ALN fighters for the Algerian War

I finished off my first batch of Battlezone Miniatures USMC Raiders this week.  They'll be used as ALN fighters for the Algerian War project.

I had two packs of five but of the ten, one was a duplicate BAR gunner and I don't like any duplicate figures in skirmish scale games.  That figure is in the spares bin now.  The other was in a vest so not what I was looking for.  He's had a free transfer to the French Indo-China War project where he fits in better. 

I didn't do anything in the way of converting these.  They're probably a bit overequipped in terms of webbing, but I have seen seen photos of ALN units in full webbing so I'll use them as a better equipped squad,  They're also well equipped weapons wise, so they'll fit in better for the era I'm particular interested in gaming which is 1957 and 1958.  This was when the French were making more use of 'copters and honing their COIN tactics.  

The paint job was simple.  The skin was painted first with Citadel Tallarn Flesh and then washed with AP Soft Tone.  The Tallarn Flesh was then used to add some highlights.

For the uniform base coats I varied between VMC Russian Green, US Drab and Green Grey.  Highlights were added by adding varying proportions of Green Grey,  The whole lot was then washed with AP Military Shader.  

I used VGC Khaki washed with VGC Sepia for the webbing.  The boots and packs were Citadel Calthan or Vermin Brown.  The wooden areas of the weapons were VMC Flat Brown, with AP Matt Black for the metal.  Once the figures were varnished I added on suitable moustaches with a fineliner pen and then highlighted the metal areas of the weapons with an HB pencil.  

I'm happy enough with the finished results.  I've probably spent more time on trying to get a good colouring scheme for the bases than painting the figures.  And I'm still not completely happy with it. 

My favourite three

I've tried endless variations and have more or less settled on a base of Dulux Sumatran Sunset, drybrushed with the Dulux mix  of VMC Iraqi Sand I had made up.  The base was then washed with AP Strong Tone.  I finished off with a further drybrush of Iraqi Sand and lighter drybrush of Citadel Dheneb Stone and VMC Pale Sand.  Finally I added varying tones of static grass and some of my homemade clump foliage.   I lightly drybrushed the figures with Iraqi Sand to add a final top highlight.  

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

City ruins scatter terrain

Image
2024 and 2025 will see the 80th anniversary of many of the great city battles of the Second World War, such as Warsaw, Budapest, Königsberg and Berlin to name but a few.  With this is mind I've been looking at my terrain collection.  My city terrain is centred around some marvellous 20mm MDF buildings I got from Commission Figurines at Salute back in 2014.  I built some rubble piles a few years ago, but when I got it all out of the loft it didn't look very impressive so I decided to make some more. The first job was to sort the base materials.  I used four different materials: cork board; 5mm foam board; old plywood bases and old credit cards.  The cork board and foam board are great materials for this type of terrain proving height, being relatively strong, easy to cut and very lightweight.  I started by pulling apart pieces of cork board to the rough sizes I wanted and then set about the pieces with a Stanley knife and an old screwdriver.  It's very easy to carve irregul
Read more

28mm Victrix Late-Roman Archers and Slingers

Image
When I first embarked on my Late-Roman project a year or so ago, I bought a few sample sprues from Gripping Beast, Wargames Atlantic and Victrix.  The Victrix one was from the Late Roman Archers and Slingers set.  The quality of these convinced me to choose Victrix for the project and I duly ordered up some sets.  After working my way slowly through these I finally went back to this original frame.  These are absolutely lovely models.  There's loads of variety and they go together beautifully.  The instruction sheet which I got from the Victrix website makes a massive difference in this regard.  I really enjoyed working on these.  They were quick to assemble and quick to paint up being in a uniform of sorts.   I only have the one frame, but I took a couple of the bodies from some of the Dark Age Archers that I was working on at the same time ( here ) and added some spare arms to make another pair of staff slingers.  This worked pretty well adding variety to the poses.  I'll do
Read more

More 28mm Dark Age warriors

Image
As a bit of a palette cleanser while working my way through the 15mm Landsknechts, I started on a half dozen Victrix Dark Age Archers.   I'd completed a  first batch of these in January and it was good to get back to them.  The original intention was to use these as Norse warriors for my Ragnarok project.  Since then though I've been looking at making them more useable for a longer period of history.  Therefore, with the exception of the sword armed warrior who is very Viking, I've tried to make them quite generic.  As before nearly all the parts came from the Victrix Dark Age Archers set, with a few extras from the Victrix Viking sprue.  These were used to make the sword and seax armed figures.  There was the usual amputations and other bits of minor surgery to make things fit and that's all part of the fun with these plastic figures.  I followed the same process as before and methodically took notes of what parts I used for each figure.  This helped to make sure that
Read more