Jonny & the Diggers (part 1)

 No, not some long forgotten 50's rock & roll act but the forces facing off on the Gallipoli peninsular in 1915. So, with the Sari Bair game looming large on the horizon for OML3 the time was right to re-visit my old Battle Honours WW1 Turks who'd been languishing in a box in the garage for 10 years! I decided that the forthcoming game was the motivation I needed to lavish some long overdue attention on the little fellas.

After a quick inspection I decided I'd got far more than I needed (surprise, surprise!) and I'd paint a half-platoon of five 9 man sections, a senior leader and a junior leader with two maxim MMG's - although not all would actually see service this time around. I'd also need to make 4 jump-off points and some shock trackers. There were quite a lot of duplicates among them  so I decided to use some of the excellent Woodbine Designs range of separate heads to mix things up a little.


1st section with a couple of head  swaps on the bottom left figures.

2nd section with a well-fed junior leader and  head swaps on the two behind him.

3rd section - again a couple of fez head swaps.

Section 4 - straight out of the mix

Section 5 - again just the fez swapped

Two Maxim MMG's with dice frames in the bases for tracking crew losses and shock.

Shock trackers (casualties by Woodbine)

Jump-off Points using baggage from Grand Manner's WW1/Colonial range.

Senior Leader and Junior leader for the machine guns

Next up are the Anzac jump-off points and shock trackers which are based and ready to paint later this week.





I Have Mostly Been Painting.....

Things have stepped up a gear as is customary now the warmer weather has finally arrived, the nights are getting lighter and OML3 draws ever closer.

With the upcoming 6th game in mine & Bob's fight through of Kampfgruppe von Luck requiring a church as it's main feature I had decided to source some much overdue gravestones and to revamp the church I owned.


A fairly cluttered table held 3 projects running concurrently (I get bored easily).

 The church I already had was the one from my old Landmark range (now owned and being heavily discounted to clear by Timecast). As fantastic a model as it is, I always thought that some of the buildings in the range had a touch too much green in them for a Normandy look, the church being the most obvious case. So I took the opportunity while painting the gravestones to give it a total repaint. I decided that I would mount the graves on some spare FoW small & medium bases so they could be removed for troop placement during play. Along with the church project, the embarrassment of not having enough walling to do the whole layout in the "Corridor of Death" scenario had prompted the completion of another 11 & 1/2 feet of new walling. This would take my total of free standing wall to a whopping 23 & 1/2 feet. If that wasn't enough now it never would be!


View from the front of the newly painted church with it's completed graveyard

I was really pleased with the outcome. I also decided to repaint the surrounding wall (also too "green") and grass around the base to match in with my other buildings.

I'm looking forward to getting this on the table for the Flank at Ranville scenario

As you'll also be able to make out in the top photo, more work has taken place on the Sari Bair Gallipoli game for this year's OML3 event. My order from Warbases had arrived!

Undercoated casualty figures to use as shock markers were mounted on 40mm discs and terrain added. Again the dice & frames to track shock were from Minibits.

 

I'd sourced some fantastic "clutter" items from Grand Manner's WW1/Colonial range to eventually mount on 30mm discs to create Jump Off Points. All of my senior and junior leaders were going to be mounted on 25mm a/f hex bases to ease recognition on the battlefield.

To bring the infantry into line with modern times, I'm rebasing them onto 25mm discs too. This would be my first widespread use of MDF bases for normal troops, having always previously made best use of coins of the realm....ahem. In the background you'll also notice the new patrol markers. Some internet clip art, laminated and mounted on 50mm discs are just the job.

Hopefully in the next few days I'll have an update showing completed versions of all the above. Mike Hobbs also visited yesterday to deliver all of the trenches, wire, craters and Anzacs for the project so there will no doubt also be some "mock up" shots as I tinker about.