Two Steampunk/Victorian Science Fiction vehicles

Both of these are from Ironclad Miniatures excellent VSF range.

The vehicle above is a steam-powered armoured car with a Gatling gun in its turret. This can also be made up with a Nordenfelt gun, which is also supplied. I decided to paint this in a neutral grey and rely on washes (Citadel Nuln Oil), dry-brushing and AK Terrains Dark Earth basing gunk to give the thing the appearance of being a hard-used workhorse. I also used a wash of diluted Vallejo Orange Brown to add a few patches of rust, particularly on the prominent bolt heads.  The figure (also from Ironclad) is there to provide a sense of scale.

The second vehicle is a steam-powered tankette, painted in a slightly more military shade, courtesy of Army Painter Army Green primer. Once again, wear and tear have been added with Nuln Oil, Vallejo Orange Brown rust and AK Terrains Dark Earth basing gunk. The tracks were given an initial coat of Vallejo Gunmetal Grey, which I've also used on both vehicles for the barrels of the weapons and the vision slits.

Both vehicles are cast in resin with additional metal parts, i.e wheels, guns, funnels, and are pretty easy to assemble. Now they are finished, I am looking at the rest of the Ironclad range to see what other vehicles I fancy buying. Hopefully, Ironclad will be at the club's Reveille show at the end of November, which will allow me to buy a couple more of these delightful vehicles.

These should be huge fun to use in a Steampunk/Pulp/VSF setting, probably using The Ministry of Gentlemanly Warfare's In Her Majesty's Name rules.

Two more tanks for What A Tanker!

Here are two more recruits to my Afrika Korps tank force for the TwoFatLardies What A Tanker game. On the left is a Panzer III with the longer 5cm KwK 39 L/60 gun, which means that it is  a Panzer III Ausf. J, although the ones with the longer gun were later reclassified as Ausf. L variants. The smaller tank on the right is, of course a Panzer II, armed with the 2cm KwK 30 L/55 cannon. As it has five road wheels, it is an Ausf. F variant, produced in 1941/42, rather than the earlier Ausf. C, so ideal as a vehicle serving in the North African campaign.

Both of these are Battlefront 15mm resin models. Although I am a big fan of plastic tanks, I think that for WaT resin models make more sense to me, because I don't really need to buy a box of five PSC models if I am only going to need one or two. I quite like the extra weight of resin vehicles for WaT.

Of course, when I eventually do something about my CoC in the desert project, these will be perfect for that too.

A couple of Afrika Korps tanks for What A Tanker .....

...... and not only for WaT, either. 

I have plans for building up some forces for Chain of Command in the North African Campaign in the 1940-42 period, but those plans will probably have to wait now that the TooFatLardies have announced their Blitzkrieg handbook is available for pre-orders. The CoC priority now is going to be switched to BEF and German forces, with French to follow later.

Anyway, having bought some already painted 8th Army vehicles at the club's Tabletop Sale back in May, I always planned to get some German opposition. I'll look at getting a couple of Italian tanks later, which will also come in handy for Desert CoC.

For the first time, I looked away from PSC box sets and decided to get a couple of resin tanks. The ones I chose were Battlefront ones, a Panzer III H and a Panzer IV F1. I did want to get a Panzer II as well, but they were out of stock. I'll probably go back later to get one.

These were pretty straightforward to paint. They were given a base coat of Army Painter Desert Yellow spray and then the detailing was built up with drybrushing, first with some unmixed Vallejo Natural Steel (if you don't shake the bottle too much you get a graphite sort of colour with only a hint of metal) to show wear on the desert colour and then with Iraqi Sand, which is a massively useful colour for all sorts of things. I used black for the rubber rims on the wheels.

I think that they have turned out pretty well. Oddly enough, it was only after I'd bought these that I remembered that I have a couple of Zvezda kits of exactly the same tanks. I made them up and compared the two for size. The two Mk IIIs are an almost perfect match, but the Battlefront Mk IV is slightly longer. I'll paint them up one day and that will give me a couple more tanks. Of the two, I have to say that I prefer the Battlefront models, though.