flames of war Archives - Page 27 of 41

"Flames of War Bridge" – Airfix Preview 2012

So there I was looking through the Airfix preview for 2012 when I saw two models and immediately thought they would work for Flames of War.

They are two bridge models.

They are 1/76th scale and therefore designed for 20mm high miniatures. However I am sure that it would also work for Flames of War miniatures which are 1/100th with 15mm high figures.

Knowing Airfix, we probably won’t see these in the flesh until the latter part of 2012, but they do have potential. They will be resin and unpainted.

Flames of War French Renault AMR-35

The Automitrailleuse de Reconnaissance Renault Modèle 35 Type ZT (AMR 35 or Renault ZT) was a French light tank developed during the Interbellum and used in the Second World War. It was not intended to reconnoitre and report as its name suggests but was a light armoured combat vehicle, mostly without a radio and used as a support tank for the mechanised infantry.

During the Battle of France the AMR 35s were part of armoured and motorised divisions, the vast majority being lost during the first weeks of the fighting.

This purchase was a bit of a mistake, I thought I was buying the Renault R-35… however in the end I decided to keep them.

Flames of War British Daimler Dingo

The Daimler Scout Car, known in service as the “Dingo” (after the Australian wild dog), was a British light fast 4WD reconnaissance vehicle also used in the liaison role during the Second World War. In 1938 the British War Office issued a specification for a scouting vehicle. Out of three designs submitted by Alvis, BSA and Morris, the one by BSA was selected. The actual production was passed to Daimler, which was a vehicle manufacturer in the BSA group of companies. The vehicle was officially designated Daimler Scout Car, but became widely known as Dingo, which was the name of the competing Alvis prototype.

The Flames of War blister comes with three of them.

These are very nice models. I will probably use them with my Late War British, though they have the potential to be used for Early War too.

These are resin models with metal wheels and crew.

See the full workbench feature on the British Daimler Dingo.

Flames of War German Panther A Platoon

I bought this box set as it was available at Hobbycraft for a much cheaper price than the list price last year.

Panther is the common name of a medium tank fielded by Nazi Germany in World War II that served from mid-1943 to the end of the European war in 1945. It was intended as a counter to the T-34, and to replace the Panzer III and Panzer IV; while never replacing the latter, it served alongside it as well as the heavier Tiger tanks until the end of the war. The Panther’s excellent combination of firepower, mobility, and protection served as a benchmark for other nations’ late war and immediate post-war tank designs, and it is frequently regarded as one of the best tank designs of World War II.

The resin and metal certainly fills the box.

There are five Panthers in the box and the hulls and turrets are in resin.

These are clean castings and the detail is very good, the Panthers for example have the Zimmeritt paste and you can see how the where it has “chipped off” has been modelled onto the hull.

Each of the castings is different, with this one there are spare tracks attached to the turret as extra armour.

They are very clean castings and the small piece of flash on the turret with this model was basically all that needed to be cleaned off.

The castings needed mininal cleaning before the next stage of constructing the models.

See the workbench feature on my Flames of War Panther A Platoon.

15mm German SdKfz 251 Armoured Half Track

The SdKfz 251 (Sonderkraftfahrzeug 251) half-track was an armored fighting vehicle designed and first built by Germany’s Hanomag company during World War II. One of the most common, and best armoured of the wartime half-tracks, the SdKfz 251 was designed to transport the panzergrenadiers of the German mechanized infantry corps into battle. Widely known simply as “Hanomags” by both German and Allied forces, they were widely produced throughout the war, with over 15,252 vehicles and variants produced in total by various manufacturers.

This is an old metal model that I think was made by SDD. I am using it as a testbed for which method I should use with my Flames of War resin models and I suspect in the end it will probably end up as a piece of scenery.

Having given the model a basecoat of Warpaint German Armour the next stage will be to add the disruptive camouflage.

I thought long and hard about how to do this, and I didn’t have or really wanted to buy an airbrush, even though that appears to be the accepted method for doing late war German camouflage.

What I did was take an old paintbrush and cut off the bristles leaving a quarter inch. This brush is then used to stipple on the camouflage pattern.

I used Reflective Green (890) and Chocolate Brown (872).

I am quite pleased with the effect.

Though the official German manual during the war told how the camo pattern was to be applied, it said the raw paint mixture was to be mixed with petrol and sprayed onto the vehicles. Reality and short supplies of petrol meant that more often the camo pattern was “painted” onto the vehicles, sometimes with brushes and sometimes with rags.

I do like the effect that the airbrush gives these models, I am not sure if I have the requisite skill to do it justice on small models like this.

See the workbench feature on the German SdKfz 251 Armoured Half Track.

Basecoating the Flames of War British 17pdr SP Achilles

The 17 pounder, Self Propelled, Achilles was a British variant of the American M10 Tank destroyer armed with the powerful British Ordnance QF 17 pounder anti-tank gun in place of the standard 3″ (76.2 mm) Gun M7. With a total of 1,100 M10s converted, the 17 pdr SP Achilles was the second most numerous armoured fighting vehicle to see service armed with the 17 pounder gun, behind the Sherman Firefly.

Having given the model a white undercoat, and as I had run out of Humbrol Dark Green, I gave the models a complete spray of Warpaint British Armour.

Next stage will be painting some of the details and the crew.

See the workbench feature on the British M10 / 17pdr SP Achilles.

15mm Ruined Houses

One of my Christmas presents was a couple of ruins from Total Battle Miniatures.

I got the ruined row of three houses and the ruined row of four houses.

They look like very nice clean castings and I think I may get some more to add to my ruined Normandy village for Flames of War.

So what did you get for Christmas?

Basecoating the Flames of War TOG2 Mid-War Monster

The Tank, Heavy, TOG 2 was a prototype British super-heavy tank design produced in the early part of the Second World War in case the battlefields of northern France turned into a morass of mud, trenches and craters as had happened during the First World War. In the end it never went into production, but as part of the Flames of War Mid-War Monsters range you can buy it and use it in alternate history games.

I was going to (as I have done with other models) give the TOG2 tanks a spray from underneath of a Humbrol Dark Green, however I ran out of paint after doing one. So in the end I gave all three models a basecoat of Warpaint British Armour.