Crusader Miniatrures British painting guide

I'm really intending to play Chain of Command in 20 mm since I do have lots and lots of 20 mm troops already. However, the battle reports coming from the Lard Island blog and Sidney Roundwood's blog using 28mm figures and 1/48 scale vehicles look very tasty indeed. So that reminded me that I actually had a bunch of 28mm stuff I ordered several years ago in a bout of "Oooh Shiney"-syndrome.

The British part of the loot; a section of infantry and some serious hardware.

After rummaging around a surprisingly short time I found a small but suspiciously heavy box. Inside were a receipt from Crusader Miniatures dated december 2006, a couple of unopened blisters, two large ziploc-bags with unpainted figures and a few miniatures I had started painting carefully rolled in bubblewrap.

About a third of the german paratroopers.

When totalling the figures I found out I had about a platoon's worth of German fallschirmjäger figures, most from Crusader but a couple from Wargames Foundry that I must have bought at an earlier date. They match in size although the Crusader figures look slightly more well fed. There were some british figures as well, in total a section of ten men with rifles and a bren gun, along with an officer with a revolver and a sergeant armed with a Thompson. In support they have a Vickers heavy machine gun team and a 2-pounder anti-tank gun with crew.

The four started british figures.

I couldn't resist finish painting the four started british figures. They were base painted with GW Khemri Brown I think. The Foundation paints were released by GW around 2006 and remember wanting to try them on historical figures. The Bren gunner was almost finished and looked like I had washed it with a black magic wash since he was glossy compared to the other figures. I decided to repaint them all from scratch, but used Khemri Brown as base colour again with liberal amounts of GW Devlan Mud splashed all over to create shading.

Coat d'Arms British Khaki (left) and Wargames Foundry British Uniform (right).

Then I couldn't decide how to do the uniform, it always comes down to this with british figures I think, how hard it is to nail down their uniform and webbing colour. I had previously bought Coat d'Arms british paint set which includes two paints that sounded suitable: British Khake and Faded Khaki. On the other hand I also have the British Uniform triad from Wargames Foundry (that is a base, mid, and light version of the same paint). After testing both paints on two of the figures I decided to use the Foundry paints for the clothes and the CDA British Khaki on the webbing. I then highlighted the webbing with CDA Festering Brown to create more contrast between the clothes and the webbings.

The colours used for the webbing. I sometimes photograph the paint cans to remember which paints I used...

Full painting guide:

• Basecoat: GW Khemri Brown, washed with GW Devlan Mud. (Both are sadly out of production now.)
• Uniform: WF British Uniform mid tone, highlighted with light tone. (The shade tone is very similar to Khemri Brown, so isn't really needed unless you basecoat with black or white.) 
• Webbing and anklets: CDA British Khaki, highlighted with CDA Festering Brown.
• Boots and metal: WF Slate Grey shade, highlight with GW Ironbreaker for metal areas, wash with GW Nuln Oil.
• Water bottle and rifle sling: CDA Brown Leather, highlighted with WF Spearshaft shade.
• Rifle stocks and entrenching tool shafts: WF Spearshaft, using all three tones.
• Helmets: CDA Army Green, lightly washed with GW Devlan Mud and highlighted with GW Gretchin Green.
• Flesh: WF Flesh, using all three tones, and washed with CDA Flesh Wash to even out the layers.
• Bases were done using Tamiya Dark Earth Soil Effect -- textured paint -- drybrushed with GW Bleached Bone and then decorated with flock and grass tufts.

The finished figures. They look conspicuously alike, are they clones?

I like the Crusader figures, but these four figures which all come from the same blister are prime examples of "lazy sculpting". That is, the sculptor has re-used the same pose for several figures. If you look closely you can see that all the bodies have the exact same stance; legs, boots, folds in the trousers are all identical on all four figures. Furthermore, the left hand on the loader and the officer are in the exact same position, as are the arms of the sergeant with the Thompson and the Bren gunner. The position of their webbing and ammo pouches are also identical. 

Don't turn the backs on the enemy. Or the camera. Really.

But that is not all, the heads are all the same which make them look like brothers, or clones. I tried to vary the highlights a little bit to avoid them looking too similar, but there's only so much you can do with paint. Still, they are very nice figures which paint up nicely and look good on the table.

I'm itching to finish these figures too...

So there you have it. I'm now going to concentrate on finishing a lot of stuff for our annual convention demo, which this year is supposed to be LRDG. So I need to get cracking on building airplanes, fuel trucks and airfield defenses for the players to blow up.

But you never know...