Friday 30 December 2016

H&R British 1980s Infantry

As with the Centurions, I bought a few of the Heroics and Ross British infantry from the 1980s because I had heard they were new and nice castings. I bought small samples of different figures, plus some support weapons. I painted them all up, but only based a few - I have ordered more, including generic infantry, so I will want to mix them up into squads. Overall I like these figures - unlike the tanks, I think these are the equals of GHQ if not better sometimes in animation, and here the ability to order them in small numbers really beats the GHQ model.

Left to Right; Carl Gustav, Nightsight, M72 LAW, Observer, Bren
 


Rapier Anti Aircraft Missile mount
Command Group

Milan team
81mm Mortar
L7 GMPG
 

Infantry with night sight
72 LAW
Carl Gustav


Monday 26 December 2016

Here comes a chopper

One of my Christmas presents from the wife (how did she know?) was a Chopper II from NorthWest Short Line. I saw this in a YouTube video by Allen Rockwell in one of his series of Tool Tips - a channel well worth watching https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_zjLdVqHHYiDYJvjSARV9Q 

The Chopper is essentially simple, a guillotine arm with a razor blade underneath, cutting down onto a platen made from modelling mat material. It comes with a couple of mitre guides - one with 90 and 30 degree angles, the other with 45 and 60. In the first two pictures below the 30/90 guide is in use, on the 90 degree side, which is probably the most common usage - it allows you to cut linear items such as posts to a consistent length. The other mitres allow you to cut sheet material at fixed angles.

Storing the mitre which is not in use was my concern - it would be very easy to lose it. There is also a tiny envelope of spare screws, the ones which are used to hold the blades in - again, very easy to misplace. After my experiments with magnets recently, and finding how cheap they are, I hatched a cunning plan. I glued three magnets under the platen, as shown in the third picture. Then the packet of steel screws, and the steel mitre, simply lock on and sit out of sight but safe until needed. Simples.





    




 

Tuesday 13 December 2016

Base metal

A couple of weeks ago I received a model I had ordered on eBay, a GHQ Nashorn, nicely painted. It came in an old metal cigarette case, along with a couple of free 3mm tanks. All three had magnets mounted underneath, which held them to the case. It occurred to me that this was an idea I could use, given that I already mount all my 6mm troops and vehicles on 1" square steel bases. If I put a magnet under a tank, then I can put it onto a base for games where I want that, but I can also remove it for games in which unbased vehicles are preferred. 
I tried this out on some GHQ Pz IVH which I had painted but not based, and some magnets I had lying around - I think from Flames of War days. I used Das air-drying putty to fill in the cavity under the tank, and then embedded a magnet in it, at ground level as it were. As it turned out the Das isn't all that sticky once dried - most if the carcasses dropped out of the tanks, and most of the magnets popped out of their holes when I offered them to a steel base. However that was not a big problem - I glued the magnets back in with superglue, and the carcasses into the hulls with Uhu or similar. The first picture here show how it works.
I then modelled some bases in my normal way - green Basetex to give some shape and texture, a bit of Flat Earth paint and then a variety of flocks and other bits. The difference was that instead of gluing a model I simply left a fairly flat area in the centre. The tanks then sit nicely on the bases - the magnets hold them securely, but come off easily enough when needed. The next few pictures show the effect - I later did the same with some Chieftains which can be seen in the last two pics, with and without bases.
This opens up several other possibilities. I can use the same bases for different tanks, so I do not need to have a base for every vehicle, just enough for the biggest battle I am likely to fight. And I can use different bases for the same model - so a Tiger could have a desert sand base to fight in Tunisia, and then switch to a temperate base for Italy, or even a snow scene in Russia. All in all, I think a successful experiment.
The magnets, by the way, turn out to be very cheap, only about 12p each for the size I used, and there is a huge range and choice.

