter set for Clash of Steel. One of seventeen tanks in the box.

This is the sprue.

The model was a relatively simple build.

I kept the tracks off the model to paint separately.

Having recently constructed the Zvezda Maus, it’s interesting to compare the two models.

They are pretty much identical.

However from a modelling perspective, the Clash of Steel version is much easier to put together.

I then gave the Maus a white undercoat.

The yellow of the plastic can still be seen, but I wasn’t trying to do a thicker base coat, this was about setting a primer for the sand base coat later.

Next step will be painting the model a sand colour.

Bullgryns

Bullgryns are recruited from most obstinate of the Ogryn strain of abhumans, clad in heavy armour and armed with rugged assault weaponry built to withstand their unwieldy strength. A line of these heavily-muscled humanoids is a frightening sight, advancing in shield-lines from which shots bounce harmlessly, issuing thunderous blows with heavy mauls and lobbing explosives as they charge.

1974 coup d’etat

The idea of a civil war or a coup d’etat taking place across Great Britain is something I have been playing with over many years.

A few decades back I wrote an article about a modern era English Civil War that was published in Issue #43 of Wargames Illustrated in April 1991.

” … its six o’clock, on Tuesday the 27th October 1998. This is the Royal Somerset Broadcasting Service, and now the news from Wessex and around the world. The headlines: Scotland has seceded from the British Republic, fighting has broken out along the border. Royalist army and volunteer militia units have pushed back across the border an armed incursion by Democratic Guards into south-west Dorset last night. Bristol Docks were once again the target of bombing over the night, but damage has been minimal. The United States has once again confirmed its commitment to the sovereignty of the Kingdom of Wessex and Duchy of Cornwall.”

The main inspiration for the background was the breakup of the former Yugoslavia and wondering if a similar scenario could play out in a disunited broken Great Britain. It was also an opportunity to bring in modern armoured trains as well.

Another idea is revolution, the start of which is usually a coup d’etat. Was there going to be a coup d’etat against the Labour government in 1974? Or more specifically was there going to be a coup against Harold Wilson? In this opinion piece from 2006 in The Guardian, the view was that yes there was some planning for one.

The great and the good feared that the country was out of control, and that Wilson lacked either the will or the desire to stand firm. Retired intelligence officers gathered with military brass and plotted a coup d’etat. They would seize Heathrow airport, the BBC and Buckingham Palace. Lord Mountbatten would be the strongman, acting as interim prime minister. The Queen would read a statement urging the public to support the armed forces, because the government was no longer able to keep order.

It sounds fantastic, almost comic. But watch Greenwood talk of setting up his own private army in 1974-75. Listen to the former intelligence officer Brian Crozier admit his lobbying of the army, how they “seriously considered the possibility of a military takeover”. Watch the archive footage of troop manoeuvres at Heathrow, billed as a routine exercise but about which Wilson was never informed – and which he interpreted as a show of strength, a warning, even a rehearsal for a coup.

Then there was that episode of Netflix’s The Crown. The fifth episode of the third season, Coup, covered this as well.

While the Queen travels abroad to learn about horse training, unhappiness among the British elite with the devaluation of the pound involves Lord Mountbatten in a plan to oust Harold Wilson.

Regardless of the reality, the idea of an attempted (or even successful) coup in the UK in the 1970s provides an interesting background for scenarios and games. There is an assumption often made that regular British forces would always obey orders given by senior officers. However as was seen in 1919 following the end of the Great War there were many occasions when soldiers would not only ignore orders, but would act in their own interest. The book 1919: Britain’s Year of Revolution provides an insight into the revolutionary troubles that faced Great Britain.

So here are some ideas for scenarios if there had been a coup in 1974.

Dockside Battles

Royal Navy ships arrive in the Liverpool docks after unionised dockers seized the port. Royal Marines disembark to secure the docks. There are clashes between the regular army and local workers.

This is the BBC

After a radical armed militia seizes Television Centre in Shepherd’s Bush, the government appear to be doing nothing. The army decides to take action and storm the centre.

Show of strength

The army undertakes troop manoeuvres at Heathrow Airport as a show of strength.

In 1974 the army occupied Heathrow Airport on the grounds of training for possible IRA terrorist action at the airport. Although the military stated that this was a planned military exercise, Downing Street was not informed in advance, and Wilson himself interpreted it as a show of strength, or warning, being made by the army.

The government orders forces loyal to the government to remove the troops.

Defending Buckingham Palace

At the height of the coup, the army has taken over many of the buildings in Whitehall, they have stormed Broadcasting House, and across the capital, the army is in control of major transport hubs, such as Paddington Station and Heathrow Airport.

There was an expectation that the Queen would recognise and support the new government, but she refuses to. The army decides to march on Buckingham Palace and remove the Queen. However troops loyal to the crown make the choice to defend the palace from attack.

Mutiny in the barracks

After being ordered to mobilise and take part in the coup, across the barracks in the UK, troops mutiny and decide to fight against the coup. However, it wasn’t the case that all soldiers obeyed orders, or disobeyed them. In many barracks fighting broke out between those troops loyal to the government, and those who wanted to participate in the coup.

Constructing and undercoating the Maus

I’ve always been impressed with the 1/100th scale models from Zvezda as well as being good quality plastic miniatures they are also reasonably priced. I was intrigued to see that my local model shop had the German super heavy tank Maus in their range of Zvezda kits.

Zvezda Panzer VIII Maus

I think it might have been priced wrongly at £3.50 as similar boxes (i.e. the bigger boxes) were £7.00. So I bought two for potential objectives or models for alternate history games set at the end of World War Two.

The model comprises two plastic sprues and look detailed and I think it will capture the feel of this monstrous tank.

Zvezda Panzer VIII Maus sprue

The sprues have sat around for a while, but having recently purchased a similar 1/100th scale 15mm Maus from Battlefront I was intrigued to see the comparison.

The next stage was to construct the models, even though it says snap-fit, decided to glue the model together. I was going add some weight to the model too, so give it some heft and ballast. I think a super heavy tank, even at 1/100th scale, should be “super heavy”. However, I didn’t have any weights to hand. The model was not as simple as I thought it would be to construct, I had issues with getting the gun the right way around, but got there in the end.

This is a large 15mm model, as compared to the M18 Hellcat in the same scale.

The next stage was a white undercoat.