Thanks 1st Corps!

Those nice chaps at 1st Corps have very kindly given me a couple of vehicles to review.

I hope to get them assembled and painted ASAP, but until then, here's an unboxing (well, un-jiffybagging) post!

First off this nifty WW1 British truck. As you can see the main piece is resin, with separate and therefore detachable resin cab cover and tarpaulin.

The metal bits consist of the wheels, brake/gear levers, the straps that connect the bonnet to the cab cover, and a driver and passenger. I particularly like the latter, who is grimly clutching his rifle while his coat collar is turned up to protect him from the elements.

The only slightly tricky procedure so far has been the drilling of the wheel hubs and axles, as I think pinning the wheels will stand me in greater stead than just glueing them on.

The pieces are very well cast and, writing this mid-clean up, aren't giving me too much trouble with removing flash and such. It seems quite a chunky beast so it'll be interesting to see how it compares size-wise with my 1/48 Tamiya and 1/50 Corgi vehicles.

Next up is this cracking Yeomanry armoured car - designed to represent the numerous privately commissioned armoured cars of the period.

Again the main body is resin, with two resin armoured rear wheels and metal front wheels and hatch covers.

Note that there are four hatches, so plenty of scope for conversion with lots of figures or weapons poking out! The vehicle also has three lamps attached to it, so it could easily be used as some sort of armoured scout vehicle.

Again mid-clean I'm not having any headaches with the filing and snipping and there are no awkward mould lines or the like. As above I'm going to drill and pin the front wheels on.

Perhaps my favourite part of this kit is the figure that accompanied it (I don't know if this is usually part of the purchase) - a chap holding a rifle and nattily dressed in Oxford bags and tank-top.

Stay tuned then folks!

Skater Boy

 

No I'm not about to burst into an Avril Lavigne song, but ignoring Spode’s calls to make the British bicycle the transport of choice, have given one of his chaps a pair of roller skates.

 

 

My VBCW collection has a number of figures I can use as messengers/runners, including horsemen, motorcyclists, cyclists and of course the roller skater from the Musketeer militia range.

 

 

However I didn't have anything that I could specifically use for my Blackshorts, so I looked to the remains of my Perry plastic WW2 8^th Army sprue, added a little greenstuff and some bits for the wheels and voilà!

 

 

 

Scenery or Scatter? It's All Objective

During a mooch around my local Hobbycraft I came across a 1:35 Tamiya jerry can set, which consists of six oil drums, a bunch of jerry cans and some buckets. Although 1:35 is a larger size than whatever scale 28mm is supposed to be, they would do quite nicely for scenery, battlefield scatter or objective markers (or jump-off points if I'm playing Chain of Command).

Using up some spare bases, I put these in varying positions, enlivened with the odd jerry can (maybe not strictly historical, but hey-ho), buckets and a scratch built mop and map (a square of folded-then-unfolded metallic sticky tape, held in place by a large rock, aka a bit of dry Milliput).

After painting them and drybrushing on some wear and tear, I added a few 'decals' (pictures copied off the internet and printed out on sticky labels) and did my usual basing.

I also bought a Tamiya 1:35 brick wall set - useable for large walls at 28mm if you don't look too closely. After glueing some sections together I decided to leave some of the ends open-ended, so that they could be fitted together either as straight sections or corners.

In order to achieve the red brick with light mortar look so common in this neck of the woods,  I undercoated these white and then drybrushed them with Vallejo Amaranth Red. A light slap of quickshade toned them down a bit, followed by some selective drybrushing with Olive Green and Beige Red, on individual bricks for the latter.

I then added my usual basing stuff and a scatter of my greenery mix and, well, they've come out pretty good I reckon!