Bolt Action: 6pdr

By Normandy, the British six pdr was the standard gun for infantry division anti-tank units. The Royal Artillery had shifted to the fearsome 17pdr. This gun was also the standard AT weapon for American infantry.

It had a similar performance to a German long-barreled 50mm gun, being a compromise between power and weight. The heavier anti-tank guns like the 17pdr or Pak 88mm were clumsy oversized weapons.

Bolt Action rules use a 3-man crew so I model the crew and weapon on one base for convenience.

Drop Zone Commander 'Clearance Sale'

Total Wargamer have a clearance sale running offering what looks like pretty much the full range Drop Zone Commander at 30% off RRP. That's £20 off the cost of a starter army. Even the rulebook is 20% off.

Very strange for such a new line to be discounted so heavily so quickly. Does this mean it is selling incredibly badly so TW are dumping or that it has sold so well that economy of scale is kicking in? Or maybe it means nothing at all!

But I have noticed some customer resistance here and here.

Another Bloody Tank!

The quote is from my long suffering wife.

A Warlord Games Bolt Action soft resin Matilda II. This was the best British tank of the early war, causing havoc at Arras in France in 1940, and against the Italians in Africa. Drawbacks were the small two-man turret and very slow speed. Advantages included a decent 2pdr AT gun capable of defeating all opposing armour in 1940 and heavy (for the time) armour that was effective against anything but an 88mm Flak gun. The Matilda was shipped to Russia as lend lease in '41.

A great kit that comes with a metal commander. I painted it in two tone green north European camo with Citadel wash to dirt it up and Tamiya mud paste around the tracks.

For those who care about such things, the photo was taken with a Nikon D60 using a standard 18-55 DX telephoto lens equipped with VR antishake.

We are in the north European winter so  took the pick indoors using a camera-mounted TTL flash equipped with a disperser. The gun was aimed up at a white matt ceiling which spreads the light avoiding harsh shadows.

Background is an A4 manilla envelope. the matt brown surface is nicely neutral allowing me to use auto-settings, which cannot be done with a white background.

The photo was shrunk  and the light balance tweaked using Paint Shop Pro. PSP always wants to increase the focussing, which I find should be avoided as it does strange things to the colour blending on a model.

Bolt Action Skoda 38 (t)

It is sometimes forgotten how important Czech equipment was to the 3rd Reich's war effort, especially in the 'Blitzkrieg years'. If Hitler had only been stopped earlier...

This is the Bolt Action 28 mil Pz 38(t), the t meaning tschechisch or Czech.

In northern Russia in 1941, the crews of these light tanks went up against T34s and KVs, an unattractive proposition. But then, Russian tank design made everyone else's AFVs obsolete so the Pz 38 (t)s and 35(t)s were in good company.

Another nice kit in light 'soft' GW-type resin.

Bolt Action: Russian AFVs

The T34 and SU76 were the two most abundant Soviet AFVs of WWII: over 150,000in the case of the T34.

The T34 was arguably the world's first main battle tank, a paragon of mobility, sloped armour and a dual purpose HE and AT gun that could defeat all extant enemy AFVs. The only drawback was a two man turret: only the Germans had woken up to the need for a three man turret for a commander free of other jobs. This was rectified with the uparmoured T34/85 fitted with the ZiS 85mm gun.

The SU76 was a SP artillery piece with the same ZiS 3 76.2mm gun that origially armed the T34. It was not entirely liked by its crews, who nicknamed it 'the little bitch' or the 'bare-arsed Ferdinand', but it was undeniably effective. The AFV was based on the T70 light tank chassis. The T70 was an obsolete death trap used to fill out the Soviet tank brigades in '43.

These two AFVs did more than any other to win WWII.

The models are both Bolt Action soft resin models and are superbly detailed. They come with crew - look at the cynical posture of the tanker leaning on his vehicle hatch.  They should add some much needed punch to my Soviet battlegroup.

Alien Invaders

Have been stricken by the wretched 'flu virus this week. I have had the jab but it only protects against last year's bug.

Oh well, onward and upward.

A Big Tank

This is a HobbyBoss 1:48 KV1. The 45mm antitank is 28ml by Plastic Soldier to give a feel for scale. I have added some Tamiya 'tank decoration'.

The KV was the king of tanks in 1941. A single example held up an entire panzer division for days. Had they been properly fueled and supplied they would have stopped the panzers dead. Most were abandoned by their crews when out of fuel and shells.

HobbyBoss make a number of KV, T34 and Sherman tanks in 1:48. They are cheap, around £10, and stunningly well detailed.

Highly Recomended.