Gangs of Rome Civilian Mobs Secundus and Tertius
With the Blood on the Aventine starter just introduced on here, and my ancient SAGA with roman participants, I laid my eyes upon the extended range of Gangs of Rome. These cover beside the fighters several sets of civilians.
I wanted to buy all three of the Mobs, unfortunately the mob primus wasn't in stock that time, so I got "only" mob Secundus and Tertius. But I'll pick that one up on Crisis or so.
The blisters are 8 GBP each and cover 5 civilian miniatures, sculpted by Paul Hicks, along with five 25mm round base and one 80mm mob movement base. For some reason my Mob Tertius was missing its mob base.
Heer46 Carro Armato P43 Bis
Following the Krupp-Steyr Waffenträger from Tuesday, today we unpack and build the Armato P43 Bis by Heer46.
This is another tank from the resin series produced in cooperation with Rubicon Models. The Armato P43 was an Italian heavy tank that was developed by FIAT and Ansaldo, but never left the draft stage. The sources why the development stopped are not clear, some say the design was dropped in favour of the lighter P26/40 tank, but it is likely that the resources were just not available after the armistice of Italy with the Allies in 1943 and the Axis had other things valued higher than Italian tank development. Only two mock ups were build, but as mentioned before not further progressed. The tank was intended to weigh around 30 tons and have a 420-430 hp diesel V12 engine. The name Carro Armato P43 stands for armoured vehicle, P for pesante - Italian for heavy - and the number '43 most likely standing for the development year.
Dead Man’s Hand: Outlaws – Part 5
It's Wednesday, and this means it's time to introduce another member of my Outlaws for Dead Man's Hand. The McMiller brothers should all have a color-coordinated look to bring out their family bond. For the henchmen, on the other hand, I wanted them to look like a very different bunch, made up of very dissimilar characters.
"El Toro" was McMiller's right-hand, stoic and loyal. Weasel, on the other hand, should be of a completely different nature. The miniature from Artizan Designs had a wonderfully devious posture and I wanted to underline this with the paintjob.
Heer46 Krupp-Steyr Waffenträger
There is a new range of 1:56 scale resin kits produced by Heer46 in cooperation with Rubicon Models, as an addition to Rubicon extensive plastic range. One of the vehicles offered as part of this assortment is the Krupp-Steyr Waffenträger.
Among the several Waffenträger (and their blueprint / papertank / prototypes) the Krupp Steyr Waffenträger is one of the less known vehicles. And like many of his kind, this tank destroyer never actually saw service. Only a similar concept of this Waffenträger, known as the Ardelt project was produced and can be seen nowadays in the Kubinka tank museum in Russia. Two wooden models and one trial Waffenträger were produced in 1944, that had a chassis constructed by Steyr mainly using parts from the RSO (Raupenschlepper Ost), and armed with an 8,8 cm KwK 43. This was the base for the model we see here. Due to the turret, and in combination with a small mobile ramp, the firing arch of this Waffenträger was amazing versatile. As this is a rather special vehicle, there aren't that many further information available. Most may know the Waffenträger from games likes Warthunder or World of Tanks.
More Planes! More Messerschmitts!
While preparing the Western Desert book, the airfield raids came back to my mind. I already have bought an Airfix Dogfights Double and have a couple of the Dust huts, so set up the matching terrain.
Daniel bought himself a Messerschmitt Bf109 G-10 by Revell, and after I saw how cheap you can get this (8-12 EUR per box), I decided to get my hands on two kits to fill up on my squadron of 3. These kits are in 1:48 scale, a popular scale for aircraft modelling.
Gangs of Rome Blood on the Aventine Boxed Set
Earlier this year, Warbanner released a boxed starter set for their ancient skirmish game Gangs of Rome called Blood on the Aventine.
Bolt Action Campaign The Western Desert
I have already covered the plastic kits of the Afrika Korps and 8th Army Infantry that came along with this campaign supplement for Bolt Action - Campaign the Western Desert. Now it is time for the book itself.
The name already gives it away, this book covers the first chapter between 1940 and 1942 of the Afrikafeldzug or North African Campaign. With 168 pages a rather big book, actually currently the one with the highest page count, pushing The Road to Berlin from his former throne at 148 pages. Warlord Games keeps the price at 19,99 GBP or 30 USD and offers as usual a direct exclusive miniature, in this case the very fitting Field Marshal Erwin Rommel. Next to the final cover, with Rommel himself, is the early cover with a British soldier carrying a Bren LMG. Nothing unusual, we already had different covers early among others for Duel in the Sun as well.
Dead Man’s Hand: Outlaws – Part 4
In one of Vince Venturella's many videos on YouTube, he once said that, no matter if you're in the midst of an army project, you should always try out new and different things while painting. Since I was in the mood to do so anyway and this approach offered itself to a Dead Man's Hand gang, I took his advice to heart and experimented a bit with the colors of the skin and the jacket.
The skin of el Toro has a slightly darker nuance than, for example, McMiller's sons Eugene and Seamus. The jacket was a rather unusual experiment. I searched Google for pictures of mariachis, western jackets, and the poncho that Clint Eastwood wears in "A Fistful of Dollars". In the result the jacket received embellishments on the sleeves in the form of yellow stripes and a stylized bull's head on the back, inspired by the Dead Man's Hand logo.
I also painted the sash around his waist in a rather unconventional way, brghtening the red up with Dwarf Flesh, giving it a milder, pastel tone. Since in my mind a sash is never just plain, I decided to paint a few stripes on it too, which eased the tense look of the miniature a bit.
Bolt Action British 8th Army Commonwealth Infantry
As already mentioned with the review of the Afrika Korps box, the Western Desert supplement is supported by two new infantry kits, and here is the second one, the British 8th Army Commonwealth infantry kit.
As these were prepared at the same time, we had the chance to see the 3-Ups at this year's Salute in April 2018. The Africa campaign is something special to many wargamers, especially those with relatives, who fought in that battle. The duel between Montgomery and Rommel is often connected with some kind of chivalry, a mutual respect between both opponents. Surely glorified to some degree, as war is war, but still a somewhat special part of World War 2 and therefore of special interest for many people.
Similar to the Afrika Korps box, who was released 1973 (!) by Airfix, the 8th army plastic kit was even around earlier than this, in the 1960s, so for some of the veterans in our rows, these were among the first toy soldiers they to play battles on the living room floors or kitchen tables. Thus reminding many wargamers to their first memories of this hobby.
Bolt Action Deutsches Afrika Korps German Grenadiers
Warlord Games released for Bolt Action the latest campaign supplement, The Western Desert, and this time the book is accompanied by not just one but two new plastic kits. We're talking about the Afrika Korps Grenadiers we're going to review today and the 8th Army Commonwealth Infantry we'll see here as well.
We were shown the 3-Ups of these kits at our visit to the Warlord Games Studio and the day after at the Salute 2018 in London back in April. The wargaming crowd is eager to get their hands on both of these boxes. But why is that so? Well, back in the day, when the now veterans of our hobby started, long before there was this broad range of miniatures made from plastic, pewter or resin, the only commonly available resource for toy soldiers were 1:72 or 1:32/1:35 plastic kits from companies like Airfix (if you're British) or Revell (if you're German). And from what I've heard, for many people the conflict in North Africa was in particular interesting from the war stories that they heard from their parents or grandparents.
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