Battle! Project.

Today I started my 20mm Battle! project.

Inspired by Charles Grant's wonderful little book on WW2-era wargaming, I have long desired to create a couple of fictional armies for that era.

Now the history and politics of the actual conflict itself are of little interest to me, and I have always had a hearty dislike of the "wall-to-wall Tiger tank" German armies one so often sees out there, and the all-too-common sets of WW2 rules that cater for them.

However, I do have an interest in the tactical problems posed by mechanised warfare, and a soft spot for many of the vehicles in use at the time. Some of them look really cute.

In order to cater for my interests, and do away with the bias so often inherent in "historical" games of WW2, I have basically come up with two fictious sides; Green and Brown. Both sides will field a happy mixture of whatever tanks, vehicles and weapons I feel like issuing them with.

The figures to be used have been selected purely on the grounds that the sets contain the requisite poses for the units I wish to create, and are available locally and cheaply.

In this case the troops will be Italeri's WW2 German Infantry (re-issue of the old ESCI set) and German Elite Infantry (the new-ish release), and their US Infantry (another re-issue of the old ESCI set). A couple of boxes of each will allow me to complete a battalion of Infantry and their support, using Charles Grant's OOB guidelines. The "German" figures will have brown uniforms, and the "US" figures green.

Support weapons such as Anti-Tank guns will also be provided by Italeri and Airfix. Armoured cars will be by Pegasus (the BA-6), Airfix and Revell (the old Matchbox Puma). Transport will be the new quick-build M3 halftracks, and perhaps later the 251 when it finally becomes available from HaT, plus Opel and GM trucks trucks from Pegasus.

Tanks will be whatever I fancy, really. Neither side will have unbeatable tanks, and Tigers, Panthers, Shermans, Mk IIIs, BT-7s, T34s and Stalins will be available to both sides. I'm using the various quick-build and E-Z build series out there from the likes of HaT, Italeri and Pegasus, and will include the latter's tidy little "what-if" models, too. I even intend to have a brace or so of the old FT-17's from HaT.

In fact today I slung together a couple of the Pegasus late-WW2 "what-if" tanks. They took me about 15 minutes per tank. The main parts such as the hull and turret went together so well they did not even need glue, and the finished kits are pretty little things, that have already set my imagination awhirl with the prospect of designing paint schemes for them.


I have no intention of creating a game that allows wall-to-wall tanks. They will be issued as support, and almost certainly be limited to three or four on a side, in any one battle.

I Used To Dabble......

In 28mm WWII stuff. By "dabble", I mean I toyed with the idea of using this size of figure to wargame the period, to the extent that I bought a fair few figures and painted them up.





I had no real idea of where this was going to go, and that is usually a bad sign for me. It tends to mean my little heart is NOT really into something, and this was no exception.





A number of things eventually put me off, but the main one was the near total lack of any support vehicles in the correct scale, and the price of the few that did exist. I was also put off by the huge size of table required if anything other than "Warhammer 40K"-style skirmish games were to be played.

Even so, I spent a fair amount of cash and time painting up various units from the period. But eventually I tired of it and sold them on, leaving only a few photos to remind me.

Here's Some I Did Earlier.

I was going through my old photo folders and clearing out a lot of duplicated shots, and found some nice pictures I had forgotten I had taken.

These figures are now sadly sold on. Wish I had kept them. Isn't that often the way?


40K Nurgle Plague Marines squad. Converted OOP Space Wolves figure in centre. Fun to add and paint all the pustules and running, open sores... and that's just on the Rhino APC... !

And a converted OOP metal Space Marines Dreadnought, again infested by Nurgle.


And Block Busting against Black Templar Space Marines.

Taking A Rest

This last few days have seen me take a rest from pouring molten white metal into rubber moulds. One needs to back off now and again or else the smell starts to permeate the house. Not too sure it does my lungs much good either.

But really all I have left to do now is the rank and file, and I already have around 80 of those done. The rest can wait, perhaps until after Christmas and the New Year.

In the meantime I have been enjoying watching our little one learn to tie her own shoelaces, a task which has resulted in many tears and angry tantrums on her part.

I've also been reading Charles Grant's The Battle of Fontenoy, which as Jean-Louis pointed out in a comment earlier, is the natural follow-up to The War Game. Let down only by a lack of photos, it is nevertheless an excellent book and great fun to read.

