Little Tanks & Tiny People

It’s time to get some more content on this blog for 2025 ! I bought these WW2 Belgians way back in 2021, but it took until a few months ago to finally get around to them. The figures are all from the Warlord Games range and the Renault FT is a 3d print that I got on Ebay.  No lengthy post this time, just the paint recipe: Uniform: Green Brown 70.879 Leather: Leather Brown 70.871 Boots: Black 70.950 (Leather Brown 70.871 for officers) Wood: Flat Earth 70.983 Bread bag: Medium Grey 70.987 Helmet and canteen: US Olive Drab 70.887   Then a veeeeeeeery thin coat of Army Painter Soft Tone Quickshade, followed by a few highlights of the original colours with some white mixed in.

From olive drab back to purple. I’ve finished the tanks for my growing cyberpunk Sisters of Battle army , who I have named the Sisters of Synth. Land Raider I thought the retro look of the Horus Heresy range would fit well with my cyberpunk theme, so I picked up a Land Raider as the transport for the Command unit. I thought about picking up two Rhinos from the range as well, but that would set me back another 70-80 Euros. I remembered, however, that I still had two old S.O.B. Rhinos laying around. So I opted for stripping them back to bare plastic and repainting them. I also removed some of the more gothic-looking details like purity seals and relics. Painting was really fun, but I think I’ll skip on edge highlighting for a little while… Rhino 1 Nearly identical Rhino 2 Base: Royal Purple 70.810 Lines: Light Turquoise 70.840 and Magenta Fluorescent 69.056 over Pink 70.958 Panel lining: Heavy Blue 72.143 Highlights: Pink 70.958 Bolter: Bright Orange 70.851 Metal: Gunmetal ...

Bit of a longer post this time, as I painted up an entire Cold War Dutch army for Team Yankee! The army consists of five Leopard 1Vs, five Leopard 2s, two PRTLs, two F-16s, two West-German Tornados and a set of Dutch mechanised infantry.  Leopard 2 Team Yankee is set in the mid 1980’s, at which time the Royal Netherlands Army was in the process of replacing its Leopard 1V’s for Leopard 2’s. Delays meant that this process took quite a long time. In fact, there had also been severe delays in procuring the Leopard 1, which meant that there were even some old 1950’s vintage Centurions left in service!   Leopard 1V For a bit of variety I picked up a set of Leopard 1Vs and Leopard 2s, but for gaming purposes I’ll run both as the more powerful Leopard 2’s. I also bought two Cheetah PRTLs (Pantser Rups Tegen Luchtdoelen = Armour Tracked Against Aerial Targets). This vehicle is derived from the German Gepard and is basically an anti-aircraft turret on top of a Leopard 1 chassis. Ch...

As promised in my last post , here are my 15mm German tanks. I left most in their dunkelgelb basecoat, although the gelb I used may be slightly dunkler than the actual colour was. As a side note, I used Vallejo English Uniform for this, which is perhaps a little ironic.   The Panther and Maus are inspired by the paint job on the Panther at the Tank Museum at Bovington. At the end of the war, tanks were no longer painted in the factory but were shipped to the units in their red oxide primer. They were then camouflaged by the crews, who sometimes left some of the primer uncovered. Panther and Maus P zKpfw V Panther ( Gale Force Nine) P zKpfw VIII Maus ( Gale Force Nine) Base coat: Hull Red 70.985 Camo: Desert Yellow 70.977 and White 70.951 Tracks and tools: Black 70.950, Gunmetal Grey 70.863, Flat Earth 70.983 Wash: Umber Wash 73.203 Dirt Drybrush: Flat Earth 70.983 followed by Bonewhite 72.034 Tiger, Panzer IV and StuG III PzKpfw VI Tiger (Zvezda) PzKpfw IV  (Zvezda) St...

