Tuesday, February 19, 2008

From My Workbench: Late World War Two Canadians

These figures are larger than the last lot I posted - these are 20mm, or in modeling terms, between 1/76 to 1/72 scale. You click on any of the photos to see a larger image.

Platoon of Canadian infantry from 3rd Can Division (indicated by the light blue shoulder patch). These are plastic figures, manufactured by Revell:



Another view of the same lot. The officer on the single base in the middle is a metal figure, sculpted and cast by AB Miniatures in the UK, who make detailed and accurate figures in true 1/76 scale:



Infantry advance up a road. The three figures in the foreground are Raventhorpe (available through the nice and helpful people at RLBPS), another UK maker of metal figures. Not sure I like them - they are larger than most other ranges in this scale, and they lack a lot of raised detail, but they don't look bad when the paint up, somehow. I've mixed some dark green with Vallejo English Uniform to try and capture the more distinctive green Canadian pattern battledress:


Raventhorpe officer with binos and a signaller with a radio backpack - I've based them together to represent a FOO (Forward Observation Officer) who goes forward with the infantry and spots the fall of shots from friendly artillery. Always a useful asset to have on the tabletop:



Finally, the company OC (officer commanding) gives orders to one of his platoon leaders, while the OC's signaller stands nearby keeping in touch with battalion. The two officers are AB - no idea who made the signaller:

4 comments:

Snickering Corpses said...

Those Revell figures look decidedly familiar. I have about six boxes of the fellows. Unfortunately, mine are all still the orange that they were molded in.

Mad Padre said...

Yes, that orange was a gruesome colour and hard to paint over - I had to finally spray-paint a flat black and start from there.
Nice figures, and the only Brits other than commandoes and 8th army desert types available at the time. Valiant has since released some nice hard-plastic late war Brits, but they're so darn big.

tim said...

Hang on... You have Canadians in 15mm AND 20mm!? You ARE mad!

Truthfully I am in the same boat. Worse actually - I have WW2 stuff in 15mm, 20mm, AND 28mm! It's madness!

These do look very nice too. Do you use them with the same rules? IABSM?

I picked up some "20mm" figures from RLBPS (I think they may have been Raventhorpe as well) and they're HUGE! They're as big as some of my old RAFM 25mm figures!? Talk about scale creep!

Mad Padre said...

Thanks, Tim:

Absolutely, mad. 20mm was my first love, but I got into 15mm when my friends here started collecting the Battlefront 15mm range. I absolutely refuse to do more scales in this period - 28mm stuff from Bolt Action and West Wind et al looks very tempting, but I need it like a hole in the head.

The plan now is to use 15mm for IABSM (company level) and 20mm for TWAT (platoon level).

The Raventhorpe figures are darn big, aren't they. I don't think I'll be getting any more. I'll go smaller in future - I like AB and Elheim, and I hear nice things about Britannia.
Sometimes small is better! :0

Mad Padre

Mad Padre
Opinions expressed within are in no way the responsibility of anyone's employers or facilitating agencies and should by rights be taken as nothing more than one person's notional musings, attempted witticisms, and prayerful posturings.

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