Building Brutish British

Confession time: I hate painting.

No, no, no I don't, actually. But I like building more. I love building. Converting, carving, glueing, trying out different poses on miniatures, adding details like stowage or battle damage on vehicles. So when I bought the first box of Perry desert rats I quickly built all of the figures, and then painted a handful of them. And lost interest. Same thing with the Deutsche Afrika Korps; built every figure; painted five or six of them, and lost interest. By juggling painting projects around, switching between different subject I can usually keep my interest up a bit, but then another problem appears.

I was so bored painting figures I bought a Tamiya model kit. Of course, now that it's built I have to paint it. Doh!

When I'm steaming ahead I usually manage to build the figures to the wrong organisation, with too many submachine guns per platoon, or not enough light machine guns, or just plain using the wrong bases. With the desert rats I built two figures per squad with tommy guns but Chain of Command specifies only the NCO has one, and I have realised that not every player can discern big men by their equipment, so I needed to rebase the leaders on hex bases. So I ordered another box, of course. I can use the extra figures for dismounted scout squads and crew figures for support weapons.

Is it just me, or do they look like badly shaved gorillas? They look better IRL though.

At the same time I ordered a box of Bolt Action late war British Infantry. Since the Perry box is quite low on extra equipment I'm going to nick a few weapons and backpacks from the Warlord box, and I have plans for a special character using parts from both boxes. Although I already have a platoon of late war brits from Crusader Miniatures it's the bare minimum of figures, so the rest of the Bolt Action figures will be reinforcements for them.

But I have painted some stuff, among others the 2-pounder I bought from Perrys.

Perry Miniatures 2-pounder. The middle guy is the goalie.

It's a rather good model, a bit spoilt by the lack of instructions, but I managed to assemble it correctly, I think. I want to weather it and do some chipping, but I'm calling it done for now. If there's time before the convention I might go back and do it.

While the rest of the gang listened to the corporal Jones and Davis played "hide the shell".

With a fresh box of Desert rats I built a couple of extra crew for the 2-pounder. In Chain of Command it has five crew and one junior leader. I chose to build a couple of kneeling guys to look like they are digging, perhaps bettering the gun's cover. This way they can also double as engineers digging for mines. I then did a leader using the pointy arm, but I gave him a Tommy gun and a pair of binoculars from the Warlord box.

Then, because building is more fun than painting, I spent an hour looking for a sheet of etched brass I bought last year with ammo belts and rifle slings on. I then spent an afternoon fitting a sling to his Tommy gun and on another figure. In the end I couldn't put it off anymore and had to paint them.

No, it's not a pile of stones. It's a "sangar". Look it up.

In order to give the gun some cover I built a sangar from gravel I collected outside. In Sweden we spread a lot of gravel on the roads during winter, and now that it's starting to thaw and the polar bears have retreated off the streets I scooped up a small box of it. Then it was just a small matter of glueing the rocks onto an old CD using super glue and a lot of patience.

D'ya think you can hit Rommel from here?

I used Tamiya sand soil effect to cover the CD, then I basecoated all the rocks with GW Khemri Brown. Then I wetbrushed them with Coat d'Arms Pale Sand and lastly I drybrushed heavily with white to represent the harsh sunlight hitting the rocks.

Now on to painting Afrika Korps... sigh... why do I feel the urge to build late war British?