Other than the normal household routine, and getting soaked taking the little one to her Stage School on Saturday, I have been cleaning and undercoating a few 30mm Spencer Smith and SAE metal figures, and basing some of the plastic Spencer Smith Rebels that John Preece kindly swapped me a few weeks ago. I have managed to mislay my usual green basing paint somewhere, so they remain unfinished.

Artillery

Another few hours free today, between the housework and getting the child to and from school... So naturally I broke out the casting tools and metal and had another bash.

After the success with the cavalry command the other day, mostly due to the new heavy duty elastic bands, I thought it might be worthwhile to have one last crack at the Artillery crews. I am glad I did because I was able to save myself a lot of money. I had given up and was going to purchase four guns and crews from Irregular Miniatures, who do a nice range of 42mm Marlburians that seem to go quite well with these PA Home-casts. But at £7.50 a shot, that was going to be expensive and was a last resort. I already had eight PA guns cast up. It was only the problems with several of the crew moulds that looked like forcing me along the purchasing route.

But today my sense of optimism was borne out, and I managed to get a very high success rate from all the moulds. I did reduce the crew size a little, from six to five, to leave out the most problematic figure. I also decided that four guns was perhaps too many for the force sizes likely to be on the table, so dropped the total guns to three per side.



I have also decided to drop the total number of Cavalry squadrons from three to two per side, and am toying with the idea of dropping the Infantry regiments from four to three. Grenadier regiments will stay at two and I shall increase the Light Infantry contingent by one regiment, for a total of two per side.

I have certainly decided to drop the Foot regiment size from 25 to 21, including the Colonel.

Overall the changes won't really make much difference to the number of castings I have to produce.



And finally, I managed to find an interesting little gem on eBay the other week; The Battle of Fontenoy, by Charles Grant. It was one of a series of books written to provide background on battles for wargamers and modellors. It dates from around 1975, and I look forward to starting it tonight in bed, with a cup of hot chocolate by my side.

By Popular Demand

These castings represent almost all the command figures for both armies. There are another ten foot command figures already fully painted (see past pictures), but the ones here include some part-painted ones now on my work table.

The photo below shows the mounted command figures. The officer pointing with sword will be used mainly for the Cavalry, but I might exchange him, in a couple of squadrons, for the officer type at the bottom; a more sedate pose. That pose will generally be used for the Infantry regiment Colonels. There's a couple of spares of each pose, in case of future breakages.



The Infantry command figures also include an excess of castings, again for possible breakages. I finally managed to get some reasonable castings of the officer advancing with raised sword. Granted I had to clamp the mould loosely, and thus got some flash, but it's easily trimmed away and the figures themselves are now whole. The last time I tried this mould, every figure it produced was sans sword and left hand...!

The four figures at bottom right are Artillery officers. I had actually forgotten I had done these, and will use them as dismounted battery officers, two per army.



Finally, the casting plugs and sprues from the command figures were dumped back in the ladle and used to cast more rank and file.

By the way, all the moulds for the above figures, plus one for an advancing Grenadier and the three Artillery crew moulds, are now listed up on ebay. So if anyone is interested, email me and I'll send you a link...

Casting Couch

I am now resting.... My lungs feel a little odd, as does my head. This AM I spent over three hours having a serious casting blitz, in order to get all of the command figures (along with a couple of spares) for both armies sorted.

And I did it.

It was perhaps the best day's work I've done so far on this project. I cast around 70 figures, 50 of them mounted, and had a success rate of over 90%. Even the tricky Standard Bearers worked fine. The trick was a couple of new heavy duty elastic bands, which the cavalry moulds seemed to respond to. With the bottom of the mould clamped, and the elastic band holding the top firmly but not TOO tight, the resulting castings proved fine. A little flash, granted, but all of them filled perfectly time after time. The only castings to go back in the pot were one where I knocked over the mould before it had set, and two more where the ridges were a shade too prominent.

So really, that is all the hard work done. I now have all the command figures cast for ALL units save the Artillery, which I will be sourcing from the fast and friendly Irregular Miniatures at a later date. so no more mucking around consulting notes for each mould's casting idiosyncracies. The rank and file consist of just two moulds, Foot and Grenadier, both Marching with Shouldered Arms. Now it becomes a simple production line. Boring but quick....

I didn't bother with photos this time. Once you've seen one casting, ...etc etc...