Reinforcements for Chain of Command: Black Gold Campaign

Shortly we will start the Chain of Command Black Gold Campaign from the Too Fat Lardies summer special and I am looking forward to it! Of course some stuff still needs to be painted for it and I am working hard t o get it all finished in time. This blog will get added to in time as more stuff becomes finished.

First of course are the Home Guard and their Elite opponents, the German Fallschirmjaeger. Home Guard are mostly Foundry figures with some Crusader thrown in for the support weapons. Lovely figures all around. 

The FSJ are from Black Tree Design and Warlord Games. While the BTD will not win any sculpting prizes, they are crisp and clean. The same cannot be said of Warlord Games. There was flash all over the place and I had to hack, cut and file for ages to get it all reasonably clean. Some displaced mold lines were beyond saving, but I hope the painting will mask it enough to pass for tabletop quality. 

The rolling materiel.  All vehicles are by Warlord Games except the British "APC" that is made by Lledo.

 The Warlord SdKfz 251. It is a plastic kit that buildis easily and fits perfectly/ Detail is a bit shallow in places (the rivets in the armor for example) but it comnes with a lot of extras like a MG42 firing crew member (that will do handily as a "Crewed" counter, jerrycans and blanket rolls.




Warlords Panzer IV was a bit of a disappointment. It came with Schurzen that were rather fiddly to assemble and didn't fit very well. There was a diminutive and very ugly tank commander with a loose and ill-fitting head that I simply ditched out of despair and the gun barrel was slightly bent. It's very rigid metal and I did not dare try and bend it so I chose not to attempt it.





If there was one tank that I had to have for my Home Guard it was the Matilda II. It's lovely archaic looking, endearingly badly equipped with its puny gun and it can survive for a while nonetheless because of its armour. Here too the fit was dodgy in places and I had to conjecture the assembly from historical photos and use a lot of green stuff to get it reasonably in shape. The fit between side armour and tracks is still off, but it was either that or destroy the rivet detail. Still I am happy with the end result .

The next is a British Churchill infantry tank. No regrets there. A nice model with crisp detail and good fit.

 I chose the Lledo butcher van for a British "APC". It was a must really. These trucks can be had for varying prices on Ebay. Mine was 6 GBP, so not too bad. At 1/48 it is a bit too big but not disturbingly so. I chose not to paint it as it looks just fine, straight from the box.






I had to scratch -built some of the more exotic Home Guard support weapons. Below are some historical photos of a Blacker Bombard (left) , a kind of anti-tank grenade lobber, and its smaller cousing the Northover Projector (right)

Added are pictures of the scratch-built Blacker Bombard (figures were a Boys ATR team by Crusader miniatures) and a Northover projector below.