As those of you who had to study Henry IV part one at school ( in the olden days ) might recognise, the quote above is Shakespeare. Notably from the same speech that says "I saw young Harry with his beaver on...." which hasn't dated as well. Anyway that out of the way I thought I'd write a quick blog about the stuff that has passed across the painting desk here "in the rebel camp near Shrewsbury". First up some Super Fantasy Brawl. Fantasy Brawl is a board game of the arena

Personal favourites from this year. As usual there is no attempt at ordering or even keeping to a top 10. As always I have painted a massive variety of stuff and clearly I have left out a lot of the 'run of the mill' Germans in 3 colour camo etc in favour of what might be visually more interesting. Collections of a hundred plus minis are represented by just a couple as in the case of Dark Rituals, Reichbusters and Winter Germans for example. In short a subjective selection

Not a blog about 1980s comedians but instead about a 1940s comedic double act, The T35 and T38 Tanks, here represented by Trenchworx resin beauties. These models are simply fantastic, cleanly cast with no warping and fitting together sweetly. Very little cleanup and metal parts also well cast. Here are the two tanks in their factory state, the black bits are a hard plastic which you do need to take a little care removing from their "sprue" The two tanks represent a point in t

Identifying and painting Japanese armour is not the easiest task for many of us. Japanese armour is just not as familiar to us growing up in wargaming as German or Allied. It is even harder than identifying Italian or Romanian simply because for most of us in the west the names are just tricky to remember and then to place against less familiar profiles. Secondly the lack of easily accessible source material on the use and battles of Japanese armour has contributed to general

Over the years I have had loads of German WW2 stuff pass across the painting desk, mainly in 28mm but also in 15mm. German commissions outnumber all the other nations by at least 2 to 1 and there are few vehicles I havent painted. Some are obviously repeat offenders and I wont be including the Panzer IVh, the Puma, the Stug IIIg or the Panther here. Instead these are my favourite vehicles by looks, rarity or oddity. They are in no particular order as there are no real criteri

A different sort of Blog this week as I thought I would do a bit of a Pantherama. A run through some of the Panthers I have painted in both 28mm and a few 15mm (at the end). This is a obviously only a selection. As one of the iconic WW2 AFVs it is a rare German Army that comes to me Pantherless. If nothing else it can be a camo resource showing some of the myriad schemes available other than the usual 3 colour wavy lines common in Normandy in 1944. First up we have a couple o

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

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

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

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