6mm Roman villa

Steve Oates of the Baggage Train passed me these at the club just after Christmas.  He is building up a nice set of 6mm terrain items, suitable for ancients wargaming, especially Roman and Dark Age periods.  These are his Roman villa and Roman workshop pieces.  I thought the workshop looked  lot like an early Romano-British villa (1st-2nd Century), while the villa looks good for 3rd-4th Century courtyard villa.  I've read that as the Romano-British nouveau-riche landowners rapidly adopted Roman style and culture  after the invasion, abandoning Iron Age roundhouses and moving into rectangular villa buildings, before moving on to more luxurious courtyard premises as styles and tastes changed - so much like the property ladder today.

I've modelled this piece to show the derelict roundhouse as an irregular circle of boulders (hut circle), to the left of the villa in the image below.  The early 1st/2nd Century villa building is now used to house slaves and as a workshop, while the landowners family live in the courtyard villa with its hypocaust flooring, garden and pond.

The front entrance of the villa.  The roof of the villa is a separate casting, so the inner courtyard can be detailed, but I need to glue it down as I see it's gone a bit wonky as I was photographing it.

Another view from the less salubrious side of the complex.

Nice crisp castings, very little clean up required.  I did wash them in detergent in case there was any release agent on the surfaces.  I'm not sure how much these are selling for, but Steve's prices for his other items are more than reasonable, well worth a look if you see him at a show.

Thanks for looking.

15mm Bravo Two Zero SAS figures



Inspired by the recent Wargames Illustrated article on the SAS planning for an attack on the Argentine mainland in 1982 (September issue), I decided to order some 20mm SAS troopers from CP Models.  While browsing their web site, I came across their 15mm moderns range and their Bravo Two Zero range of SAS for the 1991 Gulf War.  I bought a couple of packs, giving me four four-man fire teams, each comprising 2 SAW gunners and 2 with SA-80s and UGLs, plus one of the SA-80 armed figures is operating a LAW as well.

 

I have painted them in desert camo gear, with a light brown base coat, dark tone ink washed.  Bergens are olive drab dry brushed with a lighter shade of the same colour.  Uniforms are highlighted in Iraqi Sand.  Boots are English Uniform.  A couple of the sand masks and grenades are painted NATO green.

 

The photos below show the figures searching a desert village (buildings from The Baggage Train).

 

The photo below shows the 8 figure content of one of the packs, each pack containing 4 SAW gunners and 4 SA-80 riflemen with UGLs.

All in all I quite like these figures.  I think with the right paint job they could pass muster as cold weather troopers as well.  In the meanwhile, these will do nicely alongside my Peterpig, Battlefront and QRF figures.  Next show I attend I'm going to pick up some Old Glory Taliban.  Painting these made a nice interlude in the flow of NATO green onto my 6mm forces and the painting of Timecast buildings (which I'm still working on Richard!).

Thanks for looking!

1980's British Scenic Bases

For the Cold War Commanders megagame at Broughton next month, we prepare scenic bases for medical aid stations, repair workshops and ammunition dumps, as these have a role to play in the game.

Here are my efforts for 4th British Armoured Division for 1985.

First up, the field hospital.  Heroics and Ros Landrover ambulances, along with 20ft and 40ft containers and piles of boxes from the Baggage Train and large tents from Leven Minatures.  Sorry about the shine on the tents from the camera flash in the first picture.

The maintenance and repair facility.  Heroics and Ros vehicles, a Chieftain ARV tows in a broken down Challenger 1.  Bedford truck with office body representing a mobile workshop with a CET 180 parked up.  20ft containers and stacks of boxes from the Baggage Train.  Camo nets are net curtain material cut to shape and Superglued in place, with a criss-cross of PVA glue painted on to stick down green flock.

The ammunition dump with three Heroics and Ros Foden gun limbers, two with the pallets off-loaded and covered with camo netting and 20ft containers, from the Baggage Train along with the piles of boxes, in their place

Finally, a Harrier hide.  Made from 40ft containers from the Baggage Train mounted on a plastic putty raised base, with a Heroics and Ros Harrier emerging from the hide.  Camo netting as above.  I'm going to have to invest in a bulk refueller to give the stand a bit more of a cluttered look.

 

 

I'm now working on the Corps Heavy Artillery M107s and M110s, plus some more Rapiers (both tracked and towed), three Stalwarts, another Chieftain Regt and an FV432 infantry battalion.

 

As ever, thanks for looking.



15mm Arab buildings

Steve Oates, of the Baggage Train, brought in some new resin buildings he has been working on for North Africa and the Middle East in 15mm.  These are really nice models of a simple single storey dwelling with roof access from a small walled garden, and a shop/bazaar with open frontage at street level and stairs access to a first floor terrace and living accommodation.  The bazaar units can be assembled as a stand alone structure, with a wall along the external stairs (see left hand building in picture below), or they can be arranged in a terrace,  in which case the wall is left out and the stairs run beside the end wall of the next building.  I've shown them here as a small village or hamlet with some of the excellent Peterpig USMC figures from their AK47 range and a Matchbox Jackal, which is waiting to be remodelled and crewed.

