Some shots of a Manticore figure I painted a few years ago.  Still one of my best figures.

Gaming the Battle of Girba, June 16 1940

Recently I ran a game of I Aint Been Shot Mum where I could use the armored cars show in my earlier post on this blog. We are doing the Operation Compass campaign. This week we ran a very strange scenario, the Battle of Girba fought in what is now Libya in 1940.
In this battle the Italians were caught as a column of the Italians Libyan allies were caught in the open desert by British armored cars. The Italians inexplicably formed square and waited for the British forces to attack.


We changed the scenario a bit and had a wounded armored car set between the Italians and Brits, with six of the tiny Italian L3 tanketts closing in. This gave the opening phases of the scenario a bit more drama as the Brits raced to save the crew.

The British task force arrived on the table in Blinds but were quickly spotted as soon as they crested the hills since they were moving fast and there was little cover.

The two British A9 Cruiser tanks and the two MkVI infantry support tanks moved in quickly on the Italian Square. The L3s desperately charged and were gunned down or rammed into the British tanks, (an optional rule I cooked up on the spot to give the Italians some small chance to stop the Brits).

The Italians had one other trick up their sleeves. The had hidden two artillery pieces in the corners of the square. These revealed themselves and the two Italians commanders attached themselves to the guns and added thier dice to the rolls to hit. There were plenty of hits but all this seemed to do was slow down the advancing Brits. Inevitably the guns were wiped out by the ferocious gunfire of the A9s and light tanks. Meanwhile, the infantry had been digging in which helped them survive the fire of the British machine guns. But with their artillery and tanks all gone, we decided it was time to call the game. Since the Italian plaer had done far better than the historical Italian commander did (the entire column was wiped out) we called the game a draw.

I painted a number of 15mm scale Morris CS 9 armored cars for a series of games set during "Operation Compass" in North Africa, 1940.

For the game I needed 9 cars from the 11th Hussars. At the time they were equipped with Rolls Royce armored cars. QRF makes a model in 15mm but the cost of the models plus shipping was pretty outrageous for some figures that I would only use for a few games. Luckily a friend of mine told me about Gaming Models 15mm Miniatures. They make a Morris CS 9 armored car which the 11th Hussars also used at this time and the price was far cheaper than any other option.

I can recommend Gaming Models 15mm miniatures for those looking for affordable figures. The sculpts are not the best on the market but they are not bad either. The figures come pre-painted with a basic desert color and some dry-brushing. If you are just looking for some gaming figures to use quickly, then you might be satisfied with the figures as is.



In this picture you can see what the figure looks like as it comes form the company. I have added all the metal pieces in the photo. I wanted to add a driver (from the Command Decision line, and two medium machine guns, both extras left over from Flames of War figures I had laying around. I also found some drawings of the Morris CS 9 the showed where the radio aerial went, so I sculpted that onto the side of the figure using ProCreate and the aerial itself is made from the little plastic things used to hold price tags to new clothes.

GZG UNSC and GZG Tank

UNSC command squad convene as a blower moves off to a new position.

I painted these a while ago but the picture is new. This figure and vehicle line by GZG is fun to paint and I highly recommend the figures.

The GEV tank was painted by airbrush and the nose art was hand painted.

I am trying to learn more about how to lite and photograph miniatures but I think this one came out fairly well.