Britannia FV4201 Chieftain Tank

This weeks update is solely about 1 model - my only Britannia Chieftain Tank. I have 4 more Chieftains - 2 Airfix ones, built and painted by somone else long ago, bought recently by me off Leigh. I also have 2 from the Tank Collection Magazine - but I have to say that the one I am most proud of is this Britannia model.

BTW - Britannia has been recently reopened by Andy Grubb. You can find the new Britannia website here I'm not sure how much Cold War kit is actually available yet - but this will be the best place to get your Britannia needs from.

For more on the Chieftain Tank you might want to look here for a start.

Review

I think the Chieftain is the nicest Britannia model I have dealt with so far. I don't believe there were any particularly big air bubbles in the resin, and I used greenstuff to fix up any small ones I did find. My only issue was that the commander's MG was a bit deformed so I simply left it off the finished model.

Putting it up against the Airfix Chieftains - it is exactly the same size - and against the Tank Collection Chieftains it is a little smaller - which at a guess means it is a 1/76th scale model rather than 1/72 - but that's just my guess.

It comes with a very nice metal barrel and commander figures. It has the commander's hatch molded open and the driver's hatch molded closed.

All-in-all I really rate this model and would be happy to suggest it to anyone.

Painting

I painted this the exact same way as the FV432s in the previous post. Only difference was I used Vallejo Khaki and a Citadel Devlan Mud was on the sections of the barrel covered in the shroud.

So here is the finished product:







As you can see - pretty straight forward stuff.

A few cool youtube clips







Finally a reminder - if you want to see an excellent TV doco on tanks with loads of fantastic shots of BAOR Chieftains in action look no further than here an old post of mine showing "Soldiers - A History of Men in Battle - Tanks". Well worth watching.

Have fun

Richard

BAOR Britannia FV432 APC

Back to normal now...

So in the lead up to last weeks game, I came close to completing a bunch of BAOR vehicles. These have now been finished and first up I'd like to go with the Britannia FV432 Armoured Personnel Carriers.

Here's some info from wikipedia on the FV432

Review

The Britannia FV432 is a very nice little model. It is a solid resin kit, with some metal peices, like a command figure, and hatch covers. You can make it, with the commander's hatch open or closed - which is something I like. You can get a couple of variants - the base APC and a FV432 with an open rear hatch. This can come with either 2 infantry men who are "standing" in the open hatch, a 81mm mortar and 2 crew, or a wombat recoilless rifle and 2 crew. All these figures are half figures and are very nicely styled and molded.

On the negative side, it does come with some air holes - which I didn't pay to much attention to on these vehicles - which I now regret - but these can be easily fixed. The other negative I have is that the driver's hatch is molded open with the driver's neck and head sticking out. I know I bang on about this all the time.... yawn.... but I would much prefer this to be optional. It's just me... Having said that - the driver is a nice little representation anyway.

Painting

These have been painted in what has become my British Army standard:

1. Undercoat - Citadel Chaos Black Spray
2. Base Coat - FoW War paint - British Armour
3. Squiggly Black Lines - Citadel Chaos Black
4. Black Wash - Citadel Babab Black - pretty liberally splashed on...
5. Drybrush - Vallejo Russian Uniform (Just the Green areas)
6. Drybrush - Vallejo Russian Uniform & Vallejo Khaki - adding more and more Khaki - eventually going over the black areas as well.
7. Paint the tracks the standard way I do...
8. Drybrush Vallejo Flat Earth or something similar over the tracks and lower parts of the AFV to represent dirt.
9. Paint lights etc.

All done

No decals at this point as I don't really own any good enough to suit. Eventually I'll try and get some from B W Models

Lastly - I had a not particularly cunning plan... I decided to make little bases - I'll call them sabots (coz it sounds cooler) to fit into the open topped FV432 so I could make them multi-use. I think they cam out quite well.

Onto the pictures:


Front view - all the painted FV432s


Rear view


Side shot of a bog standard FV432


Top view of another FV432


Front angled shot of yet another FV432

Now onto the open topped one


This are the sabot bases


Front view with infantry


Side view with infantry


Rear view with mortar


Rear view with the other mortar (I actually made this mortar and was pretty chuffed with how it came out)


Side view with mortar


Side view with other mortar


Side view with wombat


Slightly different side view with wombat.

Obviously all this finally umpteen pics are of exactly the same open topped FV432. I have 2 other unpainted open topped FV432 to do and another standard APC variant to paint.

Now a couple of youtube clips to keep you entertained


The obligatory car crushing clip


More like my colour scheme


Demo


A detailed look

That's all for now - have fun

Richard

A Small Airfield in Germany - Part 2 - AAR

OK - On with the game

BAOR recce units move further onto the table, closing on the dug in VDV.

Landie Gunships prepare to engage:


Scimitars bounding forwards:


All the while further BAOR reinforcements arrived from the NATO table edge.

The FO team (in the Spartan) and Milan Sections (in LWB Landies) move up:


While the CO (Sultan) and Mechanised Infantry Platoon (FV432) drive on:


and on...


The last of the BAOR reserves, the Chieftain troop arrive:


Throughout the majority of this time the VDV silently waited until they were able to spring their ambush:

taking out a Scimitar section.

Under cover of the hangers, the BAOR units move forward:


The chieftains following:


Of course as the game intensified I kept forgetting to take photos!

The first VDV reinforcements arrive (a BMD-2 platoon)


Well time as on the Soviet right flank the BAOR mechanised platoon launched a somewhat ill-fated assault. You can see some burning Scimitars in the background:


Things appear to be going badly for NATO as the assault never really gets started and more Scimitars burn:


However, the Chieftains arrive:

and begin to shift the balance.





By now however, the VDV have taken out both Scimitar sections, the Recce Landie platoon and the Milan Platoon, leaving the BAOR with only two units on the board. The NATO player must keep making Company Morale Checks at the beginning of each of his turns - which he keeps doing!

The final VDV assets arrive - the ASU-85 platoon.


The VDV BRDMs and ASU-85s start to move up the airfield behind the hangars:


The BAOR player isn't too bothered as the BRDMs have no chance of scratching the paintwork of the Chieftains, while the ASU-85s must take flank shots.

The BRDMs rush out from behind the last hangar into the cover of a hedge:


and take out the Company Commander's Sultan, killing him and ending the game.




So - for once the Soviets pull out a win. Although the NATO force suffered a large amount of casualties, once the Chieftains came into play the balance began to shift back towards the BAOR as nothing the Soviets had could damage the frontal armour of the MBTs - (I'll have to revisit those stats).

The NATO player could have just waited until his Chieftains arrived and then advanced, but one of the sceanrio rules stated that he had to have at least one team over the 1/2 way mark of the table by the beginning of the Soviet turn six. This drove him forward and made the game that much more interesting.

All-in-all a great game - lots of fun and as we didn't try and fit everything we had onto the table, it was manageable, had a good outcome and was relatively balanced.

So - have fun

Richard

A Small Airfield in Germany - Part 1 - AAR

Not by John le Carre....!

Well we managed to totally complete a game for once yesterday, and it was quite a close game.

Scenario

The scenario was something like this. Some time during a cold war turned hot in the 1980s, Soviet Paratroopers have taken "A Small Airfield in Germany" (hence the name) and are attempting to consolidate their "airhead". NATO, in this case, AFVs and troops from the British Army on the Rhine are attempting to crush the airhead.

Each side has reserves and some artillery off-board.

Deployment
On one edge of the airfield a mechanised VDV platoon have debussed from their BMD-1Ps and have dug-in, awaiting the expected NATO counter-attack. They are supported by two BRDM-2s, and two ATGM teams (who are hiding in ambush).

The Soviet end of the table looks like this:



NATO is appraoching from this end of the table:



A few close ups starting from the PACT end of the table:







NATO photo reconnaissance spots the deployment of most of the VDV:







BAOR recon troops enter the arena:





Part 2 - The Game begins...

Have fun

Richard

W-I-P BAOR Part II

First up - thanks for all the nice comments to the last post. Rather than answer any questions there I thought I'd simply update the WIP with the work I completed today and answer any questions raised in this post.

So - to get into it - here is the next WIP photo



Not the greatest photo for comparison purposes - but basically all the vehicles have been drybrushed as far as I think the should be, and have a few extras like tracks, some rolls etc painted. This will probably be as good as they will get before the game on Monday as I'll be going down to Canberra for the next couple of days.

I'm liking them all a bit more now, and feel that once they have had the crew painted, all the bits and pieces done etc - they'll look fine.

Once they are totally complete, I will do one of my standard painting tutorials to show exactly what I used - but to answer the questions:

Basecoat Green - is FoW Warpaint British Armour.

The Warriors in the previous photo were from Revell - OOP now as I undersatnd it.

Mark correctly identified crewing options. Liberation Miniatures also does British AFV crews.

That's about all for now

Have fun

Richard

W-I-P BAOR AFVs

I was hoping to have something completed for this update, as I was working on 3 very old Matchbox RAF Chinooks, and whilst they have reached a certain point, it was nothing worth photographing.

And then, as a long weekend is about to hit, I organised a little game and decided to use that as motivation to knock out some British Army on the Rhine AFVs - most of which I've had for a while, but for some reason they keep going to the back of the pile.

So just the one work-in-progress photo today:



As you can see there a 4 x Britannia FV432s (carrying 1 Mechanised Infantry Platoon in the game) a Britannia Chieftain (which will be added to a couple of very well painted Airfix ones I bought off Leigh - who bought them off someone else...to make a Tank Platoon) a couple of Airfix Scimitars - and in the back ground you should be able to make out two others - again beautifully painted - not by me - and bought from Leigh. These will make either 1 four AFV close recce platoon, or I'll split them into two elements of 2 vehicles each - not sure yet.

There is also a Cromwell? Spartan and a Cromwell Sultan. The Sultan - for whatever reason I'm not exactly sure - is one of my all time favourites. I just like its lines for some reason... The Sultan will be my HQ Command Vehicle, and the Saxon will be carrying an Air Defence Team.

In the background you can probably see a few Warriors - more on that at some point in the future.

I'm not 100% happy with how these look right now. I'm hoping I'll grow to like them more, the closer they get to completely finished - but there may be a bit of repainting in my future. With a bit more work though, they will suffice for the game on Monday.

After the game I'll try adding a few more cam nets etc to really make them pop.

Hopefully I'll be able to take a couple more WIP photos, then some completed photos and give you an AAR next week.

Thanks and have fun...

Richard