Back in 2020 , I painted up some tiny 15 mm or 1:100 scale tanks. If I may say so, I think I’ve gotten a bit better at painting in the last four years, so I thought it was time to redo them. I couldn’t resist buying some extra as well, of course. I’ll start with the Allies, the Germans will follow in the next post. Brits (NW Europe) British Cromwells (Gale ForceNine) British Sherman Firefly (Gale Force Nine) I used a much more acurate green than last time. As you can tell, the yellow diamonds aren't perfectly symmetrical because I did them by hand. Base coat: Refractive Green 70.890 Drybrush: Khaki 70.988 Tracks and tools: Black 70.950, Gunmetal Grey 70.863, Flat Earth 70.983 Wash: Umber Wash 73.203 Chipping: Khaki 70.988 and Gunmetal Grey 70.863 Dirt Drybrush: Flat Earth 70.983 followed by Bonewhite 72.034 Brits (N Africa) M3 Lee's (Zvezda) These M3's are technically American Lees, not British Grants, but I don't mind. I really dig the camo. Matilda II (Z...

This part wraps up my 53rd Welsh Division for Bolt Action. At least, for the time being. The Division had quite a few toys to play with during the liberation of ‘s-Hertogenbosch, so don’t be surprised if I add a Cromwell, M10 Tank Destroyer or a Churchill Crocodile at some point... No late-war British army is complete without a couple of Universal Carriers, so my army has two. These ones are by Warlord Games. The kits go together very easily and there is just enough stowage on the sprues to make each look a little different. Bit of a letdown, however, is that three of the four crew members come with the same head sculpt. As I had some spare heads from the infantry box, I added in a couple of those. Quite a few divisions are represented on the decal sheet that comes with the vehicles, but the 53rd Welsh Division isn’t one of them. Luckily, the red crown used by the division is pretty simple to paint on by hand.   And then it was a matter of painting up the infantry. There ar...

I sort of teased my latest project in my previous post by showing an unfinished Sherman Firefly. I have since blacklined the details to make them stand out a bit more and also added some more weathering. The Firefly, together with a second Sherman armed with a 75 mm cannon and a Ram Kangaroo armoured personnel carrier, will be part of a late-war British army themed around the liberation of 's-Hertogenbosch by the 53rd Welsh Division in October 1944.  Sherman IC Firefly (Rubicon Models) The Sherman IC Firefly is made by Rubicon Models, while the Sherman V is by Warlord Games. The dimensions of both vehicles are very similar and both kits can be used alongside each other without any problems. The Sherman V is slightly longer than the IC, but that is accurate considering that the hull of the Sherman V was lengthened to fit the Chrystler multibank engine.  There are some stylistic differences between both kits, however. For one, the crew figures of the Rubicon kit are considerabl...

Click here for part 1 ,  Click here for part 2 Having gotten the heavy weapon teams and most of the vehicles of my early war German army out of the way in my last post, this post centres around the infantry. These are all from the Warlord Games Blitzkrieg German infantry box and, although the sculpts are really good, I have to say I’m a tiny bit disappointed with the box. First of all, each figure consists of about 6 to 8 parts, so some instructions wouldn’t have gone amiss. However, all you get is an image of the sprue labelling the individual parts. E.g. left arm for MG gunner, leg for prone soldier, etc. Notwithstanding, the parts go together very well and, although assembly is rather time consuming, I found the process rather fun.   Secondly, although the box says it contains enough parts for 30 miniatures, I was only able to build 28 due to the layout of the sprues. The box contains five identical sprues with bits to build an MG40 gunner and loader, some MP40’s, a pis...

Click here for part 1 ,  Click here for part 3 I’m currently working my way through the Warlord Games Blitzkrieg German infantry box. Those minis are not quite finished yet, but I have finished another vehicle and two weapons teams. First up, an early war Pz.Kfw. III by Rubicon Models . I built it as an Ausf. G, as small numbers of those were used in the occupation of the Netherlands. I don’t think a bustle was ever fitted to the turret of that particular version, but the Pz.Kfw. III doesn’t look right to me without one. Also finished is this 3.7cm PAK 36 anti-tank gun with crew, again by Rubicon Models. For a bit of visual interest I added a little tree trunk made from a twig.   Finally, I painted this medium mortar team by Warlord Games. Unlike the minis from their infantry box these are all metal. The Warlord minis are slightly taller and bulkier than the Rubicon ones, but not so much that you can't use them side by side. I do prefer the slightly more cartoony look of th...