Review-Anyscale Models

This post I will be looking at some of the kits and pieces produced by Anyscale Models. I first met Stuart, the CEO, workforce and tea boy at Anyscale Model, at Albanich Wargames Show 2015, in Dumfries here in bonny Scotchland where he co-erced me into buying one of his kits and a terrain piece as well as promising me that I could buy chunky, military looking wheels from him. Since then I have bought quite a few pieces from him and have never been disappointed.

Anyscale Models produce vehicles and terrain for wargaming in 15mm, 20mm and 28mm scale as well as 00 scale railway terrain in resin. Pretty much all of it is aimed at gaming in the 20th and 21st century and covers a lot of stuff you never considered for a wargames table for instance wheelie bins, washing machines and tumble driers and modern tents as well as ammo boxes, fuel cans and jerry cans, ammo boxes and crates as well as field kitchens, repair facilities and, zeltbahn tents for WW2 German forces. He also produces excellent barricades, entrenchments, pontoon bridges as well as shell craters.

Vehicles are also an interesting and unusual mix including a WW2 Japanese APC, the German amphibious Landwasserschlepper, a varied selection of Opel Blitzes with different bodies including an ambulance and fuel vehicle. For the WW2 British there's the Dorchester command truck, CMP trucks and Quad truck for towing artillery etc.

The beauty of Anyscale Models is their price with 1/56 vehicles currently costing between £6.95 and £10.95  which is brilliant. Now these aren't Rubicon detailed kits or even comparable with some of the other resin vehicles out there but what they lack in small detail they make up for in robustness. As Stuart told me, his intention is to produce vehicles and terrain the can stand up to being picked up for inspection by "the club Shrek" His other intention is to produce kits that require the minimum of construction and can be ready for the table as soon as possible whch I think he has achieved in quids; the maximum pieces I have had to put together with one of his kits is five, and that was attaching four wheels to a vehicle!!

Below are a selection of photos showing the majority of the Anyscale kits and terrain pieces I have. Hope you like them and are tempted to invest in some of Stuart's stuff, you won't be disappointed

Not Anyscale models but  I did get the wheels from Stuart to make these Dinky armoured cars look a bit more wargaming pieces and bit less like toys. I still don't know if they are 1/56 scale but they look like they are in the parish.

The German vehicles I have bought so far from Anyscale Left to Right; wrecked Opel Blitz, Opel Blitz with 20mm Flakveirling (I added Warlord's Fallschirmjager flakvierling as it was sitting doing nothing in my display cabinet), Opel Blitz and Opel Maultier. Figures are for scale purposes

Anyscale Models flakvierling; not scared of any club Shrek. Very robust and
destined to be added to a terrain piece as a bit of battlefield wreckage.

Some of the British and Commonwealth CMP Trucks. The one on the left looks taller than the one in
 the centre as it has had a base added to it. The third is the lovely detailed wrecked CMP

rear photos of the short wheel based CMP truck and wrecked CMP truck; 

Anyscale Models LVT(A)1 with added crew, MMGs and sandbags.
I'll need to revisit this and add gun shields. 

Citroen Traction with new owners

Humber Heavy Utility car and short wheel base CMP truck destined for my
DAK force. Looking forward to painting these

Terrain and stowage. Anyscale produce much more stowage. I haven't photographed
 it as it's stuck onto various vehicles and tanks

Objective markers anyone? Covered ammo crates

Jump off markers for Chain of Command and/or objective markers for Bolt Action etc

craters

two minefield marker sets. Really nice with a selection of anti tank
and anti personnel mines including the dread German schu min

Walls and gates, obvioulsy

I built these for a specific scenario and as they needed to be about 8 foot high in scale I added a
concrete base made from Milliput. Looks quite effective I think

A OO scale railway piece that I bought to go with the garage I put together for my WW2 games

rubble piles

corner rubble pile in situ

I bought Warbases workshop and made it into a local garage by
adding Anyscale models vehicle repair depot set and vehicles spares set

Command post set; very nicely detailed set

Brillaint; road side temporary graves, really clever idea. I aim to get another set
 and add Allied and German helmets to the top of the crosses

Earthwork for vehicles

So there you have it, a small selection of Anyscale Models vehicles and terrain available in 28mm. In case you hadn't gathered I love Anyscale Models stuff for it's detail, ease of build and painting and, of course, the prices which is recommendation enough without my ramblings.

That is all for the moment, pip pip,

General Jim Bob 

Sharp Practice At Britcon 2018 French Sappers part le deu

An update on the road to Manchester and Britcon 2018. Ihave been busy, beavering away at my usual mixed bag of projects alongside all the RLS that comes our way leaving me little time for blogging.

However, here's a quicky; Tadah!!my French Sappers are finished!

forming a firing line, though they would be happier
 chopping wood and sawing trunks

The terribly butch Sgt  Alphonse Le Brock who also has terrible dress sense

Showing their good side

Next up for my French force is some repair work on this limber that I threw together for Black Powder and has seen some fearful hard times snce

More anon, in the meantime pip pip from the Strathbungo Gentlemans Club for Curmudgeonly Old Codgers,

General Ramblings  

Sharp Practice at Britcon 2018. French Sappers

Wee update (or should that be un update petit?) 

Got some work done on the French Sappers over that last couple of evenings.

