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Winter Kriegsfuhrung

Winter Kriegsfuhrung

As everybody knows Germany invaded the USSR on 21st June 1942 in Operation Barbarossa and was spectacularly successful in terms of enemy killed/captured/acreage but fell short before Moscow and Leningrad due to some combination of starting late due to the Balkan Campaign or early autumn mud "glueing" German units in place. From here the story goes that thanks to Hitler believing it would all be over by Christmas after the whole rotten communist edifice collapsed there was no

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Rapidish Rauchtarnmuster

Rapidish Rauchtarnmuster

I recently had a commission to paint some SS infantry wearing the rarely painted Rauchtarnmuster camouflage, sometimes known as smokey or blurred edge camo. It is a version of the much more common plane tree camo which i painted a version of here.... https://www.firstcommissionpainting.co.uk/single-post/2019/11/12/how-i-paint-waffen-ss-oak-leaf-camouflage-and-pea-dot However the difference is basically the blurry edge of Rauchtarnmuster - not easy in 28mm and therefore as alw

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Chi Ha Shinhoto - painting guide

Chi Ha Shinhoto - painting guide

The Shinhoto Chi Ha was apparently just a normal Chi Ha but with a 47mm Anti Tank gun instead of a 57mm infantry support weapon. I think that this came about after meeting Soviet armour in 1939 and coming off worse. In any event this is Warlord's Shinhoto painted up in a slightly later version of the Japanese three colour camo. Reading other people more knowledgable than myself (almost everyone in this case) the nice yellow stripe and black outlining was dropped in 1942 so do

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Several Soviets - painting update 12

Several Soviets - painting update 12

A few Bolt Action Soviet bits recently completed and in one place. The BA10 armoured car is one of my favourite vehicles from an aesthetic point of view as it has plenty of nice open panels for some subtle modulation. I always thought it was called the BA 32 but apparently that was just a later version. Seems it was used extensively early war successfully against Japan and less so against Finland, although the tracked version can be made from the Warlord kit. Something like 3

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Burn them all!

Burn them all!

I recently had a dinky T26 Kht 130 to paint for a commission and actually remembered to take some snaps of how I went along. First of all though I need to acknowledge that almost everything I do when painting WW2 armour was learned from the master Ruben Torregosa on his Heresybrush website. In fact if you want to skip the rest of this guide here is the link to Heresybrush https://www.heresybrush.com/en/ If you're still with me what I've done is to adapt all that I learned fro

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Painting WW2 British in NW Europe

Painting WW2 British in NW Europe

WW2 British Infantry are some of my favourite ww2 figures to paint both because of the aesthetic and the challenge. The aesthetic is that their uniform is frankly dull and designed to be that way. It was a uniform without frills built for function rather than form and as it continued throughout the war and into the 1960s with only small changes It obviously did the job. There are no high leather boots or shiny leather here, just a khaki coloured workmans clothes with webbing

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Winter Camo T34

Winter Camo T34

Recently I have winter Camo’d several vehicles for various customers and thought to take some pictures while doing this T34. As a result here is a quick “How I do…” on winter camouflage. Step 1 First take your painted T34. Here I’ve got a Bolt Action 28mm T34 and painted up and varnished in the usual manner with the modulation probably overdone for the purpose. Subsequently I’ve discovered that cruder slightly darker modulation actually works better with snow camo. Some mino

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How I paint Waffen SS Oak Leaf camouflage...( and Pea dot )

How I paint Waffen SS Oak Leaf camouflage...( and Pea dot )

I have painted a number of Waffen SS commissions including these chaps from the most recent and have learned some lessons which may or may not be useful. Lesson one is that in 28mm you can’t really paint accurate Oak Leaf – the elements are just too small and if you were able it wouldn’t look like the real thing and would be confusing. Lesson two is the rather annoying contradiction that to look good on the table it has to stand out! This wasn’t the intention of the creators

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Painting US Army

Painting US Army

The US Army of WW2 very quickly evolved through a series of uniform styles and colours which seems to have resulted in troops wearing a variety of items all identifiably American but not always homogenous or in fact uniform. This might be due to the opposite situation of armies such as the Japanese who were struggling for any kind of uniform items in far flung isolated islands – maybe the US troops could take their pick of available and new items and were not as hidebound to

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Painting USMC

Painting USMC

The USMC in the pacific Campaign of WW2 has been well represented on screen in recent years with the series The Pacific and the Clint Eastwood film Flags of our Fathers, as well as outstanding books such as Tolls Pacific trilogy (only 2 out yet…) and older primary sources like ‘With the Old Breed’ by Eugene Sledge. They are also well represented by Warlord and Rubicon and I have recently finished my second USMC Army so thought I would add this quick ‘How I paint’ to the Blog.

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