Recent AHPC Miscellany

First of the smaller AHPC entries is this Afghani Imam from Badger Games that was included in the give-away bag at a show (remember them?) a couple of years ago.

One day I may paint up those Empress Miniatures long languishing in the lower strata of the lead mountain.

I've painted up a pair of Vivandière from the pack I picked up from Brigade Games, they are really lovely sculpt by Paul Hicks.

Vivandière/Cantinière is an synonymous term for the ladies who accompanied the French regiments with their barrels of wine or brandy to sell to the troops.

I'd recommend this Wikipedia article for more information on their history and role.

When I was last in the UK in 2019 I picked up some of the lovely new Crusader Miniatures Senegalese and got them painted up for Chain of Command. Some pics here, here and here. I decided that they needed some armoured support and the Chain of Command list allows them a Renault R-35 so I ordered one from JTFM last year and it's sat in the box since.

The crewman is rather fancy with his droopy Gallic moustaches and silk scarf.

I don't have any appropriate decals so the blue ace of spades is a free-hand bodge. I also did quite a bit of weathering but it does not show up that well in the photos.

I needed something to represent a Tomb, so a trawl of the local games stores turned up this Wizkids "Heroic Statue" a few times, and the plinth could hold some remains, so, on Saturday I pulled the trigger and bought one.

It's quite a simple paint job, the statue was done in VMC Bronze with a couple of washes of AP Green Tone to give a verdigris effect, while the plinth is from a basecoat of VMC Basalt Grey with some staining and lichen patches stippled on.

Finally for now a pair of Aides de Camp, from Brigade Games. 

This vignette will be especially useful for our General d'Armee games to represent two ADC assigned to a brigade.

Victoria picked me up some more troops from Brigade Games for my birthday back in January and included in the presents was this pair of French Aide De Camp transferring orders.

Cold War DDR Motorised Rifles

Having been to Little Wars earlier this year I resisted starting anything new despite all the lovely shiny new toys on display. But, driving back through the blizzard Drew and I stopped off for a coffee and a bite to eat and got chatting about how cool it would be to play some Cold War games set in the 1970's and 80's maybe using the 7TV rules.

Although it was a great discussion and passed the remainder of the journey, by the next day I had pretty much talked myself out of it.

Then I took a look at the Badger Games web site and noticed that they are now doing the Mongrel Miniatures range of Cold War East Germans, lovely!.

After talking myself out of it again, I was surprised to find that I had, ahem, "accidentally" bought a pack each of these figures and they were in my mailbox on Monday.

A complete 'No New Projects' FAIL!!!!

The castings are really nice and take very little in the way of cleaning up, Monday evening saw them cleaned up and stuck on Renedra 25mm bases with a layer of VMC Pumice Gel texturing the base. Tuesday saw some grit added to a few of the bases and a spray of grey primer. Wednesday evening was gaming and Thursday evening we went to the cinema to see The Cold Blue  with a little base-coating in between. I'm having a long weekend so Friday saw the painting done and the bases started while yesterday I finished the bases and gave a spray off dull-coat.

Already thinking about Cold War Chain of Command or Seven Days to the River Rhine.

Here are some pictures of the contents of each of the packs available:

MM DDR001 Motorized Rifles I
Two infantrymen with AKM assault rifles and a leader, also with AKM holding a map, or maybe consulting the Stasi report on the dangerous subversives in his unit. The fourth figure is armed with a RPK light machine-gun.

MM DDR002 Motorized Rifles II
Four riflemen with AKM, one of them has a field radio, the antenna I added was a nylon bristle from a hand-brush.
The photo on the Badger Games website shows one of the figures with a RPK, I think that is an error as that figure is in pack 4.

MM DDR003 Motorized Rifles III
Four infantrymen with AKM assault rifles, one of them makes a good squad leader signalling his troops on.

MM DDR004 Motorized Rifles IV
As well as a infantryman with AKM this pack has a good selection of support weapons with another figure with a RPK light machine-gun and a pair of figures representing an RPG gunner and his ammo carrier.

Looking at the organisation for an East German motorised rifle platoon, it was quite a small unit so another couple of packs would see it up to strength, but then there would of course have to be a trio of BMP-1 and why not a T-55 or a T-72.

Sorry, did somebody say 'No New Projects'?