The Sappers plus Sgt Alphonse Le Brock
(in the stripey breeches)

I've taken a few, a very few liberties with their uniform and equipment. As these figures represent sappers who have been on campaign for a few years in the Peninsula, they have, over that time, lost or worn out their aprons, lost or worn out their tools and have had to adapt normal issue crossbelts to carry what axes they do possess.
Not my best efforts but I'm happy with them

Sgt Alphonse Le Brock, sapper sergeant
and swinger of a big axe

I hope to have them finished by the weekend as there's only there's not much more to do, just all the wee go bits.
Pip pip
General Jim Bob

Sharp Practice Britcon 2018

"Most Cleverly Fought" Campaign Event

I recently posted some reminiscences about a French Indian War event I took part in last year. This was arranged and organised by a very nice chap I know  Mr David Hunter, who used to be a regular fixture on the Downorder podcast, chatting' discussing and sometimes ranting about all things Bolt Action. 

More recently Dave has been focussing on Sharp Practice and it appears that Dave has caught the event bug  and now runs regular Sharp Practice events (or as he likes to call them extravaganzas) across England. These extravaganzas campaigns are predominantly set in Peninsular War Spain (a theatre I have yet to game in) and are very popular  with the more discerning gamer. 

Dave has organised an event for Britcon 2018 in Manchester on the weekend of the 9th-11th August and in complete contradiction to my statement about discerning gamers, I ain't no discerning gamer but I do like Sharp Practice, I do like a campiagn and I do have that weekend off so I have signed up for Dave's event at Britcon this being entitled "The Most Cleverly Fought" campaign.  The campaign will consist of three games on Saturday and two Sunday with a variety of scenarios annd opponents.

As Dave pretty much organises these things off his own back he does rely on participants to help out with terrain so to that end I, along with a few others, have offered to put together a tables worth of terrain.  

To start with I have some vaguely Mediterranean buildings that I intend to use. These buildings are from Warbases modular buildings range that I picked up a couple of years back and I got them as they are pretty cheap, give you the chance to make something unique and they're fairly easy to put together.

However, whilst I thought they were fine a few years ago I am less happy with them now so my plan is to upgrade them and improve them; we can't have shabby buildings at the extravaganza, so these two are getting a make over...though not in 60 minutes ...

And this one is going to be the fairest of them all.

Dave has also supplied a  campaign event pack with all the info, naturally, including the force lists for various belligerents. As there were no Russians or Austrians in the  Peninsular War i have chosen to play the French.

Amongst the choices in the list was an option that I hadn't encountered before; Pionniers Volontaires Etrangers or sappers. A wee bit of digging about in the General JimBob Military Memorial Library uncovered this picture of a nice, pristine sapper in all his glory. The only 28mm sapper figures I have  found online were a set by Warlord which has them, similar to this chap, all in their aprons, marching as if on parade and one by Front Rank which is the same pose (though it's a much nicer sculpt IMHO :D ). I wanted mine to look like they had seen some hard campaigning so I decided to kitbash them

Beardies galore!! Sappers WIP, using Victrix French Line Infantry I attached the grenadier heads then scraped away the detail on the front of their bearskins, green stuff-ed some fur where the plates had been and gave them all beards

arms and weapons added. The axes are
spares from Fireforge's foot sergeant set

Sapper sergeant

The rest of my French force is already built and painted so I only need to put these chaps together to finish it off.....well, these chaps and some 8" of breastworks and 12" of barricades, a wee extra you get when you select these fellows for your force.

I'll update on these separately over the next few weeks so prepare yourselves for exciting times ahead!

pip pip

General Jim bob

More recent stuff

Alongside the German armour splurge last week I also managed to get my Afrika Korps zug started. It's just a small start to work out the uniform colours for the infantry; the vehicles are much simpler to paint. I've gone for a base of Vallejo English Uniform mixed with some black then English Uniform as the mid colour them English Uniform with Iraqi Sand as the highlight. And it looks good, I think. I've put together two other squads and they'll get painted by and by as there's no hell fire rush for them

I have two Panzer IVs, the one on the left, the IV F1 with the light howitzer, is from Blitzkrieg and the other is from Warlord, being one of their resin kits. Similar to the Afrika Korps chaps these will get done at a later date.

Panzer IV F1 and Panzer IV F2 primed and ready to go

I also added s few more riflemen to my US Infantry platoon, as my force is somewhat lacking in that department. I also painted up another commander for my Yanks too as I wanted one that was slightly more individual. Basically I used a couple of arms from the US Marines sprue as I like the left arm with the wrist watch sculpted on it. I know, little things please little minds.

Also on the go is this M10 Tank Destroyer from Rubicon. To be honest i'm not a big fan of Rubicon kits (I have a few of teir kkts) They feel rather flimsy and I dislike the fact that their early kits have no crew which isn't a huge problem with their tanks but for vehicles with open turrets it's a pain. On saying that i have got around that problem by making my own crew from, in this case, from Warlord's US infantry sprue. I just scraped off their webbing harnesses, posed them, painted them and popped then in. Happy days.
As you can see I have also been busy with the green stuff and spare stowage

Lastly, I took delivery of a cobblestone gaming mat from Deep Cut Mats. I got a 4'4' one as that's as big  board as I can squeeze in our flat, 

Naturally I had to photograph it and so I put some terrain and figures on it  to enhance it as it looks rather dull otherwise.

Just the job for In Her Majesties Name as well as other skirmish type games 

That's it for the moment,

pip pip