Bolt Action: British Crusader MKIII for British 8th Army

When the British arrived in Northern Africa and fought the Germans, their cruiser tanks were seriously outgunned by their adversaries. The British valued speed over armour and the cruiser tanks, like the Crusader, was faster then any other tank. But the guns were too small and the armour too light.

Here's a great image of a bunch of Crusaders MKII with the lighter guns.

It;s an amazing shot of life in the desert for a tank crew!

Here's the upgrade the British introduced soon after, the Crusader MKIII. It had upgraded armour AND a 6 pounder cannon, that would put up a much better fight against the German tanks.

You can see the turret had to be changed to facilitate the larger gun and it took away a crew member. The commander was also the loader, which didn't improve productivtiy...

Here's a crew cleaning a gun, you can see it's much bigger then the MKII

Here's the Tamiya 1/48 scale kit that I built. Tamiya gives two color schemes as options, a green one (later desert war) and the earlier yellow/black one. 

 I chose the latter, since I have painted enough green armour for a while after finishing my US 92nd army. Tamiya based their yellow black camo scheme on this tank: 

...and I faithfully copied it:

Now a bit of a gripe with scale in Bolt Action. It really bugs me that the Bolt Action vehicles are so small. it just doesn't look good and after spending dollars and countless hours on a model, I want it to look great in my army. Even 1/48 scale is a bit small, but certainly much more realistic then the 1/56 scale that Warlord produces. I really wish they would switch to 1/48 scale. There are not many vehicles in the game anyway, so it really doesn't have a big foot print on the game table.

Below the Perry minis next to the 1/48 scale Crusader. 

Here's an image that gives you proper proportions

Hope this inspires!

SC Mike

British 8th Army: 1st squad finished- Perry min vs the world

A while back my friend SC John gave me a box of the much discussed Perry Miniatures "Desert Rats'. He bought some Afrika Korps Germans from the same range and we decided to put together a desert themed battlefield, with 2 nice looking armies.

Just to make sure, here's the box set that I got:

Upon opening, I noticed one thing right away: these models have absolutely great detail. The sculpts are crisp with plenty of detail, including tiny shirt buttons. To be honest, i realized I am not a good enough painter to honor these little guys. Here's the radio man, which will become my forward observer for my Spitfire.

You can see the nicely detailed torso, with plenty of detail to work with - far superior to Warlord. it's not really strange, keep in mind the Perry twins have been in this game for a long time and have sculpted plenty of model classics. The only complaint I have about the set, is that there are no shirt sleeve decals. I had to paint mine on, which looks fine from afar but poor upclose.

Here's the painted squad:

All the models are on Games Workshop bases with Litko magnetic adhesive for easy transportation. I kept the ground on the base minimalistic, the way desert looks where there is a lot of foot traffic.

Much has been said about the Desert Rats' size, which is slightly smaller then the Bolt Action models. I have even read people saying they wouldn't model or play them, since the size difference bothered them so much....well here is a comparison, with a Victoria Miniatures (traitor)guardsmen included. The medic is metal, and the metals are actually a bit bulkier then the new plastics from Warlord.

Now you can't tell me the Perry minis are SO far off, you won't play with them?

SC Mike 

British 8th Army start: Supermarine Spitfire for Bolt Action

After finishing my US 1000 point army for Bolt Action, my friend John got a hold of some new Perry miniatures, the British 8 army box. He also bought some Perry Germans and we decided to build and paint two armies, based in Northern Africa in the early forties.

I decided on the British and I have been working on my first squad of ten troopers, and they are almost done. In the meantime I built and painted a Spitfire for the army, basically a fancy phantom model that doesn't really have a role in Bolt Action, but looks cool. We use the plane with the forward observer so we can get some fire come down on the enemy's heads.

I picked up this box set from Airfix: 1:72 aifrcaft of the aces.

It comes with three planes: a Messerschmitt BF109, a P51 Mustang and the Supermarine Spitfire in an early rendition, the MK1a. It cost me about 30 bucks and came with paints, surprisingly good quality actually and with good colors and with a few brushes.

Anyway, for my desert army I painted the Spitfire up in desert camo. Here's the camo (but not color) pattern I copied:

And here's the model I just finished. I tried to make him look a bit weathered as well:

Of course the Airfix kit doesn't have the correct decals for the Northern Africa campaign and since the model will not really play a role in the game and is more for good looks, I decided not to follow through and purchase correct decals. Interesting to note is that in a lot of WW2 images, the Spits in the desert didn't have letter markings on the bodies, like above and below:

Here's a desert pattern from Eduard, that does include letters, but blue ones, outlined with white. 

You can see that the color scheme in the original color picture and the one above is more yellow, but the one below has more muted colors and that is what I went for in my model, since that fits better with the troops.

 I based the model on a long, 14 inch bamboo skewer, with a resin 60mm base. It's very stable and it's height makes it look great with 28mm models. Warlord has also advised to use 1/72 models for the game.

The airfix kit comes with the blue paint needed for the bottom and in my collection of Games Workshop paints, I could not find the right one; i was glad for the little mini cup of blueish paint!

And here are my palettes, just like everyone elses I presume! Trying to find the right colors takes some time.

SC Mike