Christmas 2017 builds

Over the holidays, I lose my painting corner of the kitchen table as it reverts to its design function as a place to sit and eat.  So I took the opportunity to search through the unmade model stash for nice things to build, thereby hoping to reduce the number of boxes stored away and making some room.

So here are the results of my holiday builds.  The front row is the contents of a Plastic Soldier Co 25pdr box, 2 Quad tows, 2 limbers and 4 guns, 2 25pdrs and 2 18/25pdrs.  The 18/25pdrs are crewed by 8th Army crewmen, while crewmen for NW Europe are shown on the far left.  Their helmets seem really big and more like the kind of skrim covered helmets worn in the 1980s - not sure what I'll use them for.  On the right are 6 Armourfast Crusader IIs ready for my 8th Army.  The second row has 4 Opel Blitz trucks, again from Plastic Soldier with a light grey Airfix Austin K2 ambulance from the emergency set.  The third row are 2 Plastic Soldier Co Panthers, donated to me by club members from their free models, I think supplied with Battlegroup Overlord BTB.  The middle of the third row are 3 A9 tanks from Plastic Soldier Co that I picked up at the Derby/Bruntingthorpe show.  At the very back are 4 15mm Zvezda Opel Blitz trucks and 4 Forged in Battle Kubelwagons that I picked up at the Recon show.

The Plastic Soldier Co 25pdr set, built as suitable for the desert, with open topped Quads and 8th Army crew.  The 18/25pdrs can be used for early scenarios and were allocated to some Australian divisions as AT weapons in later scenarios as they pack quite a reasonable AT punch.

The Crusader IIs from Armourfast, a nice Christmas present from my wife.  I modified the two command tanks by cutting the hatch in two and adding spare crewmen from the Plastic Soldier Co A9 kits.  I will add some stowage before painting.

The Opel Blitz trucks, on the right 2 with tarpaulin covers are trucks, the open topped vehicles are Maultiers.  The Airfix Austin K2 will be an addition for larger Battlegroup Tobruk scenarios.  The big hat NW Europe crews are on the left.  Behind are the 2 PSC Panthers and 3 A9s, built for the desert.

The 15mm Zvezda Opel Blitz trucks; my aim is to add these to the early war 15mm German force I'm slowly assembling.  On the right are the FIB Kubelwagons, which will probably be allocated to my 15mm Late War and Desert War forces - any spares will find themselves in the early war force.

Santa also bought me various boxes of plastic figures, including Strelets new WW2 Indian heavy weapons and their slightly older Indian infantry for the desert and various late war winter Germans from Italeri and Caeser.  There were also boxes of Strelets Arab Revolt Foot, Polish Blue Army, WW1 Tropical Turks and WW1 German Hussars and Uhlans and Russian Hussars, all to swell the ranks of my Andreivian forces.  With the release of the Blue Army figures, combined with assorted Russian and Austro-Hungarian infantry, there is the core of a Czech Legion force - I can see me scouring toy shops for suitable train models to uparmour.

So, lots to get on with in the coming weeks.  Have a very Happy New Year, all the best for 2018 and thanks for looking.