Far East project - part three

This post covers a second platoon for my 1942-3 Malaya, Singapore and Burma project and that platoon is a Sikh one;

Above is the platoon HQ, plus a Vickers MMG support option. These are all, once again Peter Pig 15mm figures from their 8th Army range.

Next, the three infantry sections that make up the platoon;

The platoon is structured the same as a British one, with the HQ consisting of a Lieutanant, who is British, a Havildar (platoon sergeant), a Boys anti-tank rifle team and a 2" mortar team.

Each section is led by a Naik (corporal) with a SMG, a three-man Bren team and six riflemen.

Peter Pig does a nice selection of Sikh infantry with beards and wearing the dastār or turban, but sadly not for everything. Therefore, I have used some British figures wearing the Mk II helmet where necessary. Needs must etc.

As with the British platoon, I have put a radio operator on the lieutenant's base, but I didn't do this with the havildar, because his pose is different to the one I've used for the naiks.

I wanted to use troops from the Indian Army because they provided the largest part of the manpower of the formations that fought in most of the campaigns between 1942 and 1945, as also suffered the heaviest casualties.

Far East project - part two

To go with my initial platoon, I have some support options. First, a 2-pdr anti-tank gun and a Lanchester 6x4 armoured car

The gun and crew are from Peter Pig and the armoured car is a 3-D print from Butlers. I would have preferred to get the Skytrex version of the Lanchester but it was out of stock, so I took my first step into the world of printed vehicles. It is OK, but it has a lot of visible printing lines on the model. It will do, though because I doubt that it will survive on the table for very long. If it does, all those Vickers MMGs will come in handy.

The 2-pdr gun should be a threat to any Japanese tanks that might turn up. 

My other supports are, from left to right, a FOO, a Vickers MMG team and a sniper. These are all Peter Pig. The radio operator with the FOO is actually a late war British figure, with BD trousers and a MK III helmet, but at this scale it doesn't make any difference. In any case, his legs are covered by vegetation. The sniper is also a late war figure, but underneath that camo netting, who will ever know?

Far East project - part one

It is almost exactly a month since I announced my next project. I will admit to spending at least two weeks or more not working on it at all, but I have now got my basic units finished. I will start off with a British core platoon.

First the platoon HQ, lieutenant, platoon sergeant, 2" mortar team and Boys anti-tank rifle team.

Next, three sections of infantry, each with a corporal with a SMG, a three-man Bren team and a six-man rifle team

I decided that the easiest way to identify the two senior leaders, the lieutenant and the platoon sergeant was to put a radio operator on the base next to them. This isn't historically accurate at all, but it does make identification easier on the table.

Looking at the sections, the corporal is on a 2cm base and has a Thompson SMG, the Bren gunner and loader are on a 3cm base and the rest are on 1.5cm bases. Where the Bren team is lying down, I've used a kneeling figure with a SMG as the third man and in the case of the standing Bren team the third man is just carrying a rifle. This is purely because of the figures I had available.

I've used Peter Pig Eighth Army figures for these troops, because in the early part of the Malaya. Singapore and Burma campaigns the British and Indian Army forces involved wore the same khaki drill tropical uniform as those serving in the Mediterranean and Africa.

I chose to use Army Painter skeleton bone spray primer as the basic colour for the uniforms, because it seemed to be a decent match for khaki drill, with German camouflage beige for the webbing and khaki for socks and helmets. Once painted, they were washed with the water-soluble version of Army Painter strong tone. I think that they have come out looking pretty reasonable. After all, bright sunlight does have a bleaching effect on fabrics and in black and white photos from the period, helmets seem to look a bit of a darker colour than the KD uniforms.

I'll do a few more posts to cover various support options, as well as a platoon of Sikh infantry.

Obviously, these will be used with Chain of Command rules.

 

I have a new project about to start

It is in 15mm again and it is WW2. Here are a few teaser pics;

As you can see there are British and Indian infantry in Tropical KD uniforms, enough for two platoons and a variety of support options and there are also three vehicles, undercoated in Russian Uniform green. 

