Maipo 1818 with Risk miniatures - Regimiento Concepción and Lanceros del Rey

Two more finished units for Maipo 1818, both for the Spanish army, the Regimiento Concepción and Lanceros del Rey.

Two more gunners were takne from its artillery pieces  to become an officer and  a flag bearer.

The Lanceros del Rey had the swords taken from their hands and replaced by a lance with paper pennon.

 Maipo 1818 is starting to get into shape. I also need some terrain for this battle namely the Espejo farm. But that will be for another occasion.

Rapid Fire! Russian Contemporary Wars in 20mm - First few Butlers' Printed Models (BMP's fom BPM) and a few more repainted Fabbri tanks.

 

 I've showed you my first experience with printed models when my friend Mario Laranja printed for me 10 T-72B2 that I used for Georgian and Russian forces.

 

A few weeks ago I went to Butler's Printed Models (BPM) site to discover that these guys make a wide range of vehicles for WWI, WWII and modern periods. And nice they are. Not only the plastic is strong enough to cope with rough wargamers hands and their sons as the level of detail is very good. But you can judge on yourself by the picture of these BMP-2.

 

With only two pieces, hull and turret, you have all details necessary from headlights to Spandrel missile launcher. For now you can always find some lines from the printing process of nowadays printing machine. The next batch I ordered will have those lines covered - hopefully- with GW Liquid Green Stuff.

 

 

I took advantage of the primer cloud to paint the last three Fabbri tanks of my T-90 battalion.

 

 

Also one repainted 2S9 Nona from Fabbri already joined the VDV unit.

 

 

Rapid Fire! 20mm D-Day, the British Beaches - (Part 5), LCT's 4

 

 

The LCT- 4 are some of the most elegant boats of WWII. You need quite a lot of them for the British beach assaults as they were carrying the famous Hobart's funnies. I built them in balsa wood one at a time. Even when I found that some of the measurements were not entirely correct I kept on using them so all boats were exactly the same. These things turned out really big with 70 cm lenght.

 

 

Each of them carries the same load: a Churchill Bridgelayer, a Churchill Fascine, a Bulldozer D7 and a Sherman Flail.

 

 

The construction is a bit crude as balsa wood is not exactly my favourite material, but with many plastic details and the animation provided by the figures  and AA guns the final result is Ok.

 

 

The figures are from Airfix and Revell with some conversions.

 

 

The funnels were leftovers from the Matchbox Flower Corvette and the Oerlikons are scratch built.

 

 

The D7 Bulldozer are built in plastic card with altered Atlantic tracks from those strange and out-of-scale vehicles of their 1/72nd scale range. Not 100% accurate but close.

 

 

Flail at work! Airfix model.

 

 

 

Flail at rest! Brittania models.

 

 

Converted Matchbox Churchill to Fascine. The wood bundle is a real wood bundle!

 

 

Another at work.

 

 

The Churchills Bridgelayers are Britannia  and Matchbox. Somewhere I read that the bridges themselves were painted white and so they were.

 

Next: quick return to moderns. In fact I served in the military in the modern days not WWII! Well... really I never served in the military but I sure do like them !!!

 

 

Rapid Fire! Russian Contemporary Wars in 20mm - Repainted Fabbri for Russians and Georgians.

Recently I've been collecting some Fabbri models from Clive Diecast and also from the short collection of 10 models that we had here in Portugal last year.

In order to have a few T-62 BAR still present in the 2008 Georgian conflict I used some plastic net I had around and added the usual crew member, antennae and a Butler Printed Model DSHK Mg.

This is the last of the seven T-80B I needed to complete this battalion. Now... let's start another battalion!

I painted a few BM-21 with Georgian colours as in internet pictures from a parade a little time after the war. In the war itself I think all these were plain green but they get more lively and distinguishable like this.  

Also a few BMP-1 were repainted. To the right a few are in Georgian colours and to the left in Russian colours. These last ones completed the battalions of S-Models BMP-1's I started months ago.

Rapid Fire! 20mm D-Day, the British Beaches - (Part 4), Pegasus bridge

 

Not directly to do with D-Day British beaches in Normandy but close. The Bénouville bridge, famously known thereafter as 'Pegasus' bridge, was one of the main objectives of the 6th Airborne Division. It had to be captured to stop German reinforcements, mainly the nearby 21PD from rushing to the British beachhead.

 

 

I made the famous Café Gondrée from card. It was tricky to build as it suffered a number of transformations since 1944. Some very old B/W photos helped a lot for its lay out, publicity posters  and front 'esplanade'.

