World War II Project - British Airborne - reboot prep

I have done all the initial prep work and the everything is ready for primer (or re-priming in some cases).

What you see is a British Airborne Platoon based on the organization in Chain of Command. I admit that I was unsure of the composition of Section 3 as it has two Bren gunners. After haunting some forums and digging deep I found that there was a spare Bren gun issue to the platoon. It makes sense that rather than waiting for one of the three assigned guns to break to assign it to a section and create a section that could serve as a base of fire for the platoon.

Everything is from Warlord Games. I started this platoon when all you could get was metal. The issue is there are way to many Sten guns and not enough rifles. I have a stash of Sten gun equipment soldiers now. I also built up as many of the support units that I could. That is why I have a fourth section of Airborne troops, there are 3 Vickers, 2 3" mortars to go with that. I still need to build a section of regulars that I is another support option. Hopefully I can use that as a nucleus for a British motor platoon.

Not sure when I'll have time to start priming but everything is sitting in the booth waiting for the fun to begin.

An overall look at the platoon with the supports. This is before I finished putting everything on 25mm bases.

I needed 8 more figures so I turned to the plastic Airborne box to flesh things out. Overall I'm pretty pleased with these, but they are definitely a bit bigger and bulkier than the metal troopers.

A look from the Back

Platoon HQ section

1st section.

2nd Section

3rd Section, they have the extra Bren gun and the sniper.

The extra Airborne section

Support weapons.  These are support weapons and crews. Within Chain of Command these need 5 man crews. Typically some kind of counter is used (a die or something equivalent) to count down casualties. I'm thinking something right on the base itself or maybe just go with kill rings.

World War II Project - British Airborne - reboot

I have been more than a little distracted lately with work and Christmas projects (I may have over committed on puzzles this year). Not to mention that after developing a window solution for the Church I have run out of steam. So in order to try and get back on track I pulled out my British Airborne to figure out what I have and what I might need.

In theory I have one section finished and second section getting close. However, I thought I should just work it out from the beginning again. My rule set of choice for platoon/skirmish level actions is Chain of Command (CoC) by Too Fat Lardies. All the miniatures I have on hand are from Warlord Games. I would love to replace these as there are some much nicer options out there now, but this is what I have in hand. In addition to a much of metal I have box of their plastics which means I could probably put together a second platoon.

After the initial sort I have all the components of the HQ section, all three sections and most of the support options (including an additional section of Airborne). All of this in metal, although the extra Airborne section will need some plastics to fill it out to full strength. I also wanted to use different figures for each section leader so three of those will be made up from the box of plastic minis.

I put one section leader together last night, he is definitely a bit bigger than the original metals. Shouldn't be a problem once everything is painted and based. And speaking of that I'm going to repaint everything to ensure that its all consistent, even the finished troops that are based. I'm not going to strip them just re-prime over what is there. I'm going to change my painting philosophy about this and go the army speed painting route.

At the moment I just plan on getting everything prepped and ready for priming. I still need to finish the church and the group of HO scale minis I have started painting.

In this shot, three full sections for the 1st Platoon, two Vickers supports, 2 mortar supports and most of a 4th section (way to many sten guns in the metal packs, I need more rifles).

Here is the platoon HQ section and some additional supports; medics, 2" mortar team and another piat team (in addition to the ones in the HQ section

There are still some support units that I need to get my hands on, most of which are engineers which may need to be converted from my box of plastic British infantry. I also need to put together a section of regular infantry as a support.

World War II Project - 28mm Village Church - Sarissa Precision - The Walls Part 9

I finally figured out what to use for the window sandwich, paper! Specifically some heavy weight drawing paper. I tried it out and was mostly pleased with the result. I used the stained glass cut out for each window as a template and cut out the outline. I then held it in place and marked the areas I needed to cut out from the other side.

I glued the plastic stained glass panel in place with CA and also used CA to glue the paper on top of it. There is a "stain" on the paper from the CA soaking through a bit but paint will cover that. The paper sits lower than the built of "frame" around the window so it looks pretty good. It is a bit tedious with all of the cut and fit involved.

Cut to fit

Cut outs marked

Glued in place

Looking good so far. A little paint it should pass muster.

World War II Project - 28mm Village Church - Sarissa Precision - The Walls Part 8

As work continues mistakes get made. I have a couple of pictures below of the biggest ones so far. My next goal is to figure out how to best sandwich in the stained glass into place. When I started this stretch I was more worried about cutting the stained glass to fit. That turned out to be much easier than expected. Its amazing what you can do with a sharp knife. Now I need to figure out how to cut out the interior piece to hold it into place. That is proving to be a bit more difficult.

Progress so far:

This is what happens when your knife is not sharp enough.

Another mistake. While I was cutting this one out I miss-counted and cut the wrong pieces out on the left side.

I trimmed off the offending pieces.

And then I glued replacements in. I literally had saved, accidentally, all the cutouts so I had plenty to choice from. Once I stipple on some texture you won't be able to tell I had made a mistake.

Cutting out the stained glass was easier than I expected.

Here is the whole wall

This is how it will look from the outside.

World War II Project - 28mm Village Church - Sarissa Precision - The Walls Part 7

After a bit of a break for ReaperCon its time to dive back into the Church. I can see a light at the end of the tunnel now so I want to push through this project and move on to a couple of others.