One of the small single storey units.  To finish this building off I'm going to add some Woodland Scenics foliage to represent a fig or olive tree growing in the walled garden - nothing too big though or there won't be room for troops.

The other building from the opposite view - note the detachable garden, for a bit of variation.

Two of the bazaar buildings shown as a terrace, with USMC searching the upper storeys and the platoon commander using the terrace as a vantage point to observe the search of the rest of the village.

Nice models, very few bubbles, easy to assemble with a little bit of filing to get a smooth fit.  I washed them with washing up liquid, which meant they were really easy to paint.  They were under coated light grey and painted light brown.  English uniform for doors and roof hatches, black for windows.  Everything was dry brushed white and black added to chimneys.  Finally coated with matt varnish for protection.



I don't think these are on the Baggage Train web site but I'm sure Steve will have them at shows next year or drop him an e-mail.  He's also produced a mosque and a larger municipal building, plus some Ottoman fortifications.



Thanks for looking.

Turkish Field Hospital

A field hospital for my 1980's Turkish army.  These are some more of the excellent 20ft containers available from The Baggage Train, together with some Scotia Hummer ambulances (UM0024) and an M151 jeep (H&RUSM39).  Roadway is sand undercoated pale grey and washed in dark ink.  Vehicles are marked with the Red Crescent rather than the Red Cross.

Thanks for looking.

Supply base for 1980's French armoured division

I mentioned to Steve Oates of The Baggage Train that I'd been looking for some 6mm models of metal shipping containers, back in January.  Last week he turned up at the club with sets of resin 20ft and 40ft containers - can't remember how many in each pack, but enough in the two packs to do 2 or 3 stands like the one shown here.

I've based a mixture of 20ft and 40ft containers to represent a temporary field supply depot.  I had a spare trailer from a Scotia modern French ferry and was pleasantly surprised to find the 40ft container fitted it exactly.  They are painted in Tamiya NATO green, with a wash of flat brown rust, highlighted in orange brown.  I'm not sure of the manufacturer but the vehicle is an AMX-30D, the only modern French vehicle I could put my hands on with a crane.  It would be great to find a manufacturer who makes a heavy fork lift truck, to show stores being on- and offloaded from smaller trucks for distribution to the front line troops.

Thanks for looking.

D day fortifications in 6mm part 3

Added some more models today.  Here we have an artillery observation tower, based I think on the example at Ouistreham in Normandy - I can't find this on the Baggage Train site, so guess it must be new, together with a couple of R667 50mm AT bunkers with left and right enfilade walls respectively.

The observation bunker from the front.  Space on the top for an AA gun, I'm thinking either single or quad 20mm AA gun.

And from the rear.  The underground entrance on the right is covered by an MG position under the concrete lintel at the far end.  A tough nut to crack.

A left enfilade R667 50mm AT bunker.

The right enfilade version.

Detail of the rear of the bunker, same for both models, showing the rear blast wall, which prevents direct fire at the rear entrance to the bunker.

Just got the sea wall sections to finish off, but there are a lot of them, almost a metre in length on the table top, so about enough to stretch from La Breche to Lion sur Mer in 6mm.

Thanks for looking!

D day fortifications in 6mm part 2

Just finished flocking these, so without further ado, here they are.

Open artillery casements - being replaced by fully enclosed artillery bunkers on D-day as the artillery pieces and crews are pretty exposed to naval pre-programmed or counterbattery fire in these positions.

 An open casement with French 155mm artillery piece for scale.

 An M262a artillery observation command fire control bunker.

 An H669 right enfilade garage bunker, viewed from the sea side.

 The business end of the H669 bunker.

 Another H669 garage bunker, this time a left enfilade version viewed from the land side.

Thanks for looking.

D day fortifications in 6mm

I'm in the process of finishing the flocking on some D-day fortifications that I bought from The Baggage Train at the Gauntlet shows back in 2012 and 2013.  I'm getting these ready for a Sword Beach game we're thinking of laying on in November, and of course, the 70th anniversary is next June, just ahead of the 100th anniversary of the outbreak of the Great War.

This is, I think, the two part bunker for 20mm AA gun.  I'm planning on mounting a quad 20mm gun in the firing platform.

This is the R622 infantry bunker - I'm thinking of using this for the core of the Hillman bunker complex - for BKCII it should form a large bunker with capacity for a HQ and a couple of infantry stands.

Still working on some AT bunkers, artillery pits and bunkers, observation bunkers and some sections of sea wall in various stages from painted through to still in packets.

Thanks for looking.