workbench – Page 53 – Felix's Gaming Pages

SDD 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.

I bought some SDD models in the 1990s.

SDD British Daimler Dingo

Not sure how I will use these, potentially desert models or as wrecks.

Another option would be to use them as part of my modern English Civil War background.

Painting the roof

This was the third Sarissa Precision Old West building I constructed, House with Stone Chimney. Like my other Sarissa Precision models, these went together really easily, and are for comparison purposes much simpler than the 4Ground models (but also as a result less detailed).

Like my other Sarissa Precision models I have now painted the roof slates.

House with Stone Chimney

I still need to paint the chimney.

House with Stone Chimney

I am contemplating if I should paint the wooden sides, doors and window frames.

A&D Hardware Store

4Ground A&D Hardware Store

This is a laser-cut mdf building from 4Ground for Great Escape Games’ Dead Man’s Hand set of rules.

Andrew Dewey and Dave Annabelle met whilst they were serving as elected members of the Territorial Legislator of Montana and both living in Helena. They both had a firm interest in travelling to the Town of Dead Man’s Hand and joining the gold rush, after buying as much equipment as they could they set out on the road.

Along the way they found out about the boom town of Bitter Creek and the gold just being picked up from the ground. So after passing through Dead Man’s Hand the partners reached Bitter Creek, they quickly realised that the gold was not just waiting to be picked off the ground as they had been told, but the constant influx of new pioneers would pay handsomely for the abundance of equipment they had brought with them. Annabelle and Dewey quickly decided the best thing to do would be to set up the first hardware store in the town, ordering in all the goods they needed they quickly started earning a fair amount.

Now the A & D Hardware Store sells mining goods, tools, provisions and clothing to prospectors and pioneers. As their shipments have increased they have noticed a rise in the town of unsavoury types said by some to be under the payroll of S. L. Wheatley in nearby Dead Man’s Hand.

Like most of the newer 4Ground models, this is a well designed kit with lots of interior detail as well as on the outside. So there are inside walls as well as exterior walls.

4Ground A&D Hardware Store

Inside the building is the main retail area, time to add a counter and stock, whilst there is a rear storage area at the back of the building with a rear exit for a quick getaway if required.

4Ground A&D Hardware Store

The model goes together really easily, but as the instruction recommend you should use clamps (or pegs) when sticking the exterior walls onto the main frame to avoid unsightly gaps and a near fit.

4Ground A&D Hardware Store

I think the only challenge I can see is adding glazing to the windows.

More of the LVT-4 Buffalo Amtrac

I have started working on my Warlord LVT-4 Buffalo Amtrac for Bolt Action. The LVT-4 is a 1/56th scale 28mm resin and metal kit. Having given the model a white undercoat I then gave the model a base coat of British Armour Green.

Here are some more photographs of the model.

Warlord LVT-4 Buffalo Amtrac for Bolt Action

This is a well detailed model.

Warlord LVT-4 Buffalo Amtrac for Bolt Action

Thinking I might need to get some jeeps for my commandos.

Finishing the Shotgun House

Having being half completed for a while, I took the time to finish off my The Chicago Way Shotgun House from 4Ground.

In the mid C19th on the French island territory of Haiti a narrow gable fronted worker’s dwelling had developed with external door openings in the gable ends in alignment front and rear. Internal partition walls were used to divide living space, with internal partition doors in alignment with the external doors enabling good air circulation; often built with a high roof pitch and small windows below the gable peaks which contributed to the cooling environment created by the effect of drafting air through the dwelling.

By the late C19th these dwellings had spread across much of the USA and could be commonly found from Southern Texas all the way up to Chicago – North East Illinois. Better quality examples were sometimes called ‘Shotgun Houses’ rather than ‘Shotgun Shacks’ to distinguish them from those of a poorer quality. By the early to mid C20th almost all of these houses were considered old and dilapidated and both ‘Shotgun Shack’ and ‘Shotgun house’ implied a poor quality dwelling.

I found the model went together really easily.

However I did find the doors a little difficult and I constructed them back to front, so worth watching out for that if you are building one of these houses.

As with most 4Ground models there are the burn marks from the laser cutting. I think they add a certain weathered appearance to the building.