I'm continue moving forward with the walls. Again everything is easier when they are flat. Here I have added the exterior detail to the windows and started added the stone edging for the interior arches. At this point its just a lot of cutting, nothing terribly difficult. I also started adding the interior window detail, again I'm keeping this simple, its not going to get a lot of scrutiny during a game so I'm okay with it.

I have come to a bit of a stand still with the stained glass. I realized that I need something to sandwich them into place with. If I use the cardboard that I have been using then it will be slightly "higher" than the surrounding stonework. I have to decide if that's going to bother me or not. But I do need to cut out enough of those pieces to add match the configuration you see from the outside.

These are the interior arches, cut out and ready to be installed

The combination view. Exterior details visible while the interior arch stones are glued in place,

A couple of arches after the glue has set

And here is the arch all cut out, 

World War II Project - 28mm Village Church - Sarissa Precision - The Walls Part 6

Progress has been a bit slow. I'm in the process of getting ready to head out to ReaperCon, down in Denton Texas, for Labor Day weekend. I didn't manage to get anywhere with projects I had in mind so if I take an entry it will likely be something that I sitting on the shelf, likely one of those French Halftracks at this point. Since we have a pet sitter stay with the dogs rather than using  a kennel it means we have been getting ready for a visitor.

In the meantime I have set the steeple aside and moved back to the walls. First step was to make up some interior arches for the windows, like I did with the steeples, with a slightly different approach. I cut the upper arch as a single piece and the straight sides and bottom edge will be three pieces instead of a single piece like I did with the steeple. I also decided that the interior arches need a little help so I cut out some stonework to wrap around those as well.

Now here is the potential step to far. Since I'll be putting in stained glass (plastic) in the windows I was thinking about how to take a picture of the interior with light streaming through those windows. There are a couple of options.

1) Do not glue the short walls in place. This would allow me to remove a short wall for a photograph and I could remove any of the four short walls so this would be a very flexible solution The long walls are sturdy enough that I think this would work. Down side is that its likely that the short walls would just fall out of place on regular basis. They just are designed for that type of removal, plus the exterior quoins could be damaged from the handling.

2) Working door, now I find this idea intriguing. It would certainly limit the potential camera angles, but I'm probably really only going this series of photographs once anyway (which means I could do option 1 once and just glue it together when I'm done). I went ahead and cut out the door so I could play around with it and think about how  to make a set of working hinges, or just buy some hinges. I'm sure there are some out there. Again the downside to this the limited viewing angle, but I would always be able to take photos this way.

All of that means I'm thinking about some extra interior detail. This how snowball gets started.

Cutting out the small arches, the sheet of large arches and the strips are up towards the top of the picture.

Bunch of arches cut out, a few extras for mistakes.

Gluing arches in place on the short walls. Basically followed the same process on the long wall.

Working through the arches. I used the walls themselves for the initial template then used a ruler and compass to lay everything else out. I found this oddly satisfying work.

The group shot. Lots of pieces that have been scattered across my work surface all brought together for a group shot. Well most of them, some of the smaller stuff is in a plastic storage box.

World War II Project - 28mm Village Church - Sarissa Precision - The Steeple Part 5

I was going to set the steeple aside till I was ready to add some extra roof detail that I haven't quite figured out yet. However, I was looking it over and felt like the stonework needed a bit of texture. I found some Liquitex mat gel in the cupboard and thought I would give that a try. 

It looks okay, however, it didn't really fill in the edges the way I wanted. I let it dry and went back in with Vallejo plastic putty, again something that I had near to hand, I applied that right along the edge and got a much better fill than the gel did. I think maybe some spackle would achieve the same effect.

Here is the top of the steeple, minus the roof

Here is the bottom, I like the soft texture that the gel added I just need a sharper edge.

Here we are after the putty has been added. Fills in the the edge gap and adds a bit more texture. I had to go back and add some separation lines between the stones.

World War II Project - 28mm Village Church - Sarissa Precision - The Steeple Part 4

The steeple continues to move along. From a detail standpoint I wanted to try and keep everything relatively simple, made easier since these windows don't need any glass. I simple traced the frames for the exterior on to cardboard that was about the same thickness and glued those to the interior side of the windows. Its pretty dark so no real detail is needed beyond some suggestion. I did manage to reverse one side and managed to glue an exterior detail to the inside...oops.

I also painted all of this stone work with the "neutral" stynylrez primer. Again it took a couple of coats to get good coverage the cardboard really soaks it up. I think it sets off from the darker stonework without being to jarring. Then I finally glued the lower part of the tower together. I think its looking pretty good at this point. I also finished off shingling the steeple roof.

I need to work out the rest of the details on the roof at this point.

Gluing on the extra window details on both the exterior and interior sides.

Gluing on the last of the shingles. Had to get creative with the weights since I couldn't get a clamp in this spot.

A quick look at the tower all glued together before the quoins (my new word!) have been glued in place.

Just getting a feel for how things are looking at this point. It feels like the steeple is getting taller!

A few red devils sneaking in for scale. This is a big building.

Gluing on the quoins.

At this point I still contemplating trying to avoid cutting anything till after I had them glued to the top of the steeple.

After struggling with this, I opted to cut them off to make everything easier to work with

The interior of the quoins glued in place.

The mostly finished steeple. I'm contemplating adding some texture to the quoins at this point.

Adding the top, for another look

And another dry fit. just to see how it looks. Looking good, although the height of the steeple is really starting to bother me,