The Last(?) Crusaders

"Thirty seconds or free!" 'e says. 'e's not the poor bugger on the bicycle is he? Nooo...

I'm hoping to have my Crusaders assaulting a trench line later this month, and they'll need support fires, so I took the opportunity to round up all my left over random pieces. This means that my last metal figures are now done. It was interesting painting these in conjunction with the 3d printed figures.

Old school metal mortar team

I can now field a complete old edition TO&E Weapons Squad of two mortar teams and two H11 LMG teams. 

Latest team on the left, older mortar team on the right

This 3d printed character figure, heavily burdened with LMG parts, ammunition, and assorted explosives, who I used for the Toulmorese QM Yawdryl after a headswap, will be the Weapons Squad Yawdryl.

The Company now, finally, has a Cook too. A whimsical 3d printed character.  I'm using some Bad Squiddo food stuffs for the three things that can be cooked instead of the pigs that go with my metal Coftyran cook.

As I've done with all my logistics elements, from Samurai pack horses to Bavarian wagons, I've tried to hint at a path in the center with the flocking and tufts along the sides

In the plastic Command Set, I noticed that the Crusader cook gets a wicker Gloam-Hyyn pack, so I've asked Don to print me one to add later.

Each food counter can be expended to remove shock, improve morale etc.

The old light infantry support gun that they had, an undersized German 150mm iG, has been replaced with this much slicker, more modern looking recoilless rifle. The .stl files came with a version being pulled (arms sculpted onto the handles on the trail) that certainly fits the "Airmobile" part of the Crusader Light Infantry. 

The gun came with loose shells that I stuck on RAFM metal ammunition boxes

"I iz pretty sure dat de snacks are oveh der!"

Finally, a dozen casualties, or perhaps severely hung over rhyflers returned from Madam Maeb's Beetle Buffet, to mark shock.

Alex Southern, host of the Storm of Steel YouTube channel, very kindly sent me a sample sprue of three Crusader rhyflers that he got at Salute this year. So I'm not completely out of Crusaders I guess, although I think these will get turned into more Toulmorese; a cook, a sharpshooter and, I dunno, maybe just another squaddie to fill out the depleted rhyfler squads. I've requested more heads etc from Don.

There is also the Crusader Specialist set out now, and I may get one to make some Crusader and Toulmore Pathfinders later this year.

Whimsical Quar Buildings

 

Big Pat decided that my Quar needed suitably whimsical buildings and arrived one night with a package from Sarissa Precision. 

Inside were three houses from their Burrows and Badgers range.

They have generous bases, so I made fences from some wooden pickets and match sticks.

The big house also got a spare wheel, pile of firewood, and a barrel full of apples in its yard. The apples are beads of welding spatter superglued to the end of the metal barrel. 

Entrance to a mostly underground home. 

Sand, flock, and flower tufts complete the bases.

I added the chimney pots from some useful gubbins I had stashed in my SF terrain bits box. Goodness knows where they're from. But they fit perfectly. 

Construction was frustrating. The pegs and slots are all incredibly tight fits, so trying to install the interior floors was abandoned. I'm not going to have interior action,  so they were declared unnecessary after I chucked one across the Basement o'Gaming in frustration.