Don't insult my Italians!!

their tanks may not be up to much , but this should deal with any allied armour easily, shame they didn't produce that many. it's the Italian Cannone da 90/53

Its the Italian equivalent of the German 88mm and is produced by Italeri in their semi hard, semi glueable plastic. It's a nice crisp model and a reasonable crew (I've kept some to use with my other Italian guns). I've painted the guns/crews as if they have just been diverted to Tunisia in 1943.

At some stage Italeri will produce a version on the Lancia 3RO truck and the truck will be really useful and I'll probably end up with left over guns, but I still thought I'd rather bu the guns now rather than wait (I'm sure that's why Italeri are releasing them in this order).

A&A buildings in Progress

Just for those interested in what I'm up to here is my progress to date on the buildings for the Gauntlet game, I still plan to add a number of others so suggestions are welcomed.
They are all based on a 60mm x 120mm footprint and built with foamcore and the roofing is the Will's Finecast pantile roofing.

Revolutionary Wars generals

I've had these few figures sitting around the back of my painting desk for a while so I got on and finished them off.

To the left is the commander of the Frundsberg contingent in Austrian service note the difference in the coat colour compared with the humble infantryman beside him.

On the right is a commander for the Polish Legion. All I need now is a few suitable figures for the rest of the French generals.

WW2 Greek Infantry

I needed to paint one Greek infantry battalion (27 figures) for the Crete big game. It was very tricky finding some WW2 Greeks in plastic. I nearly bought the metal figures from FAA before deciding on a straight paint conversion of the Esci/Italeri Italian Mountain troops.

At the time of the German invasion the Greeks were in the process of changing their uniform so you could find either the British Helmet or their version of the Italian Helmet. Therefore all of these are in the Italian helmet with the green/khaki uniform The officer and HMG come from the Emhar WW1 set, which was the next nearest fit in plastic.

The most useful site I have found in English is

http://www.geocities.com/ww2greece/

I still need to sort a 20 figure unit of Greek Gendarmerie, so if you have any links/ideas, please let me know

Latest purchases

I'm trying to catch up,after the holiday.

Just before leaving I received a batch of figures traded with Chris from The Plastic Pelisse who provided me with some useful figures in return for wide selection of figures from various sets for his 20mm figure/metal comparison site. I received:

• an almost complete pack of Zvezda GNW Russians - yet more for my WSS/1683 Austrians
• an almost complete pack of Zvezda C17 Austrian Musketeers and Pikemen - I was please to find they were a reasonable match to my Revell TYW figures even though I'll be using them in a separate unit
• Some more Strelets Confederate generals - I'll be using them for Union as for some reason they still have not produced a Union mounted set yet ( a missed opportunity)
• The religious group from the Strelets Crimean Russian general Staff - just the sort of eye-candy I need for my Napoleonic Russians

On Thursday I picked up a couple of other items from the local Modelzone

• an Austin taxi by Oxfod Diecast - I plan to use this as a tender to support my armoured cars
• the Zvezda Russian noble cavalry - nice figures even if slightly earlier in period than I would have wished, and there were 6 identical retainer figures in the pack, and none in the "Cossack" style uniform (except the standard bearer and musician) perhaps this is linked to their sudden plan to produce Zaporozhian Cossacks shortly.

At long last the E13 release from Hat has arrived in the UK so I need to put an order in. the only problem is that I would like to order the new Pegasus vehicles at the same time (BT7 & BA10) so maybe I should wait until after the big games, etc.

On the Workbench - May 09

The year is slipping away and May is half over (the problem of slipping off to Italy for 2 weeks) So I need to concentrate on the SOGG big game and the SOTCW game at Gauntlet. The main targets are

• paint a Greek infantry battalion (I've already decided to use modified Italeri Italians)
• Find/modify some figures that are close enough to Greek Gendarmerie.
• Continue work on the Achse/Avalanche terain - buildings/olive trees/vineyards

As always I have a number of other bits and pieces on the go

• Italian 90/53 AA/AT Guns (I've now assembled them)
• German DAK motorcycles (ditto)
• Something might be done with the BefehlsPanzer III conversion
• The M8 HMC is almost constructed (the SHQ model has a lot of parts and the glue needs to be left to harden)
• Some Tartars for my Ottomans ( I sorted these out just before going on holiday)

back from Italy

If you thought it was quiet for a while, then you'd be right as I've been off to Italy for a dose of Roman history and a quick visit to Maori (where the US Rangers landed at Salerno). More to follow shortly, once I get some zizzzzz and read Battlegames.