"Herbie": The Canadian Wargamer Podcast Mascot Figure

On his blog recently, Dai, a good friend of this blog and a good mate, was lamenting the tedium of batch painting.   Having almost finished 42(!) 6mm Napoleonic cavalry, I can well relate.  Sometimes it’s a welcome break to focus on one figure and lavish it with attention and with all one’s meagre talent (speaking purely for myself).  Hence, I present “Herbie”, a WW2 Canadian infantryman, named for the wartime cartoon drawn by Bing Coughlin and published in the Canadian Army newspaper The Maple Leaf.  I don’t think there was ever a widely adopted nickname for the Canuck soldier in that war, comparable to “Tommy” or “GI Joe”, but “Herbie”, Coughlin’s bewildered and misfit hero, seems to fit.

 

This figure is perhaps too martial and competent looking to be a “Herbie”, but I think that’s the name that stuck when my mate James got Canadian sculptor Bob Murch to design him as a registration gift for the 25th anniversary of the SW Ontario miniature gaming event, Hot Lead.  Here he is enjoying a brew (tea, hot, sweet, with a dollop of evaporated milk), his foot propped on a German helmet, in the ruins of some unfortunate city.  He wears the light blue shoulder patch of 3 Division and the “turtle” helmet issued before the Normandy campaign.

 Herbie will not be a gaming piece, but he’ll grace a bookshelf and perhaps be the image of the Canadian Wargamer Podcast, which James and I are dreaming up and which may see it’s inaugural episode recorded tonight.   Stay tuned for more.

 

Cheers and blessings to your brushes,

MP+

 

Lovely Lysander

Good day!  Since this is my first post of 2021, I wish you a happy new year - may it be happier for all of us.  Over the Christmas holidays I started the traditional plastic model kit build - a 1/48 scale Lysander for my Weird War 2/ Pulp project.  I had opened the box back in the summer of 2020 and the myriad of small parts therein seemed more complicated than the time I had on hand would allow for.

The kit is by an eastern European company, Eduard, which I gather is a gold standard for WW2 games, though I found the instructions somewhat less helpful than I would have liked.

This time I kept my nerve and forged on, going as slowly as was necessary, as it required some nerve doing things like gluing the brass-etched parts like the foot pedals onto the cockpit assembly - totally unnecessary for gaming, but if you’re going to do a thing, do it well as my dad said when he vainly tried to teach me how to make the balsa wood airplanes he had made as a kid.

Brass-etched seatbelts, cockpit instrument panel, and pilot’s compass.

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Wireless set.

The interior fuselage assembly complete.  I had a discouraging moment when I broke off the wing roots at the top of the frame with some  misapplied press from my clumsy fingers and had to re-glue them.

The Lysander has a huge canopy and the Eduard kit came with precut masking tape, which I had to carefully apply with my wife’s best tweezers.  That was fun.

The masking tape certainly helped the final product.

And finished!  Because of the gaming it might support, I chose the all-black paint scheme used by RAF 141 Squadron, which supported SOE operations in Occupied Europe.

 Those huge struts supporting the wings give the kit a lot of stability.   There is also an underslung fuel tank for greater range, and a ladder to help passengers enter and exit the aircraft.

 

Somewhere in occupied France.  Yvette of Cafe Renee and Michelle of the Resistance keep watch as the RAF delivers something vital to the war effort.   

Thanks for reading.  Again, may 2021 bring happier lives and gaming to all of us.   Stay safe, and blessings to you brushes.

MP+

Canadian Troops for The Rockies Ablaze Project 2 - Specialists

Good evening friends.   Finishing up my last post on the Gorgon Studios minis which will make up my interwar/ear war Canadian platoon for an ongoing pulp projects.  Again, I have lots of praise for the Gorgon sculpts, los of detail and character, and the variety of specialist figures allows for a well rounded platoon with supports to be fielded.

Here a Bren gunner and his assistant get to wok in the snow.  The rifle of the assistant is separately cast, which is a nice touch.

 

Bren gunner and No. 2 moving, both in leather jerkins, which adds some variety to the rest of the sculpts in greatcoats.

 

Snipers/sharpshooters.

Sniper and spotter set up behind a snowy log.  Let’s hope they have silver bullets for that SMLE!

Forward observer with field telephone and map.

“Hello, I’d like to order a pizza delivered to the following grid reference."

Signaller team.  The fellow on the right carrying the No. 38 manpack wireless set doesn’t seem very happy.

Perhaps they’re calling HMCA Timber Wolf for pickup, or to send down some hot rum.

Major John Maynard holds his briar pipe and ponders while Platoon Warrant O’Malley chivies the lads forward.

Major Maynad consults with the local Mounties while his native guide looks on.

Thanks for looking.   Now that I have a significant number of minis finished for this project, I think I need to start gaming with them!

Blessings to your brushes!

MP

Some Pulp Heroes Willing to Dare (and Bare) All

Here are five 28mm figures painted for my ongoing Weird War Two project.  I posted them a few weeks ago on the Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge site, and am only just posting them here.  The first four L to R are from Pulp Figures, sculpted by Canada’s two-fisted Bob Murch.  The one on the right is by Reaper.

