Battle Kings K-116 Artillery Truck

Matchbox Battle Kings have been one of my favourite things since childhood, and I will admit that I enjoy having been able to refurbish some of my childhood toys for use in my current games. The process is quite simple, drill out rivets, replace missing heads on commanders and gunners, prime, repaint, reassemble, and wash.

Two Battle Kings Artillery Trucks.

 One of the things I have enjoyed about the refurbishment process is discovering what real world vehicles and weapon systems the Battle Kings with generic titles were based on (Such as in this post about the Battle King K-107 155mm SPG click here for details)

Haradian Artillery Prime Mover or Heavy Transport Truck?

I had thought that the Artillery truck was without any basis in the real world until I saw these pictures of International ACCO trucks (click here and here to see them). I was inspired to look for them after seeing a painting of similar trucks towing 5.5inch guns. While the grill of the Battle King is quite different from the ACCO trucks, it is very similar to a grill on a 1970s International Harvester concept vehicle (click here for the picture)  So was the Battle King Artillery Truck based on a concept truck?

Repainted and washed. Now waiting for a name, stats and purpose.

In CD terms in is at least a class IV vehicle, possibly even a class V, but I will leave the stating out the vehicle for another day.

Reworked and original model.

 The photos for this post were taken on my phone, so are even worse quality than usual, but I have used Paul's (From over at Plastic Warriors - If you haven't checked his stuff out already, you really should) trick of cropping them in paint to try and bring the models in as the centre of attention to the photo.

The current collection: 1 to keep, 1 repainted, 1 in process of being repainted.

The plan is to add two of these big behemoths to the Haradi motorpool and as I rather like the look of them, and the nice thing about an imagination is that large possible concept vehicles can occasionally find their way on to the tabletop:)

Deagostini T-72s

Recently I started to  repaint  and ink wash some of the Deagostini T-72s I got as part of the Combat Tanks Collection partwork. I wanted get some of my diecasts looking a little sharper by just giving them a wash of GW Agrax Earthshade, but  Andy  suggested that I could paint over the awful white snow camouflage with sand to create a nicer paint scheme.

The magazine is NZ$20 and comes with a rather nice tank.

 Like many of Andy's suggestions, this idea proved to be a winner! As a result the three winter camoed T-72s were changed to a more useful scheme that better matched the fourth T-72, and the BTR-80s.

Paint job in progress. The tank on the right is another Combat Tank Collection model, a T-72  in an Iraqi paint scheme.

 After the paint job, I then gave the diecasts a liberal dousing of brown wash, which I think worked out quite nicely. I have started giving the diecasts a wash in warm soapy water, followed by a rinse in warm water, and then leaving to dry, before applying  the wash. Previous to this, I had found that the wash adhered unevenly. After following this method results have improved greatly.

Four nicely washed T-72s.

Of course, now I have four T-72s finished, I want to do some more! But I should probably finish off some of the other WARPAC equipment I have first!

Hornby Power Pylons

Recently I started to do some work on items of terrain, so I could start to either finish off older projects, repair damaged projects, and figure out what the priority is for new items. It has been quite interesting to see what items I have stashed away - such as half a dozen power pylons.

Power pylons: A nice piece of infrastructure.

 In the repair  damaged items category falls these Hornby power pylons that got quite munted through both earthquakes and moving. I figured the easiest thing to do would be to base them, and to glue them back together where they had broken apart.

Same Pylons, now with a Matchbox Battle King for scale - which I also just recently refurbished.

The basing was very simple, glue plyon onto mdf coaster, brush on artists medium, paint, wash with GW brown wash. I think the result is quite pleasing.

I also did a quick wash and touch up paint job on some diecast BTR-80s, and assembled two S-Models 9P148 BDRM-2s.

BTR-80s and 9P148 BDRM-2s. I got side tracked from working on terrain by Warsaw Pact goodness.

I'm quite impressed with the S-Model kit and will be getting more. The 9P148 sprue contains the turret for the regular BDRM-2 , so I have made them up for use with another project. The sprue seems to be the same for both the 9P148 and the regular BDRM-2, but with key components snipped out. In this case the missing piece is the upper deck with the turret ring.

More BTR-80 goodness!

I have yet to make up any additional S-Model kits, but I can see that they will be something I will be buying more of in the future, as based on the two models I have made, and the online reviews of others, they seem to be quite detailed and accurate kits.