1938: A Very British Civil War BA-6

So I finally got around to buying some of the books for Solway Crafts absolutely brilliantly and wonderfully barmy tabletop wargame, 1938: A Very British Civil War.
Now, in my haste to become one of the many people who have this game, I may have not really been paying that much attention to what I bought from North Star Figures since I bought the Concise (which it really is) Source Book and A Guide to Tanks and Military Vehicles. I thought the first one was the rulebook.
BUT enough about my mistakes.

A good week or so ago, I purchased possibly my... fifth? No, sixth purchase ever of a Warlord Games product, the Soviet-built BA-6 armoured car.


Now, when I first saw anything to do with 1938:AVBCW, one of my main thoughts was; "Okay, so the single largest imperial and political faction in the world in the 1930s is having a civil war, during a period when one country is gearing up for a war and another is also preparing to go to war too. There is no way in hell that either country would not try and use this to their advantage."

And I was right. Since in A Guide to Tanks and Military Vehicles, we see examples of armoured fighting vehicles from Nazi Germany (the Panzer I and the NbFZ or Neubaufahrzeug "New Construction Vehicle") and Fascist Italy (the Lancia armoured car and the Fiat tankette) being used by the British Union of Fascist and examples of armoured fighting vehicles from Soviet Russia (the T-26 and the T-28 being the examples used) for the socialist forces. This example is reinforced by the inclusion of the fact from the source book which says that the Soviets did send advisers, crews and equipment to aid the socialist forces. Which settled it for me: I would paint the BA-6 for use with the armed wing of the socialist forces in Britain during the conflict, the People's Assault Column.

I had ideas for originally starting with the BUF, but buying the BA-6 kind of clinched it for me.

As you can see, the model is resin and metal. The resin is pretty good quality, although some bits on the turret needing filing down and it turns out those bits on the sides of the rear part of the chassis that I thought were simply flash turned out to be actually a part of the vehicle, as it shows in the very first picture above. Whoops. And the holes for the guns in the turret and in the drivers compartment needed to be drilled in before I put them in, along with the holes for the headlights, which was a pain simply because of where they were.
The metal was a bit... hit and miss. The guns in the turret fitted all right apart from a minor bit of filing for the gun in the hull. The wheels were all right, but the axles for the front and the rod for the two wheels at the middle had a habit of simply falling off so I had to be careful with those. And the steps in to the drivers compartment really did not want to stay in, especially the one on the right hand side! In the end, I just had to get rid of that one all together, which you will see at the end of the post.

 Next up is the painting. After undercoating the model with a Chaos Black spray, I basecoated it with the Army Painter primer spray, Angel Green, since from what I've seen in photos, that's pretty damn close to the simple green used for Soviet military vehicles.

Next began the drybrushing. I used a liberal drybrush of Castellan Green. Technically, the primer wasn't official Citadel paint, so I think that I can get away with using the basecoat paint over the primer/basecoat.

Now I'm not 100% sure whether this is because the picture is darker or whether it's because of the wash I applied, but at this stage of the model, I applied a wash of Agrax Earthshade, probably the best thing created by Games Workshop for painting.

May have skipped taking a photo of the step after the application of the wash, but I used a drybrush of Loren Green to get the colour up a bit. After that, I started painting on the more detailed parts, mainly painting on the initials of the People's Assault Column and the Red Star. The star is... it's not good. I really should have used the decals I got with the T-34/85 I got a few months ago (photos of that will be coming up), but right now I'm sticking with it. I am pleased with the PAC initials on the turret though. The details were painted in Khorne Red first before going over them with Wazdakka Red.

And here are the finished photos. I plan to buy some period relevant terrain and also some militia models for the PAC so I can take some proper photos of the BA-6 and infantry support in action. But all in due time.
To get the weathered look, I applied a light drybrush on areas at the front and around the edges of Leadbelcher, while using a fine detail brush to apply relatively thick patches of Leadbelcher to areas that I think would most likely have been nicked by terrain and enemy small-arms fire, before applying small patches of Runefang Silver to those areas to make them pop a bit. The mud splatter was achieved by drybrushing, quite heavily, the lower portion of the model with Mournfang Brown. Mud is mud.

And so the model is finished! All in all, I pretty damn pleased with model. It helped me work out how to paint a military vehicles in a single uniform colour, which is something I thought I'd struggle with, while also helping me get out of the sci-fi/40k hole I'm slightly digging myself in to.
While this isn't the first historical model I've ever bought (and I have a good number of them still left unfinished), it is the first one I've completed fully to a standard I feel comfortable showing off to people.