Completed Army for ValleyCon 2017

I have finally completed my army for the  Flames of War competition at ValleyCon 2017, which I have themed on 1st Armoured Brigade in Greece, April 1941.

Photos of the Commonwealth equipment in the Greek campaign show a real mix of colour schemes: single overall colours, Caunter, the two-tone green European camouflage of the period, and seemingly random disruptive patterns that look to have been sprayed on in a hurry.

There are a number of photos of abandoned 3rd RTR A10s, and good drawings in the Mike Starmer book on Caunter. The general pattern that they carry, with some variation between tanks, is a modified version of the official Caunter scheme, with silver grey replaced with the basic colour, and a single disruptive colour applied where the official scheme specifies slate. I originally tried light stone and slate, but the contrast between those two colours was far greater than was apparent in the photos, so I went with the silver grey instead.

The 15cwt trucks for the infantry have been painted in overall light stone to match the only photo I've found that is definitely a 1st Armoured Brigade 15cwt, backed up by the Rangers war diary which suggests that only their carriers and scout cars were given a disruptive pattern on arrival in Greece.

The Battlefront one-piece resin carriers are convenient and well detailed, but there were a few quality issues with the track mouldings, which I didn't dare try to rectify due to the brittleness of the material. The hull sides are also very thin and likely to break with handling. I also overlooked the fact that each pack only contain a single anti-tank rifle, not the one per vehicle that I needed, but it's too late to do anything about that now.

I found one photo that is presumed to be a Rangers carrier, but I wasn't able to recreate the hastily-resprayed look without making the model look like a mess. In the end, I have gone for a scheme inspired by the tanks. I'm not 100% happy with it, so I can't guarantee that they'll still look like this come the tournament.

Without a reference for the portees and guns of the Northumberland Hussars, I had to guess at a possible colour scheme. On the assumption that as frontline vehicles and thus would have had a disruptive pattern of some kind, I chose full Caunter.

With just under two weeks to go, the plan now is to do a couple of objective markers and a few more sangar entrenchment markers, and touch up some mid-war Americans for the Bring and Buy table, before moving onto Team Yankee.