15mm WW2 British Platoon

No games to share after the holiday so far so I'll post some progress on the painting queue.
As an addition to our 28mm games we have been thinking lately to scale down to 15mm and or 20mm for our platoon and larger games.
There are many reasons like time to paint, storage, availability of miniatures or cost but my main reason is it just seem to look right for the size of games we play. Or is it just that we are the average wargamer with a constant need to change and add things...   So 20m or 15mm was the big question we needed to address . I will spare you details on how our group came to a verdict but in the end I'm staring at my desk stacked with 15mm as well as 20mm miniatures. How convenient.

Well, I decided to start with a platoon 15's so I could mark those off and be ready to game Chain of Command and, together with Cromwells of the 7th armoured division I painted long ago, we can try the Battlegroup Normandy system for larger games.  One of the obvious advantages of going smaller is the reduced amount of time and this time I was once more surprised that I could finish those in under 2 weeks spending just six evenings or so. Probably four times quicker than 28's.
Next up will be some 20mm AB's, Normandy as well. We just could not resist the stunning AB models and the availability of so many models to spice up the table. So while we mostly reuse 15mm, the 20's provides a great opportunity to paint up some great models. Oh, and some terrain of course...

These miniatures are from the Plastic soldier company with the exception of three or four figs from Forged in Battle I put in just because I had them and wanted to feel the difference between the plastics and metal. Just as in my previous post I liked painting the plastics better. Much, much easier and due to their chunkiness they made me think of them as small versions of Artizan miniatures. So that's the second plastic box I like, one day I might become a fan...
The box itself is quite good. Enough variation in poses and with some head and arm swaps you could even get more. The weakest poses IMO are for the sten armed officers unfortunately. With just two different models I changed some arms to make them look a bit different. Also, the uniforms on some of the figures do not seem 100% correct. I do not claim to be an expert but the equipment seem to be on the wrong side at most of the figures.
Anyway, did not bother me to paint up these nice figures:

Section 1

Section 2

Platoon HQ

Perry Desert Rats & some terrain

Holiday is over so time to get back to the hobby and see what's everybody been doing recently to get some fresh inspiration.
Unfortunately I did not have many games over the last few months but I managed to get a platoon and some buildings done for our 28mm Chain of Command desert WWII games.


These are from the Perry plastic boxed set with some metals thrown in for a bit of variety. Now I've never been a fan of plastics but I must say these are the first I actually like (and I tried many:). Easy to assemble, good variety and proportions and a joy to paint. This can't be said of the metals though, I really struggled with those. Yes, great poses but the quality is just poor IMO. It takes longer to clean the figure than to build a plastic and you get lesser quality which was a pain to paint. The 2 pdr model was good though and my favourite of the range.

For terrain I ordered some buildings from The Colonial Steamboat company. Great models and they come with a decent basic paintjob so you can use them straight away. I actually painted the bases to match the desert mat and put a few lighter colours on them. After this I went on to experiment with the modelmates products for weathering. I was so impressed with the effects you can achieve with these liquids that I went a bit overboard with the weathering. But no problem here, I have't sealed the effect yet so with some water I can still remove it.

Original building from colonial steamboat company

and a scenery piece from The Last Valley, repainted as well

28mm Napoleonic Peninsular British

First ones up here are some 28mm British units I painted to join my little Spanish army. 3rd Buffs in units of 12 for Sharp practice, our favorite set of rules for Napoleonics now by TooFatLardies.

The first ones I did were plastics from Victrix. I liked them a lot and there is plenty of room for variation in the box. However I found the time it took me to assemble/glue them very time consuming. I think and hope the newer ranges are a lot easier now.

So I tried the Perry box. Easier to assemble and they make a nice firing line.




Ok these are different poses but what happens if you mix them..Judge for yourself but I must say that it is different from behind. The backpacks differ in size. A lot.


I wanted to expand these to units to 24 but I ran into Offensive Miniatures and wanted to give those a try because of their marching poses.


So I end up with three different units from three different manufactures. I plan to paint some more of them but you guessed it, which? Not sure yet.

Last ones up are the Big Men. Testing the use of thumbnails as well...

I went for a pretty clean look with these units. For red I used a base of GW Dark Flesh. I mixed in more GW Blood red with each layer until pure and i think I ended with a final Foundry bright red. For white I used Foundry Arctic Grey triad.
The gallery for the British is here if you want larger pictures.