 

 

 Besides ordinary card I used some brick card for some walls and chimneys.

 

 

The bridge was made with my lawful Evergreen plastic card. Plenty was used on all possible shapes and all info came from the internet where you can find hundreds of useful pictures.

 

 

The roof of the control house is big enough for a MG stand.

 

 

The Evergreen beams and other structures for architecture were particularly useful.

 

 

Horsa view.

 

 

 Detail of the lifting stucture of the brigde. These French bascule bridges were some of the first in the world and marvelled everyone in the 30's.

 

 

Defending the northern aproach to the bridge lay a 50mm Pak gun. Models and emplacement from Britannia.

 

If you want to see my British Airborne Division (the 1st from Arnhem not the 6th of D-Day fame, but they are almost the same) here it is:

 

http://jpwargamingplace.blogspot.pt/2014/09/rapid-fire-20mm-british-1st-airborne.html

 

Next: the Ouistreham Casino, or something else as I'm afraid of going to hell for not fulfilling my oaths as a good christian.

 

 

 

 

 

Rapid Fire! 20mm D-Day, the British Beaches - (Part 3), Commando and Royal Marine Commando LCI(S).

 

According to Rapid Fire! D-Day supplement you need two LCI(S), one for Gold and another for Sword Beach to transport the Royal Marine Commando and Commando units on the day.

 

 

I made them in plywood mostly with many plastic parts added.

 

 

The Oerlikons are Britannia metal parts with plastic crewmen.

 

 

The funnels are pieces of Evergreen tubing heated to shape. As usual I made the masts extra large for more security.

 

 

I left plenty of room vacant for the 35 figures each boat has to carry.

 

 

These two were a fun to built and most of the inspiration came from the Sentry models that RLBPS is kind enough to show on its site.

 

Next; The Ouistreham Casino.

 

 

 

Rapid Fire! 20mm D-Day, the British Beaches - (Part 2) WN16 ('Morris Strongpoint') gun casemate.

 

Smacked in the middle of Sword beach, on high ground stood the WN16 with its casemates with 100mm Skoda guns. The fire of these guns was controlled by the nearby WN17 (the 'Hillman' strongpoint).   The delay in taking the bunker complex has been cited as a reason for the Allies not completing their major D-Day objective of taking Caen.

 

 

 

The casemates for the guns was of the 669 type.

 

 

The 100mm Czech gun was made from the HAT WWI 77mm Feldkanone 16. I just added the covers for the wheels for the gun to look its part.

 

 

Next: more on the issue...

 

Rapid Fire! 20mm D-Day, the British Beaches - (Part 1) Sherman DD's

This new series will try to show you my British (and German, obviously) stuff I have to wargame the three beaches were the British and Canadians landed on the 6th of June 1944. While I can consider Omaha finished - with the exeption of a few terrain boards missing- the British beaches of Gold, Juno and Sword are far from finished but I can already show you plenty of dedicated models made for them.

I used three cheap Airfix Shermans, bought probably to have more LCM's, in order to make an extra company of Sherman DD's.

Most of the details are Evergreen plastic card and two-part filler used on the canvas parts.

The radio box on the back of the turret and big red and white numbers made these DD's undoubtedly British.

I copied most of the details from my first DD company made of Britannia models.

While basing the British DD's I took the oportunity to base the US ones (Atlantic) and to place wheels on the three water-line US DD's  I had.

Rapid Fire! 20mm D-Day 1944 - Omaha Beach (part 18) - The full setting.

In the last weekend, in Coimbra, we had a nice toy fair. I took the opportunity to show my Omaha Beach. Unfortunately I didn't finish the last four 60X60cm boards of sea and sea and sand and I had to cram the whole setting on an area of fifteen boards (total 300cmX 180cm). Like this some of the German WN's had to be placed to the rear of others. Good enough for someone not very familiar with the events though...

At sea the things got no better. Many of the landing craft had to be left at home as there was clearly no room for all of them, otherwise the table would look like a Marina.

 In this picture it's better for the skipper of that LCT to  clear the way for the hurrying Destroyer!

 

In the eastern corner of the beach more overlapping can be seen.

 

Sie kommen!

 

And also here more sie kommen! They are sie kommen everywhere!!!

 

Destroyers come to hit those pesky openings on the bunkers.

 

The landing at full force.

 

Will the defences hold? They did but only in miniature.

Getting closer.

 

'Itza a beautiful zight, Gerhardt but I zink its time to leave!' I used Valiant figures this time for the German infantry (Valiant minis can really be seen from afar).

 

Next: the British D-Day beaches.