British WW2 Micronauts

I've always loved ships.  Probably stems from trips to HMS Belfast and HMS Victory when I were a lad.  At the beginning of the year I bought some GHQ Micronaughts from Wargames Emporium and prompt painted the York class heavy cruiser HMS Exeter and three tribal class destroyers, which I have named HMS Cossack, HMS Ashunti and HMS Zulu.  Today I finished off the basing of two of these models.  Hope you enjoy!

11th Armoured Division (6mm / 1:300), Part 2, British base labels

So after my last post, and after a lot of thought, I have finialised my british basing labels for tanks, armoured cars and artillery. I will be working on infantry later. The tanks and armoured cars are similar, and broadly based on history. The artillery caused me many more problems working out a simple system that worked. In all cases the division and unit serial are as per real life. The conventions are as follows:

Tank Battalions (Recce & Armoured)

The troop is distinguished by the troop shape. Diamond is HQ, triangle is first squadron, square is the second troop and circle is the third. the line outline is the battalion colour, in this case white. The inner colour

is to allow me to determine the members of each troop within the squadron. I had tried numbers, but these where so small so as to become illegiable. My standard is the HQ is white, first is red, second is yellow, third is blue and fourth is pale green. Below is an example of the senior armoured brigade.

The Stuart Light tanks are battalion assesst rather than belonging to a troop, therefore these have a diamond (HQ) symbol. I have split these into three troops for game purposes.

Armoured Car Battalion:

THe Armoured car battalion follows the same rules as the tanks. Due to the fifth troop in these formations, I have added the orange to be this troops colour.

Artillery Batteries:

The three types of batteries I have currently created lables for are; the Field Artillery, The armoured horse artillery and the self propelled anti-tank guns. Each battery is labelled as per the battery letter (A, B, C or D). The batteries are then divided into gun troops and sub-divided into sections.

The anti tank guns are slipt into three troops. The first troop is red troop, secton is yellow troop and final is blue troop. Each of these is split into two sections, green and blue.

Hope you like them.  Thats all for now.

11th Armoured Division (6mm / 1:300), Part 1

There a two truths that is being encountered by an increasingly large numbers of UK wargamers.  Firstly is that the average gamer can't afford a house big enough to have a full size gaming table.  My dining room table is only 3' (90cm) x 4'(120cm).  Secondly, tables are just too crowded with models for your budding your toy solider general to out manuver his foes.

With this in mind, I have decided to increasingly focus on smaller scales.  The guiniepigs are my old favourite, the WW2 British 11th Armoured division.  The models below are two GHQ models, a Cromwell and Challenger tank.  The level of detail on these models is phenomenal, they are as detailed as the 15mm tanks from Plastic Solider Company or BattleFront.

I've painted these with valejo Russian uniform then brushed on gloss varnish and washed in agrax earthshade from GW.  The varnish stops the wash staining the flat surfaces and helps when adding decals.  I then added decals fron GHQ using Micro SOL and SET.  Tracks were then painted black, but I my add a brown to these before basing.  I may, if I' feeling brave also try picking out the tools.  Before basing these will get a dull cote spray.

In the picture above, I've put the models on two test bases (small FOW size 1" x 1 1/2") a patchy grass one, and a bowling green one.  I prefer the patchy one, though I think it needs more grass.  Each stand will be labelled, because in 6mm, it can be hard to tell the difference between a rifle stand or an MG stand.  I haven't finished designing the labels, once I do, they will be printed on photo paper, spray varnished (lightly) with gloss and carefully stuck to an mdf base from Warbases.  I will do a seperate post on my choice of base sizing, when I have a selection of forces based up.

I have a more British GHQ models (Achilies, armoured cars, Stuart Vs and more Cromwells) on order From Wargames Emporium and German Vehicles (Panzer IV, Panthers, Tiger I, armoured cars, marders) and Russian vehicles (T34/76, T34/85, IS2, BA64, SU122, SU76) and a british 25pdr battery of 4 guns.

I have to say I'm enjoying the speed of this project, as it makes a refreshing change to my usual slow paint speed.