German officer with greatcoat and scissor binoculars

German officer with greatcoat and scissor binoculars mounted on a tripod. An iconic figure from the Revel Panzergrenadier set.

 He’s accompanied here by a Zvezda infantryman and Imex radiomain with a portable backpack mounted radio.




Vehicles are 1/72 MAC Distribution Opel Blitz 3t Radio Car Kfz. 305, Airfix / Heller 1/76 scale Opel Blitz & and old Academy 1/72 Kubelwagen.

1/72 Fantasy Figures – Good Guys & Bad Guys

I spent a little time recently finishing off some 20mm fantasy figures.

First off a few good guys.

These three sword brandishing adventurers are Caesar figures. They bear an uncanny resemblance to characters from the Lord of the Rings films.

Nice robust figures made from a fairly stiff plastic that have plenty of detail and paint up well



The archers below are from the same Caesar set.

Same again here, well moulded and highly detailed from a fairly stiff plastic.



The ladies below I suppose are neither good nor bad guys.

Vampirella on the left is from the Caesar undead set and the vestral virgin on the right is an elf, minus her catwoman ears, from the same Caesar set as the LOTR characters.

Now onto the bad guys

We have some generic bad-guy ork bowmen here who are basically old Airfix Roman archers.

I had to replace their bows and arrows with new ones made from metal pins as the plastic ones were far too flimsy and the paint kept flaking off. The green guy with the spear and the thunderthighs is from the Hat Sea Peoples set.

Some more green-skinned generic baddies. A couple more of the Hat Sea People, the figure second from the left is from a board-game called The Fellowship of the Ring, and the skinny pigailed running bad-guy is from the Esci Barbarians set.

Matchbox 7.5cm Pak 40

This Matchbox German Pak-40 75mm anti-tank gun is one of the oldest surviving bits of kit in my collection. I’ve had it for around 30 years, could maybe even be older.



It was painted back in it’s day with Humbrol paint, desert yellow I seem to remember, but since then it’s been drybrushed and given a wash and a little weathering to bring it up to date.



The gun in the picture is crewed by more modern mix of Preiser, Revell and Pegasus figures.

WARGAMING SCENERY - How-to Make Rivers, Ponds and Marshes using X-rays

mprovised Rivers, Ponds and Marshes using X-rays

Some time ago a friend from our wargame group, Juan Reyes (Brazo de Nelson Wargamers Club) had a brilliant idea of using cut-outs from old X-rays that he painted over with gloss paint to use as wargame scenery to make marshes.



In a recent game scenario we needed a wide river section to cross the entire table, and so inspired by Juans marshes, we cut-up some old x-rays with scissors to make improvised river sections.



These are not painted, just the bare X-rays but they actually work very well.

The game was one of a series of scenarios weve gamed from an Arnhem campaign. The bridge spanning the river is an Airfix Pontoon Bridge, mounted on supports made from Lego and painted concrete grey.

Bolt Action in 1/72

A 1/72 scale "what if" scenario on the outskirts of Arnhem WW2.

Bolt Action rulset, umpired by my mate Carlos and gamed yesterday afternoon with the fellas from the Brazo de Nelson wargame group.

The scenario is basically two farms bordering the central road at the end of the table where an isolated group of British paras were tasked with stopping German reinforcements trying to get to Arnhem.

Turned out to be quite a balanced game, the Germans managed (but only just) to get some units through, but at a fairly heavy cost with a great many casualties, while the British suffered very few but were unable to stop the reinforcements from getting through.