I am now thinking about getting the other two Shotgun Houses from this range.

Painting the LVT-4 Buffalo Amtrac

I have started working on my Warlord LVT-4 Buffalo Amtrac for Bolt Action. The LVT-4 is a 1/56th scale 28mm resin and metal kit.

Having cleaned the model it was a relatively simple process of putting the kit together, well apart from the issue with the rear mudguards.

Having given the model a white undercoat I then gave the model a base coat of British Armour Green.

There were lots of undercuts which meant careful spraying.

Overall I was quite pleased with the initial results, and the next stage will be adding the British markings.

Painting the Scimitars

For Christmas I was kindly given not only the Team Yankee Iron Maiden book I also got a box of the newly released 15mm British Scorpion or Scimitar Troop.

I have been thinking about the paint scheme for my Scorpions and Scimitars and I outlined this in a previous post.

I started them off, with a base coat of a spray of Chieftain Green paint.

Like the Scorpions, I didn’t quite get the coverage I was expecting.

Building the LVT-4 Buffalo Amtrac

There aren’t too many parts to this model, so I thought it would be a simple build, but in the end I made a mistake which meant having to start again.

The problem arose when adding the tracks to the main hull. Unlike when building Flames of War resin models which include notches for the tracks, the LVT-4 Buffalo tracks had no way of indicating where they were placed on the hull.

Doing a dry run I thought I had it right, but when I came to place the rear mudguards I realised I had them on too far back! So I had to remove the tracks, then attach the rear mudguards before replacing the tracks.

Apart from that, the rest of the model went together really easily.

The next step will be a white undercoat.

Painting the Scorpion

For Christmas I was kindly given not only the Team Yankee Iron Maiden book I also got a box of the newly released 15mm British Scorpion or Scimitar Troop.

I have been thinking about the paint scheme for my Scorpions and Scimitars.

One choice would be to paint them as part of the BAOR tracked reconnaissance regiment. The kind of scheme they would have in 1985 just as war broke out.

Another choice was to paint them, if they had been fighting World War III for a while, possibly even after a limited nuclear exchange. The inspiration for this scheme is of course GDW’s Twilight 2000 background. These could be BAOR vehicles struggling to find their way home or another perspective could be the remnants of the British Army attempting to maintain control in a Britain broken apart by the nuclear exchange.

Another possibility was to use my own British Civil War background and paint them as Royalist forces, or as their Republican opposition.

In the end though I started them off, with a base coat of a spray of Chieftain Green paint.

Due to poor light I didn’t quite get the coverage I was expecting.

However I do think once I have added the black camouflage and given the model a dark wash, then this won’t matter so much.

Centurion Mk 5 – Team Yankee

Centurion Mk 5

The Centurion, introduced in 1945, was the primary British main battle tank of the post-Second World War period. It is widely considered to be one of the most successful post-war tank designs, remaining in production into the 1960s, and seeing combat in the front lines into the 1980s.

According to this source, in 1981, the BAOR had 300 Centurion main battle tanks in reserve.

You can imagine that if World War III had started as imagined in the book by Harold Coyle that the British Army would want to use all the tanks they had access to when faced with the might of the armoured formations of the Warsaw Pact.

So though the Iron Maiden rules don’t cover the Centurion tank and no (British) models have been released I still thought it would be nice to have some Centurions on the gaming table.

So I ordered and purchased a couple of Sho’T models from the Flames of War Fate of a Nation range and will paint them up as British Army Centurions for use in Team Yankee games.

Centurion Mk 5

These look like really nice models.

Centurion Mk 5

Another possibility was to use my own British Civil War background and use them as Royalist forces, or as their Republican opposition.

I did consider getting the ANZAC Centurion Mk 5s from the Vietnam range, but they don’t have skirts. After operating for a few weeks in Vietnam, the tanks crews soon learned to remove the protective armoured side skirts from both sides of the tank, to prevent the vegetation and mud from building up between the track and the mudguards.

I did think that in a World War III scenario such modifications or battle damage would still mean the models could be used, but as the Israeli Sho’T models already come with skirts, I decided to use them.

So are you using Centurions in your Team Yankee games?