2/21 London (H) Battery, Royal Field Artillery (TF) Palestine 1917.

 The 4.5 inch Howitzer, ammunition cart, crew and team from Empress Miniatures with Woodbine Designs headswaps. Now that Empress have released the 18pdr, two batteries of these will follow. I also intend to use the 18pdr and team to respresent the Berkshire Battery RHA as the RHA batteries exchanged their 13pdrs for 18pdrs before crossing the Sinai desert.

Empress Miniatures WW1 British 4.5 inch Howitzer

Behold...the Empress Miniatures WW1 British 4.5 inch Howitzer, ammunition wagon and gun crew. The limber and team will follow in due course. The gun and ammunition wagon are from the hands of ace model maker John Hart and the crew from the skilled putty pusher that is Paul Hicks. There are a couple of really lovely touches in this set. Paul Hicks has sculpted each of the gunners wearing a lanyard on the left shoulder and John Hart's eye for detail has included a cracking dial sight for the gun. Other variations will follow including an early WW2 version of this gun and ammunition cart with rubber tyred wheels and crews for the same time period and some gunners in Wolseley foreign service helmets. Top work, chaps!

Mules and other things.

The Brigade Games WW1 British 2.75 inch Mountain Gun in transit.

These chaps are the WW1 Turkish cavalry produced by Forgotton Front Miniatures (found on the Miniature Figurines website). They are meant to be Lancers wearing arabic head dress, but here the right arms have been bent in and/or down and they will represent Ottoman "Dragoons". These are a bit of a "speed paint"as time is short and I need to wrap up the Mesopotamian painting so I can complete some early war German Infantry before the summer ends.

The horses for these chaps are being painted elsewhere.

WW1 Field Artillery Observation Position, Middle East.

Some more "table dressing". The Limber Pole Observation Ladder from a previous post, a battery officer and an officer up from Brigade conversing with the observer, a field telephone powered by a Royal Engineers Sapper on a bicycle generator and some frantic semaphore from a signaler.

All these figures have Woodbine Design heads. Figures from Woodbine Design, Great War Miniatures, Footsore Miniatures and Dixon Miniatures.

WW1 Artillery Observation Limber Pole Ladder.

"'Ey, Frank!" shouted Battery Sgt. Humphries, "I can see our Mam's 'ouse from up 'ere!"

And here is a real one!

Royal Field Artillery Limber and Team.

The Great War Miniatures Limber, team and 18pdr field gun with Woodnine Designs heads ready for service somewhere hot and dusty.

Playing with Pigment Powder and an Ambulance

Recent research leads me to conclude that WW1 British Artillery equipments in Mesopotamia, Egypt and Palestine were painted in the standard khaki-green rather than in a desert scheme. So, when I was asked to take on a rather large project of four 18pdr guns, ammunition wagons and horse teams from that theatre, the challenge was on. How to make a gun look as if it had been dragged through dry desert sand and dust..... on dark green paint? Drybrushing sprang to mind but I might have done that on a desert paint scheme but it simply wouldn't work on khaki-green. So I bought some pigment powders (more than I really need but one day they will come in handy) and pigment fixer and I began to play.....

... it was a steep learning curve. The next one will be better!

Last weekend saw the local Wargames club here put on their annual show. It has been a few years since I last attended, but I needed a few bits and pieces for the painting table and popped in. Not much for me there, I'm afraid, but Warbases were in attendance and I stocked up on some MDF bases and purchased one of their new 28mm MDF WW1 vehicle kits just for fun. The lady who served me said that there was a PDF file of instructions on their website. I couldn't find it so it became a problem solving exercise. It was a fun way to spend a Sunday afternoon. I slapped some paint on it very, very quickly (in less than an hour, in fact, and lots of details NOT painted) just to get an idea of what it would be like with some colour. So here is the MDF Model "T" Ambulance.

Obviously a MDF kit can not provide the same level of detail and realism that a resin or plastic kit can reproduce but these models (Dennis and Albion trucks, a Crossley Tender and the Ambulance) don’t look half bad and would add some interesting detail to dress the gaming table at quite a reasonable price.  The Dennis truck is quite a monster! Less successful is the MDF kit for a Mark I tank. You need rivets on a tank and MDF does not give you that! Go and have a look.