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Saturday, July 23, 2011

British Infantry - Part I

Here is a peek into what I am currently working on. It is a painted set of 50 British Infantry figures. As you might recall, I like to keep the poses unique and sometimes not all the poses from a given manufacturer 'make the cut' as far as the quality of the sculpting. You might also notice that I am only painting 50 figures instead of 100 as I did with some of the other sets. This is partly due to time constraints, partly because there aren't that many unique poses for this country/branch of the military, and partly because playing a war-game with 100 figures + vehicles, tends to take quite a bit of time, so 50 seems a good number. Another thing to note is that this is an expansion from about 12 figures that I had originally painted about 10 years back, and therefore you might see some of them at different stages of painting. As far as when they will be done, I am not sure as lately I have been doing a lot more blogging and a lot less painting, but eventually you will be able to see the finished product. Alright, so let's get to it.


Airfix British Infantry
Except for the guy who is standing firing, these poses are very dynamic. One of my favorite sets. They are also among the original squad that I had painted a few years back. That was before I learned how to give them their protective coats, so over the years they got chipped and needed a touch-up. You might also notice a glossy finish which I don't really like. By the time I am done, it will be gone. The other thing that will change is that originally all the webbing for their equipment was beige, but I later noticed that British Infantry also had green webbing, so I decided to switch to that color.

Airfix British Infantry Heavy Weapons Set
As you can see, only a subset of the figures are represented here.

Atlantic British Infantry
There are 10 figures in the original set, but some of them are a bit stiff, and some of them, like the guy carrying his wounded buddy shown in a post a couple of weeks back, are not really action poses that lend themselves to a table-top war-game. Click here to see the rest of the Atlantic figures.

BMC British Infantry
To be more precise, these guys are British 8th Army Infantry, but they round up the 50 figures well. Their sculpting seems nicer than that of the other figures from the other sets that did not make the cut.

Britains Herald British Infantry - Part I
Based on the weapons they are carrying these guys seem to be post-WWII figures, but their poses are nice enough that I couldn't resist being a purist and I drafted them into the WWII Army. 

Britains Herald British Infantry - Part II
Britain's Herald figures were produced from the 1950's to the 1980's, some of the later ones made in Hong Kong. You can tell some of the newer ones from the base which is not part of the figure but attached to it.

Marx British Infantry
A classic set. A bit slim for my taste, but nonetheless a nice addition to the unit.

Matchbox British Infantry - Part I
The Bren gunner is one of my favorite ones. For some reason the flamethrower guy tends to be harder to find than the rest.

Matchbox British Infantry - Part II
The officer with the sheepskin coat is turning out nicely.

Weston British Infantry
New production by Steve Weston. Overall a nicely sculpted set. The only thing to criticize is how wide the helmets are. Some of them remind me of the helmets used by the Star Wars men protecting the Emperor.

Finished British Infantry
This is how the whole unit looks after I finished painting them and gave them their protective coats.



3 comments:

  1. Oh, a note about the Britains Herald figures- you noticed they were post-war, but actually some of them are holding the experimental .280 EM-2 rifle. This was proposed to replace the Lee-Enfield .303 rifle, but because NATO and the US wanted to standardise ammunition, it was dropped in favour of the SLR rifle (which the casualty figure is holding). The 'bullpup' design was later revived for the current L85 rifle that British troops use, and that I used.

    They are also wearing the 1944 D-Day helmet, issued mainly to the first British assault troops and also to the Canadians. In 1945, this helmet was in widespread use, about half of British troops using it.

    An old Pathe newsreel, shown in cinemas in 1951, highlights the proposed EM-2: http://www.britishpathe.com/video/new-rifle-test-for-experts

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    1. That's quite bit of good info and from the video it looks like it was quite an improvement over the erlier models. Thanks a lot for sharing. Nothing like having direct input from those who know! :-)

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  2. Yeah as PMDM CORRECTLY points out there are EM2 WPN TOTEING FIGS out there ... including HONG KONG COPIES POST WW2 geared !! ALSO THE I.W. WAS INITIAL produced IN 4.85MM CAL WITH AN LSW VARIANT THEN AS MDRN ERA TROOPS KNOW ...THE SA80 SAGA !! 5.56MM ON EX LIONHEART 84 ..IRISH GDS were TOTEING M16s ops with initial IFVs

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