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Just before christmas I picked up a Flames of War British armoured platoon box set to see what it was like. I started it just before moving house, so had to shelve it for a while, but now it is complete (the tanks at least). This was my first time painting in 15mm scale and I enjoyed it enough that I thought I would keep going. The plans after this are another armoured platoon (already purchased and work has started on it), some typhoon aircraft, some artillery and a bit more infantry. I still have the tank crews to paint and am working on them at the moment as well.

So let's begin... here is the box set:


People have always said that while the flames of war box sets are expensive, they contain everything you might need and they are not wrong. A British sherman platoon only has 3 tanks, with a firefly as a fourth tank. The box set contains a complete spare tank. The HQ for the army is made of a minimum of 2 sherman tanks, so with just 2 box sets you have a legal 745 point army already. I took a picture of the contents all laid out anyway:


The next step was to drill out some holes and add some magnets to the turrets to stop them falling off in the heat of battle:



After this, I put the tanks together. They are solid resin with metal details. The metal is a little bit softer than the metal GW use, so is easy to clean up but gun barrels are a bit more liable to bend. I washed the resin in the sink to get off any mould residue (there was a little bit on them).


After seeing some conflicting pictures on the Internet, I thought I would get a better idea about the little details and layout of the shermans so I went to the Imperial War Museum in London where they have the exact same model from the guards armoured division. A friend of mine was in the Irish Guards so I thought I'd paint it up in their livery. I was in France a few days later so I took the opportunity to have a look at some shermans there as well for some more inspiration (well that and because they are beautiful tanks).


The next step was to undercoat the models. First I gave them a dusting of purity seal varnish to give the paint something to adhere to as my varnish is dead and now creates a dusty grey texture that is great for priming onto. Next a coat of chaos black spray, and finally I tried my hand with an airbrush for the first time. It was too cold out so I didnt have much success but after a couple of coats and some touch ups by hand it was fine and was still faster than doing it all by hand.


Next I undercoated the metal areas black. The tracks were quite tedious at this point:


Then I painted the metal areas with boltgun metal. After this picture was taken I washed the tracks with devlan mud and I washed the other metal areas with badab black:


After tank track fatigue I started cleaning and assembling the crew. I bought a second box of tanks so although they are currently sitting untouched, I thought I would do all the crew at once, which is why there are 10 bases instead of 5. I bought some vallejo pumice (5 types actually) and after looking through them decided that white pumice was the most suitable for the infantry bases. The pumice looks like it will last forever as it comes in a massive tub:

The infantry were quickly all based. The pumice is a real timesaver, but it does shrink when it dries so I needed to touch it up with some sand and flock in places. It is also quite goopy so is hard to manage between the soldier's legs.



The infantry were a large enough distraction that I went back to the tanks. After three levels of highlighting and a wash, they looked nice and factory fresh:


Meanwhile the weather improved enough that I could get an undercoat on the infantry whilst waiting for some decal softener to arrive in the post:


Once I got the decal softener I was able to apply the decals. Because I was doing a slightly non-standard unit, I had to buy some decals from Dom's Decals, which is also where I got the magnets from. The decals were easy enough but the allied star on the top rear of each tank was a little too large so I had to trim it down. As you can see, the decals are horribly bright and clean looking:


Weathering fixed that. A heavy wash of devlan mud on and around the tracks, followed by a liberal coat of vallejo flat earth and then a light splattering of mud from a tamiya weathering stick. The weathering stick is very cool - it is kind of like lipstick except it dries on and becomes solid. It rubs off fairly easily so if you are making a gaming piece the mud would have to be on inner areas, but it was a very easy way to make mud look very good without much effort or mixing up batches of filler. I gave the mud a light drybrush of graveyard earth to give it some more depth as it looked a little flat at 15mm scale.


The final touchups involved painting the tools on the rears of the vehicles and a few more bits of weathering. I used vallejo smoke for some fuel spills down the side of a couple of the tanks. If you have never used smoke but paint vehicles or orks then you should do yourself a favour and pick some up, it is like bottled engine grease and has an amazing effect on metal. I used vallejo woodgrain glaze on the wood areas to give them a bit of depth, though there is not much that could be done due to their size.


And with that, the tanks (and my January vows) were complete. If you are not sure what 15mm scale looks like, here is a picture of the tanks next to a penny:

legoburner wrote:After seeing some conflicting pictures on the Internet, I thought I would get a better idea about the little details and layout of the shermans...

You can afford to be pretty lax about the size of stars and where they go, there's very little consistency. Main spots are the engine deck, turret sides, turret top, hull sides and sometimes one on the front between the wheels (lower hull). Though you probably wouldn't see stars on the turret sides and hull sides at the same time, though there's undoubtedly photos to prove me wrong.