Major Paul “Puncher” McPhail, Chief of Staff of Project Alice, a top-secret British counter-intelligence and dark ops organization tasked with monitoring and thwarting Nazi investigations into the occult

Murch absolutely nailed British mess kit. This is almost exactly what hangs in my closet, and which strangely gets tighter every year.   This was the first bald figure I’ve ever painted.

The Major’s niece, Fiona Harmer, sometime of St. Hilda’s College, Oxford, an ace researcher and crack shot.

I tried to add some colour and texture to the hair to offset the drab clothing.

Sandy McGonigle was Major McPhail’s batman, and now his gamekeeper and bodyguard.   Don’t send me emails about the tartan, I just made it up.   I spent way too much time working on this figure, but enjoyed every minute of it.

 

Mimi LaRocque of the Resistance, a ginger with an attitude.   I love her outfit, which seems almost military, but I decided on a civilian colour scheme, to suggest a student, perhaps.  Who can resist a girl with a gun in a hat and tie?

 

 

Reaper’s Naughty French Maid.  Code name Bijou, she will do inside work collecting intelligence from senior German leaders, especially those with a fondness for the flying helmet, the limp piece of celery, and the feather duster.  The sculpt is by Wener Klocke, and I certainly did not do it justice, though I am happy with the hand painted tile floor.

 

I’m kinda hoping my Bishop doesn’t follow this blog …..

 

These figures bring my 2017 totals to:15mm: Vehicles: 3, Foot Figures: 4, Scenic Pieces: 720mm: Foot figures: 1828mm:  Foot Figures: 36;  Mounted Figures: 2

Blessings to your brushes!

These figures bring my 2017 totals to:

15mm: Vehicles: 3, Foot Figures: 4, Scenic Pieces: 7

20mm: Foot figures: 18

28mm:  Foot Figures: 36;  Mounted Figures: 2

Some Artizan Weird War Two Heroes and Heroines

My Weird War Two project has been slowly growing over the years, even if I’ve never actually played a game with any of these figures - yet.

Hopefully that will change soon.  Here are some heroes and heroines who will struggle to prevent unspeakable dark forces from being unleaded on the world by the occult and ancient evils which the Reich has awakened and made its faustian bargain with.

These figures are all 28mm Artizan sculpts, from their wonderful Thrilling Tales range.  From left to right, the Artizan product codes are PLP165 General Clearwell, PLP133 Sgt Milsom, PLP132 Inspector Dawlish, PLP146 ATS Driver Sally Haines and PLP055 Ivette.

When Mademoiselle is not waitressing at a well known Cafe frequented by high ranking Germans, she is part of a special Resistance network that assists Project Alice’s agents as they learn the scope of the Nazi’s occult projects.

Her undeniable charms have distracted more than a few would be suitors, until too late they see the business end of her Sten gun.

I am a huge fan of the TV show these three characters are clearly inspired by.  Any guesses which show it is?

Oh for goodness sake, it’s easy.

I’ve tried to capture Foyle’s wonderful camelhair overcoat and his blue fedora, and usually Millner wears a grey overcoat with a brown suit and hat.  The Milner/Milsom figure is curiously cast as if he has a slight limp, which fits the character seeing as Milner lost a leg while fighting in Norway before returning to the CID.   In the TV shows, after a while it’s as if he grows his leg back, because Milner gets quite spry in the later seasons.

The police, Detective Inspector Barnaby (couldn’t resist, lots of talk of late about Midsomer Murders) and his assistant, Sergeant Jones, will have top-secret clearance to work with Project Alice on occult incidents manifesting themselves in Britain.   The ATS driver (is there any actress lovelier than Honeysuckle Weeks?) captures the pluck of Sam Stewart’s character, and even has her red hair.  When she’s not driving the detectives around, she might act as the assistant, Katherine Putnam, for Brigadier Kenneth McAllister, commander of Project Alice and it’s military arm, S Commando - some of you with long memories may remember meeting her and the Brigadier here.

Putnam don’t take no crap from Nazi bad girls.  No other excise for this photo than to show how well Artizan figures mixl with Bob Murch’s Pulp Figures.

Don’t let his rotund appearance fool you.   As a young subaltern in the Midsomer Regiment, he won the MC for taking command of a decimated battalion as the sole surviving officer during the Retreat from Mons and led his men back to safety.   As a staff officer assigned to the Canadian Corps, he was involved in the incident (officially denied by the War Office) of the Werewolf of the Trenches, the backstory for the Rockies Ablaze, which is the backstory to my Weird War 2 project.  But I digress.    Because of his experience of the occult, McCallister was picked to head Project Alice, and his network of contacts, including DI Barnaby (a CSM in the Midsomer Regt during the Great War), has proved invaluable as he put his team together.

Painting this figure makes me want to watch the Life and Death of Colonel Blimp again.

OK, lots of fluff for just five figures.  Thanks for being patient if you got this far.

 

These figures bring my 2016 totals to:

28mm:  Foot Figures: 34; Mounted Figures: 3; Buildings: 1

6mm:  Mounted figures:  36;  Buildings:  2