28mm German Pioneers - Warlord Games

From a local auctioneers I recently won a job lot of 28mm Warlord German Bolat Action figures & vehicle.

As ever, these went straight onto my shelf of shame to await painting sometime in the future......

One of the boxes of figures was the German Pioneers set, which consists of the Early War Infantry box set of plastic sprues with a couple of bags of white metal "add-on" parts to convert the figures. As well as new arms & weapons there are heads with different head-gear, one complete figure, pioneer rucksacks etc. How to assemble each figure is covered by the leaflet included with the box.

This was my first experience of Warlord combined plastic-metal figures so I thought I'd give them a go now, rather than much later into the future!

The metal parts need a little cleaning up and then a little "fettling" to match up to their intended plastic body. Nothing too bad, and then they are attached using super-glue (with  a quick spray of  accelerator to speed up the drying process)

While most of your pioneers will be standard early war infantry, there are sufficient metal parts to create some specific pioneer figures, including; -

• Flame Thrower operator
• Driver + Goliath remote tank
• Anti-Tank Rifle (with grenade cup) operator
• Panzerwurfkörper 42 anti-tank flare pistol operator
• Wire cutter (complete figure lying on his back)
• Man running with sacks filled with grenades hanging around his neck
• Mine detector operator

The detail of the castings is great and does enable you to produce some nice, original figures.

I guess you only need a squad or two of pioneers in any army, so the rest of the box may prove to be surplus to requirements if you already own the early war infantry? Best solution would be to just buy the pioneers box, assemble your pioneers and use whats left as plain infantry.

These  early war plastic figures go together really well and are well sculpted/posed but I have yet to paint them up....

1/56th (28mm) Cromwell & Churchill Tanks - from Warlord Games

To bolster my British Late War Bolt Action army, I purchased a part built Warlord Cromwell from a table sale.

The model's hull bottom, hull top & turret had all been assembled so all I needed to do was paint them up, attach the tracks and final assembly.

The model was clearly very simple to assemble and produces a nice likeness of the AFV.

As with all these kits, they are wargames pieces. Therefore the details are simplified in places....aerials that are way too thick, moulded on tow cables etc..... but if you want to super detail them it wouldn't be too difficult.

One commander figure is included to be placed in the open turret hatches

Enthused by the look of the Cromwell, I treated myself to the Warlord Churchill kit, at the Lincombe Barn Table sale in May.

This is a very similar design to the Cromwell, moulded in grey hard plastic the kit is straight forward, and simple to assemble.

Included with the kit are several data cards (for each possible variant) and a "knocked-out" marker kit

As ever, a quick walk through the assembly steps helps you define your painting strategy! As I was going to spray the tank, I realised I would need to paint both track sponsons and tracks separately,  first before they were assembled around the tracks themselves.

The kit has many options for building, based around choices of cast & welded turrets. You could build standard 75mm armed gun tanks (including the North African modified vehicles) as well as the Petard armed AVRE. In fact so long as you are prepared to scratch build one or two parts from plasticard, you can build both a MkVII turret and an AVRE turret as I did 😊

Once completed, both tanks were finished in the same way.

• Overall British Dark Green - PSC Spray followed by Vallejo Light Grey Wash and Iraqi Sand Dry-brush
• Tracks - Vallejo Dark Grey followed by Vallejo Black Wash and Boltgun Metal dry-brush.

One commander figure is included, together with the option to leave turret hatches open.

Nice and simple, very quick, but quite effective. After adding a few decals, they were sprayed first with Satin Varnish and then Army Painter Matt varnish.

Both are good models that I would thoroughly recommend.

Pikeman's Lament - 28mm Warlord ECW Figures Painted with Citadel Contrast Paints

Once upon a time I had a dream that I would wargame the ECW using 28mm figures. Having bought just about every set of ECW rules I could find, I finally settled on Pike & Shotte from Warlord Games as my preferred game.

Along the way I had tried Polemos ECW in 6mm and quite enjoyed it and also had acquired a large collection of 15mm ECW figures too.

As the 15mm figures painted up quicker, they took over from my intended 28mm armies and the few boxed sets from Warlord that I had bought languished on the shelf of shame.

Enter two things, totally unconnected, that have changed all this.

Dan Mersey's Pikeman's Lament skirmish rules and Citadel's Contrast Paints.

Firstly the number of figures I'd collected would provide me with two (maybe even three) 24 point companies with plenty of options for variety. I had a mixture of Pike & Shot, Firelocks, Cavalry and Dragoons. All I lacked would be an artillery piece if I fancied it.

Secondly, I was quite taken with the new paints from GW and thought that I'd like to try them on a historical subject. What better than these ECW figures?

I know I've said it before, but these paints really are very good. The figures come on really quickly (great for any time-strapped wargamer) and look really quite good. You could argue that the colours I've chosen to start with are a little bright, but viewed from two feet above, on the table, I really like what I see.

I need some variation in colour schemes and must get myself a darker blue and green when I next visit Firestorm Games. But to begin with things are going great. And this little lot were finished in three sittings.

I'm basing the figures in 1's, 2's & 3's as per the recommendations in the rule set, using mdf bases. I replaced all the plastic pikes with steel items....which you have to be careful with as they're really sharp! I had a few pikemen torsos left over so using spare officer sprue arms together with some left over from some Perry Medievals I created some additional leader figures and a drummer.

Let's hope I can (for once) keep the momentum up until I actually finish a project!

A Break from the usual

My wife (and I) are big fans of the League of Gentlemen comedy show. Last year Crooked Dice released a group of figures entitled "Children of the Fields".

Random Scarecrow figure...

Three of the four figure group were clearly portraits of characters from our favourite show.

My wife just had to have them and ordered immediately (£15 for the four)

Edward Tattsyrup

They're beautiful 28mm miniatures, cast with little in the way of mould lines and come with GW style slotta bases.

Tubbs Tattsyrup

I've taken rather longer than I hoped to get around to painting them up, but they're finally done.

With this level of detail, painting was fairly straight forwards, giving a very nice finished article.

Enjoy.....

And so it continues.....

Father's day came and went whilst I was on a business trip to China....but my dear daughter didn't forget me.

Once again I received a new plaque for my hobby room. This time a facsimile of the English Heritage plaques placed on building where important historical events took place (i.e. so and so was born here).  Pamps, by the way, is what my Grandson calls me....

They just don't appreciate our hobby! 😂😂