Can you guess what theatre I am going to do? The colour of the vehicles and the large one in front should be clues.

The figures are all Peter Pig 8th Army and the vehicles are 3D prints from Butlers Printed Models. These are my first venture into the world of 3D printed and I have mixed feelings. The striations from the printing are pretty noticeable which is annoying, and the models needed a lot of cleaning up when they arrived, but I think that they'll do on the tabletop. I added in the Carrier drivers from some leftover figures from my spares box.

You can just see the armoured car's turret behind the body of the vehicle.

These are for Chain of Command. Hopefully, I'll have them pained up pretty quickly.

Cheap MDF houses

I bought a load of cheap MDF houses from eBay just before Christmas, because I needed a lot of basic houses that might do for my games. Specifically, I wanted houses that would mostly work for WW2 games, but maybe also be useful for earlier periods. I've finally got round to photographing them. There are thirteen buildings of varying sizes in total. Scroll down to see them all and read what I did to zhoosh them up a bit.

 As you can see, I've given them all a rough plastering with ready-mixed filler and roofed them with printed slate paper. I've also given some of them little gardens with bushes, paths and vegetable patches.

The base models were very cheap. The whole lot, plus a church that I've stuck together but not done anything else to yet. They came as a three separate plastic bags of bits with no instructions, so working out what went where took a fair while.

Quality-wise, they are very basic and I had all sorts of issues with getting them to fit together properly, the roofs being a particular problem. You can't actually remove the roofs, because they have to fit into slots cut into the end walls. Therefore, only the multiple storey houses can have figures put inside them. I converted one of the longer single storey buildings into a barn, which doesn't look that great, but it'll do on the table.

My aim was to make them look a bit run-down and bedraggled, which I think works OK. The main reason for this is because they lack any detail and I couldn't be arsed to spend much time on them and I also didn't have much time because I needed them for my 15mm Big Chain of Command game that I ran at BIG a couple of weeks ago. I'll do a separate blog post about that.

I thought that I'd finished my Soviets ................

 .... but I decided that I needed to paint up a fourth section of scouts for my recce platoon.

I already had the figures but after play-testing the scenario I will be running at Winter Wonderlard at BIG on Saturday 12th February, it became apparent that what I was planning wasn't going to work in the time allowed, so I re-wrote the scenario. That meant trimming down the size of the opposing forces and beefing up the scouts a bit, so I quickly painted the remaining squad.

Nothing different to the previous lot here, Junior Leader with SMG, 2-man LMG team, four men with SMGs and four with rifles.

Still, the bonus here is that my game will run a lot more smoothly.

I've been thinking about what to do with the various bits I have stripped out and my plan is to turn this scenario into the opening one of a PSC (a pint-sized campaign). I am thinking about four or maybe five separate scenarios that will expand upon the narrative that drove my ideas for the initial too unwieldy one I've had to slim down. I shall have to see how it goes once the inspiration pixie has come to visit me.

 

My two final Soviet tanks

.... well, final for now. There may (i.e will) be more later on.

 These two are also Zvezda 1/100 scale models. On the right is the later T-34/85, which entered service in 1944. The version here is the M1944 model with the ZiS-S-53 85mm gun. 

Around 84,000 T-34 tanks were built during WW2, with 49,000 being armed with the 85mm gun.

The other, larger tank on the left is the IS-2 with the powerful D25-T 122mm. Derived from the earlier KV series tanks, nearly 4,000 of these monsters were built during WW2. The D25-T gun was adapted from the 122mm A-19 M1931/37 and its AP munitions could penetrate the frontal armour of a Panther at 2,500m range and could knock out a Tiger I at around 1,000m. Demonstrating its origins as a heavy artillery piece, the HE shells fired by the D25-T were devastating against infantry and could also knock enemy tanks out because of the massive explosive force generated. 

I've chosen to paint these two tanks in a battlefield condition, with plenty of mud. I've also given them the white aircraft recognition stripes on the turrets, again looking a bit irregular and hand-painted as with the one I did on my earlier T-34/76. Looking at various photos of Soviet tanks in action, these stripes always look a bit scrappy and temporary.