All Quiet on the Quar Front

 

"C'mon you geezers, break time's over!" Milwer (pointing) and a trio of casual rhyflers having a smoke and a brew.

Their pointy little helmets look like pickelhaubes to me, so these Quar just scream Great War Germans. Which will compliment my First World War French poilu inspired Coftyrans and British Tommy inspired Crusaders nicely.

"Shoot those buggers over there!" Yawdryl and two rhyflers. 

Officially, these are from the Tollyn-Maeryn, the army of Maer Braech, so lore wise, they can fight either Crusaders during the Crusader advance into Maer Braech, or Coftyr as Crusader auxiliaries after the Crusader liberation. Just change the colour of their tunics. But why do that? Use German feldgrau and they can fight both in my mind.

Packs

The Yawdryl has a cross strap that I felt needed something attached to it, so I've given them small haversacks. 

I did a Google Image search for First World War German uniforms and found mostly a mid grey. The Osprey's that I have give a pretty grey uniform for the German shutzen right through the war. But Alex Southern's painting 15mm WW1 Germans video, and Sonic Sledgehammer's How I paint WW1 German Infantry video both suggested German feldgrau. So that's what I went with. Perhaps the green dye hasn't held up and so re-enactors are working from greyed examples? Whatever, it looks good. 

There are also heads in this garrison or undress cap. The front has a brass badge on it. I also did their tunic and cuff buttons in brass. This army is old fashioned and puts a lot of stock in button polishing and square bashing.

Squirrel Handler. The pykpyk is holding on with his back feet and he likes the view from up there.

Uniforms are Vallejo 70830 German Fieldgrey WWII,  drybrushed with Vallejo 920 German Uniform. Helmets and bedrolls are Vallejo 70995 German Grey drybrushed with Americana Neutral Grey. Equipment is Craft Khaki Tan inked with Bombay Sepia, Boots are straight Rowney Burnt Umber ink over the base coat. Rhyfles are honey brown wood, black metal, drybrushed silver then thinned Rowney black ink. Wood get Rowney Burnt Umber ink. Hat plumes are TT Combat leather red, highlighted with primary red and then washed with Sepia ink.

I'm lacking in left arms to go with the shouldered rhyfle arm, thus the more casual attitude with mugs and cigarettes. 

It's taken a few figures and some liquid putty to figure out how to best get shooting poses, thus all the marching poses in this initial batch.

Finishing the bases was delayed a couple of days as I had to remove a lot of the railway ballast I had glued on, because it was too coarse. But I want more exposed dirt on the bases, since these guys will be in trenches a lot.

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.