New Beginnings

Hello,
as you might know I recently moved to a new place. That was the main reason why I haven't done a lot of hobby stuff lately, but now that we are settled in to our new home I have to sort out my hobby room!

(Well, I have to share it with the wife's sewing machine and knitting supplies, but that's a small price to pay, isn't it?)

I thought that would be a good opportunity to show some of my collection, although very little of it is actually finished.

Let's start with some 6mm Cold War Commander armies, i.e. Syrians, British Army of the Rhine and IDF:

Next, most of my Bolt Action armies: 8th Army, Early War Soviets, Hungarians and Late War Germans

 As you can see there is a lot to do, I need to paint/repair a lot of the 8th Army vehicles, and the Soviets should get some reinforcements soon since we are going to have a big Bolt Action battle again at the start of December. In the background you can just make out a GAZ AA, Komsomolet and some Black Tree Design infantry.
Well, and the Hungarians and Germans are not even half painted... One day I will finish the 44M TAS and Rohamloeveg in the fictitious ambush camo pattern I want.

I also plan to venture into 1/35th territory:

I love IDF armor, and the Meng Production figures are awesome! I hope I won't get too annoyed by the tracks with multiple pieces per link...

I also decided to expand my 6mm Germans for Blitzkrieg Commander:

I guess a fine drill and some steel wire are in demand to fix these barrels... Anyway, I am planning to paint those units and some infantry as part of a P500 on the German Tabletopwelt forum. This is a nifty little event they have every year in which you pledge to paint a full army with each 500 points block being finished in 6 weeks. It's a great way to get feedback and motivation, and I think this kind of "pressure" is very good to get me doing something. And since one of those Jagdtigers is already worth 280 points, I also decided to double the points per block to 1000. More about this project soon, it starts on November 1st!

Review - Warlord Games M10 & Churchill

I took advantage of Warlord Games' recent "Wheels of Steel" offer and god myself a new bunch of tanks. Sadly I ordered early and could only chose from the limited selection - bad move to open up to every plastic kit at the end... The only reason I got the M10 was because I needed to add a third kit, and I would be way happier with a Firefly. So next time I will think twice before ordering a special offer from them...

Anyway, I am not sure yet if I want to convert the M3 to a Satan for my upcoming USMC or a Stuart Recce for my Desert Brits. So today I'll just talk about the M10 and the Churchill.

First the tank destroyer. a pretty simple kit, but nevertheless they managed to mention parts in the instruction which are not on the frames... I assume a copy/paste error from the M36 kit? There are several other wrong numbers, too, so be careful. Nevertheless, quite embarrassing.

Overall, the instructions could do with some more sub-assemblies since it was not always clear what would be the best order to put things together. Details are good, but the contact area for the threads is pretty small which makes it quite a pain to get them on.
The only choice you'll have to make with this kit is if you want to use the American or the British crew. I actually had to look up if the M10 really had a 5 man crew - the turret is ridiculously crammed!

Anyway, the final result seems to be alright:

 Color-wise I will go for this pattern from a British unit in Italy in 1944:

Picture: http://www.tanks-encyclopedia.com/ww2/US/M10_Wolverine.php

For the Churchill, I had the ambition to build it in a way that allows to field it in as many different configurations as possible, and I managed 5 - not bad!

The kit comes with a bunch of unit cards and material for damage markers. The cards are pretty much useless and I don't know if I will use the other stuff.

I went for the Mk III hull to make it suitable for King Force (also I now realize that those tanks should have the front guards on the tracks...), and build the turrets to be able to play Mk III, III CS, IV CS, AVRE and NA75:

Sadly, the 6 pdr of the Mk III won't fit into the cast turret, so no Mk IV for me.

Since the kit only comes with 2 antennas, each turret is missing one. maybe I'll try to find some plastic rods to fix that. I also should build a straight-edge turret box for the Mk III, and add the one from the kit (with cut-off corners) to the cast turret.

This one will get painted in Kingforce colors, which is of course somewhat inappropriate for the AVRE and NA75 to say the least, but I don't really mind:

Picture: http://www.tanks-encyclopedia.com/ww2/gb/A22_Churchill_Tank.php

Here are some additional pics of the two:

And because it is freaking awesome, I leave this here, too:

Community Service

We were looking for new ways to promote our hobby (and club) and got into contact with the local library. They were very keen to put up a display, so I volunteered some of my 8th Army!

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They needed  work anyway (a lot of transport damage...), and this was a great reason to get it done.

Some of my infantry, supported by a Matilda II, 2 inch mortar and a 2-pdr ATG. The 2-pdr is from Perry Miniatures and so fragile that it needed its own support base - sadly I haven't had time to paint it :/

M3 Grant (in the 4-tone camouflage as seen on the one at Bovington), SAS jeep and troop and a squad of Sikhs.

I count those towards my goal of getting 200 miniatures ready - 38 down, 162 to go!

Review - Airfix 1/48th Bedford MWD

I needed another truck for my Bolt Action British, so I picked up a 1/48th scale Bedford MWD from Airfix.

First a couple of words about the original:
The Bedford MWD was the ubiquitous 15cwt truck in British service - over 200.000 have been produced during the war and it served in every theater. Also only 4x2, it had a powerful 72 hp engine and reached a top speed of 95 km/h with a range of over 400 km. It could transport a 10-man squad or up to 800 kg of material.
The early version had only canvas doors and tiny screens for the driver and passenger, earning it the nickname "pneumonia wagon". In 1943, the design was updated to have half doors and a proper windscreen, together with some changes to the engine covers and instrument layout.
In the desert they were also used as 2pdr ATG portees.

The Airfix kit comes with 95 parts on 3 grey sprues plus one clear sprue for the windshield.

It allows to build both the early and late version and several canvas configurations, so you'll have a decent amount of pieces left after you finished:

You could even further reduce the number of used parts by omitting the engine parts and some of the interior that might not be visible in the version you want to build.

The kit comes together without any issues and I only encountered two small pitfalls:
First, the tires are flattened on one side so be careful when you assemble them to make them fit correctly.
Second, the instructions skip one step when it comes to the steering wheel, but it is quite obvious how it should work.

The final product is a fine little model:

I found several pictures of MWDs in North Africa, and it seems to have been quite common to remove the side covers of the engine, so I left them off my truck, too:

I also left the hood separate to allow easy access to paint the engine:

Size-wise, it fits quite well with 28mm miniatures, mostly because the MWD is such a small truck. A Company B driver doesn't look out of place at the wheel (apart from his missing legs...):

And next to some Perry Miniatures 8th Army soldiers it still looks good:

Even in direct comparison to a Warlord Games 3-ton Bedford the scale difference isn't outrageous:

Just to put the difference between 1/48th and 1/56th scale into some numbers:
This MWD is 1.3 cm too long, 0,6 cm too high and wide.

And with a coat of sand color it is almost ready to roll!

All in all, this was fun to put together and the kit makes a very nice looking model. The scale is acceptable in my mind, and I am looking forward to finish the paint job soon!