 








Monday 12 December 2016

Chieftain vs Chieftain

 Getting into Moderns for the first time, and I decided to try some H&R, specifically the 1980's UK stuff, as I had heard it was new and some of their best work. I ordered a variety of infantry in small amounts - you can order a single strip of 3, 4 or 5 figures for about 60p, so you can get exactly what you need, without having to buy a pack of 60 or more and put up with the mixture you get. I also bought four Chieftain Stillbrews - again you order these individually, so you can get just the number you need.
I painted the Chieftains up, and fitted them with magnets for flexible basing (more of that in another post). They seem nice enough models, certainly with better definition than previous H&R I have bought - though that does go back to about 2000. I thought I should do a proper comparison, so I sent off for a pack of five GHQ Chieftains - these are the Mark 5. I painted these up as well, and the photos below show both types together. It is easy enough to spot the H&R models, they have distinctly fatter gun barrels.
Overall, I still prefer the GHQ. Apart from the finer barrels, they generally have sharper detailing. They are also slightly larger - about 2mm longer and maybe 0.5mm wider - though the GHQ ones actually seem slightly lower in profile. There is more definition in the various racks, grilles and other attachments to the hull and turret. Not a huge difference - the H&R one is not a bad model, but GHQ wins for me.
Of course there is one major downside - the GHQ tanks cost £9-25 for the pack of five, or £1-85 each. The H&R ones cost 65p each, only a whisker over a third the price - and as I mentioned you can buy exactly what you need, which may effectively lower the price quite a bit - if you wanted six, say.
So if price or purchasing flexibility are important, H&R are well ahead here. But if you want the best quality models, it's still GHQ. I would also say that H&R still has no photos on the site, which makes purchasing a bit of a shot in the dark. I got my GHQ from Wargames Emporium - Magister Militum are the other UK stockist - and on both their sites you can see a picture of every model before you buy. That matters to me, especially with infantry where  you would like to see the poses and animation.


 






Friday 25 November 2016

Adler Command

While I was painting my Baccus UK Paras, I needed some extra variety in the command figures. I ordered a couple of command strips from Adler, and while I was at it I picked up two command strips each of Wehrmacht, Waffen SS and FJ. Each strip has four figures - the poses vary from one range to another, though in every case one of the four is a kneeling radio operator.
So in each group I had eight figures in four poses. I used one set to make a four-man command team in a 1" square base. The other four figures I put on coin bases - two singles and one pair including the radio. Good figures and they paint up well - and they have the advantage of being available in small quantities if you need them to make up a unit or for some particular purpose.











Thursday 24 November 2016

Baccus Paras

At Joy of Six in July I picked up a number of packs of Baccus British Paratroops - two of the standard infantry packs of about 100 figures (one each of Advancing and Firing) plus some of the support packs - MMG, PIATs, 2" Mortars. The support items come based on small discs about the size of a 5p piece, and I left some just like that, while others I based on my usual 1" square steel. The individual infantry come as strips of four figures - you get four command strips and 20 line strips in each pack. The command strips are the same in both packs, though the line strips are obviously different (one firing, the other advancing). So in the two packs I got 32 command figures in four poses, and 160 line figures in 8 poses.
It would have been nice to have a little more variety, though the figures themselves are very well sculpted, perhaps the best at this scale I have tried (competing for that honour with GHQ and Adler). For the basic infantry this wasn't really a problem, but I wanted a little more variety for the command, so I ordered a couple of Para command strips from Adler (as well as some other command figures, for which see another post). All told I made seven 1" square Command bases, and 23 infantry bases. I painted them in a three colour camo pattern - a base of khaki with spots of desert sand and a terracotta brown.
In addition I had been playing some IABSM, which really needs individual Big Men. So I made a dozen single figures, mostly command but also a few from the basic infantry, based on 5p pieces. Previously I had thought that single figure bases in 6mm was a bit too far out, but in fact with the quality of these figures it works perfectly well. This opens up the possibility of skirmish games at this scale, which I had previously ruled out.
Overall I would rate these figures very highly. Slightly more variety would be nice, but that's not a big gripe. There were a few casting problems with figures having one leg gapped at the ankle, and I lost 2-3 figures that way - not a high percentage. I have a lot more Baccus to paint - British and German infantry - and I see that they have just released a range of German infantry in the smock.
The pictures show a variety of the units, support weapons and single figures, and at the end a couple of pictures of the whole lot in their container.