Italian Tanks

From next week I'm shifting from painting 6mm Pyrrhic War Greeks and moving to the early days of the WWII North Africa campaign. So its time for me to start thinking about Italian armour and it just so happens I have seen some up close and personal at the Tank Museum in Bovington. Nothing quite beats seeing the real thing to help when painting. 

M14/41 Italian Medium Tank. It was a slightly improved version of the earlier M 13/40 with a more powerful diesel engine

This symbol identifies the tank as the First Tank of the 3rd Platoon in the 2nd Company.

Twin 8 mm Breda mod. 38 machine guns in the Hull

The Engine deck. The exhaust manifolds glowed red hot when in use, burning off any paint and leaving them open to rusting

Plenty of information here to guide me in my new project. Now I must plan a return trip to Bovington for later in the year!

6mm Pyrrhic Army Finished!

Last year I had the rather crazy idea to paint a complete new army in 6mm to use in games using the To the Strongest rules. These could be used against my existing Republican Romans. I quickly decided I would paint them as part of the Analogue Painting Challenge and started planning what units I wanted and ordered nearly everything in one hit from Baccus 6mm. When it all arrived I knew I had a big job on my hands and started planning how I would tackle the job as part of the Challenge. I initially thought completing the army would take nearly the whole 13 weeks of the competition but as soon as I started painting I realised that my progress far exceeded my projections. 

In a little under 9 weeks the army has been completed and here it is in all its painful glory (those pikes are sharp!).

And unit by unit here they are...

Epirot and Macedonian Pike Phalanx

Greek Slingers

Greek and Sicilian Hoplites

Thessalian Heavy Cavalry

Tarantine Light Cavalry

Greek Heavy and Light Cavalry

Greek Bowmen and Indian Elephants

There are more units I can add at a later date (allies mostly) but for now I am very happy to have completed this army as fast as I have...now I just need to find anther army to top this in next years Challenge!

Greek Archers and Successor Elephants

The Challenge always proves to be a huge inspiration and spur to painting activity for me (I'm sure many of the participants would agree). That gentle combination of healthy competition and peer pressure does wonders for curing me of my usual inertia! This year has proved no exception and in under 10 weeks I have managed to paint a whole 6mm Pyrrhic army. Of course I can add a few periphearal units later on but the core of a good solid army has been finished. I'll post some pictures on my Blog in a few days but before that here are my final units.

First up two units of Greek Bowmen. These light units will provide a nice screen to my forces hopefully inflicting some damage on my enemies before the heavy infantry crash into each other.

The last units are a little special. I painted some Elephants for my army earlier in the challenge but realised rather too late that I had painted the wrong models. So I immediately went online and ordered the correct elephants from Baccus.

I decided that this time I would base my Elephants three to a base rather than two as previous. I think this looks a lot better, and certainly increases the intimidation factor when these units advance on the enemy.

Twenty four bowmen will net 12 points and six elephants each with four crew should net me another 24 points. A modest submission but every point is a step in the right direction.

Navigating the final Challenge

I'm putting the brushes down for a couple of days for a long weekend away with the family. We're not going anywhere glamorous its really just an excuse to get away from work and let the wife loose for some retail therapy... of course I have my eye on a couple of local games retailers as well. This means I won't be working on anything for the Painting Challenge for a few days, but there is method to my madness. 

I've been keeping the pressure up on myself since the Challenge started in December and I need a little enforced time away from the workbench to recharge my batteries. I have completed my Pyrrhic army and Monday should see my final submission of 6mm figures for this project. Then, when I get back from this trip, I can start all fresh on the project that will take me through to the end of the Challenge on the 20th March - Operation Compass, the British offensive against the Italians in western Egypt and Cyrenaica (Libya) in December 1940 through to Feb 1941.

I have been wanting to do some games from Operation Compass for a long time but had other projects that needed finishing first. With them out of the way I can finally focus on one of the most complete allied victories of WWII, that has somehow been overshadowed by later victories. This was in no small part due to Churchill's speech after El Alamein that said that "Before Alamein we never had a victory. After Alamein we never had a defeat." The perfect words to lift a war weary nation, if not strictly true. 

Churchill's rhetoric aside I have always found this British offensive massively interesting. These are the days before Rommel, before the defeats that left the front shifting back and forth for two more years. This was the perfect example of asymmetric warfare with a small highly trained and disciplined army defeating a much larger army of poorly lead and poorly motivated troops. I'll be starting off with just a couple of companies of British and Italian tanks and will build up from there. I can't wait to get started!