Another FAMO

This time for my late war German forces. Again a De Agostini die-cast picked up cheap on ebay and repainted with stowage and crew

Deutsches Afrika Korps - filling the gaps

The appearance of some cheap die-casts has allowed me to fill a few gaps in my DAK. The FAMO, light Horches, sdkfz 232 and 234 all were needed for various Rapid Fire scenarios. The heavy Horches were some metal models I had already, but needed some crew added. Crews are various plastic figures chapped up to fit.


Another pair of almost finished items - any guesses?

WW2 French Command base plus Gendarmes

Continuing the clear out of oddments before year end. These are resin figures by Retrokit/Solfig, the detail is not all that crisp, but they are quite unusual subjects. Close up the officer figure does have some resemblance to De Gaulle.

Typically once I'd taken the picture and packed the figures away I spotted that the Gendarmes pistol hadn't been painted - it's now been rectified.

It's Christmas

and I've been good again, so a nice selection of presents were under the tree

So what do I plan to do with them:

• The Stradioti will provide Light Cavalry for the wars in the Balkans against the Turks and potentially for a future Italian Wars project (but I'm not starting any new periods)
• Roman Senate - will be used for civilians and also have potential for some sort of skirmish
• Tecumseh - more reinforcements for my woodland indians
• Red Army of the Winter War - reinforcements for my WW2 Russian winter forces now I have created more than enough Axis.
• Romanian Infantry - I had forgotten these when I created my winter Axis forces
• Soviet Assault Group - Engineers for my Russians, I've only got a few so far
• Honours of War - Has had good reviews and I'd like to try them with my SYW forces
• Fighting Sail - buried away somewhere in the stash is a large number of Napoleonic ships, hopefully this will inspire me to get them out assemble, paint and use them.

M21 Half tracks

I had always been short of half tracks with mortars for my US forces. I had hoped that the Hasegawa M4A1 version would have met my needs (link) but I couldn't face getting any more. Gradually I found a couple of diecast M21s at reasonable prices (thanks Bob) Then they appeared cheaply on ebay so I bought a couple more so I could replace my two existing models. They needed repainting to match and crew added.

The crew are from the Plastic Soldier US sets, which I had spare. The old vehicles will go on ebay in the new year

Ottoman Artillery C16/C17

My Ottomans now have their own artillery, up until now I've used some Cossack gun crews instead. These are the new figures from Redbox and they come with a number of extra figures that can be dotted around the guns.

There are two set that for the Sixteenth century (left) and another for the Seventeenth (right). The guns are the same but the figures vary between the two pack
The hot is odd, I found references to it being either red or black so I went for a dark red!

It's the bishops

Another bargain, I acquired a while ago these Valdemar resin figures provide a command stand for my medievals, I'm not sure you would get this many bishops together on a battlefield but the look fun.

Having photograped them close up in good lighting I can see a couple of bits I missed!

The horse fo the mounted bishop was rather undersized so I replaced it with a bigger plastic one. The colour scheme came from the Valdemar packet.

For the flag I hunted around the medieval section of the excellent Dansk Figurspilsforenings hjemmeside medieval section until I found something suitably ecclesiastical fo go with the figures