Unless you want to make a specific vehicle, do whatever you find most pleasing. Same with 'olive drab', it's anyone's guess as to what the colour is and it differs between vehicles too. So choose what looks good there too!


I'll keep watching this one!

Here are the finished shots:


Firefly Vc:




Regular British Sherman:



RAF View:


All of the images here are hosted in our gallery, so you can click on any of them to zoom in and get a closer look.

Howard A Treesong wrote:You can afford to be pretty lax about the size of stars and where they go, there's very little consistency. Main spots are the engine deck, turret sides, turret top, hull sides and sometimes one on the front between the wheels (lower hull). Though you probably wouldn't see stars on the turret sides and hull sides at the same time, though there's undoubtedly photos to prove me wrong.

Unless you want to make a specific vehicle, do whatever you find most pleasing. Same with 'olive drab', it's anyone's guess as to what the colour is and it differs between vehicles too. So choose what looks good there too!

I'll keep watching this one!

I wasnt too keen on the idea of the boys getting blown apart by trigger happy flyboys so the star had to go on the top rear . They are british so I didnt really want them plastered with stars elsewhere either. The next update to this blog will be the crew, and then 5 more (identical) tanks.

legoburner wrote:I wasnt too keen on the idea of the boys getting blown apart by trigger happy flyboys so the star had to go on the top rear . They are british so I didnt really want them plastered with stars elsewhere either. The next update to this blog will be the crew, and then 5 more (identical) tanks.

lol, yes it took the americans a little while to work out the star on the side was providing the germans with a bullseye. The germans made the same mistake some years before, solid white cross on dark grey background, it was quickly changed to the more familiar outline of a cross.

Legoburner, I might have missed it, but what shade of green did you use for a basecoat? I'm thinking about painting my Leman Russes that color.

I'll update it with the full list of paints later, but basically you can see the exact colours I used in my personal article. I used Vallejo Model Colour - Russian Uniform #094 as the base.

The tanks look great Lego! Keep it up!

Cool - thanks, I appreciate that.

Neat. I do like the FoW package contents. I'd probably have picked it up but I'm just not as interested in WWII as I am sci-fi and fantasy games.

Really nice! Thanks for sharing

Great blog so far. I'm quite enjoying seeing something different on here for a change, even if it's not something I'll get into. Don't forget to post pictures of the troops when they're done. Incidentally, could you post a scale picture of the troops with a penny?

ok I took some scale pictures.
Epic 8mm,
Flames of War 15mm,
40k 28mm

The Flames of War infantry has some white blutac behind it to increase contrast as it is pure black right now thanks to the undercoat. I took a picture from the top and the side so you can get a good idea of scale, though the whirlwind looks smaller than it actually is in the side picture as it is further from the camera.

I've shown it with £0.01, $0.01 and €0.01 so that everybody can appreciate the relative scales

Thanks Legoburner. Very interesting. Those things really are tiny!

Yes, makes it easier and harder to paint at the same time. Easier because the detail/expectations aren't there. Harder, because the of the size.

Nice work. Keep it up.

very cool.

Wow, I had always assumed you were chained to a keyboard in Gonad's basement, not running free and painting tiny tanks. That's some sweet work, keep it up.

Thanks for the feedback all.

Captain gordino, if I was chained up in an australian basement then the native spiders would surely have finished me off by now, or the snakes, or the platypus.

Lego just so you know the black lava pumice is great for blacktop in 40k makes a good parking lot.

I've just finished some a tank crew team. I'm going to post it in a few places to get feedback then update it to fix any incorrect colours and add any insignia. After that the work starts on the other 9 bases.

Those guys look a little big next to the tank, or so it seems to me. Well painted though, very nice.

They are further towards the camera so the perspective is a little off. Still a lot better than 10 space marines in a rhino

Heh heh, yeah...

that makes me want to play that. brilliant work.

Where do you find magnets like you used on the tanks. Was a great idea that I would like to borrow from you.

I got them from http://www.domsdecals.com/ - the 1/8" ones. I'm not sure where to get them for the US though. 1/8" fits perfectly with holes drilled with the 1/8" dremel bit which made it very easy to do.

Thanks for the reply. Looks like Amazon has them in the US so I should be able to get them fairly easily.

Well hell has frozen over - I have actually painted more stuff this month so here it is!

First off, the tank crew for 10 tanks:


These guys are only used in game when your tank gets hit by a powerful attack - they bail out of the tank from fear of being burned or exploded, then you have to pass a test for them to get back in.

Close up of 5:

and thanks to PanzerSmurf for giving me a few hints towards what flowers exist in the wild in Belgium (These guys are part of the Irish Guard who liberated Brussels in September 1944).

Close up of the other 5:


Test crew rebased:


Close up of a more wounded crew member:


And finally a better scale picture of the crew next to their tanks: