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. 

Princess P'trysha of Collysh's Lifeguard Infantry Regimental Cannon Company

Princess P'trysha, being a forward thinking young dyna, and an avid reader of the Crymuster Defense Quarterly, in order to keep abreast of the latest in military theory, decided that her regiment needed it's own organic fire support and declared that a Regimental Cannon Company would be formed, composed of the smarter rhyflers who could do math and calculate trajectories.

Each squad consisted of two cannon. Two squads to a section and two sections to the company. No. 4 Section would have two 76mm howitzers instead of the 55mm field guns. 

To set them apart from the pink coated rhyfle companies, the gunners got purple coats with pink facings and a double row of brass buttons and their bicornes sport pink plumes. The figures are Tolly-Maeryn gun crew with Gwynt heads. The gun is a reduced scale French 75mm. I wanted little and whimsically cute.

The gunners seats obviously are shrunk as well, so one made a nice perch for a curious squirrel, who's just arrived with the latest Fire Mission Orders.

I painted two extra with open hands in case they need to crew a fortress gun. I still have ideas to build a small First World War style fort. Or I could paint a second field gun or convert one into a howitzer as well, I suppose.

While I was splashing purple paint around I did the dismounted tractor crew that came with the official Gwynt Aerfen tractor.

Their tractor coveralls are in cavalry purple. Once the cavalry is released, those troopers will sport purple coats and pink trousers in reverse of the infantry. Naturally their lance pennons will be pink over purple.

This figure is a dyna, as you can tell by the slightly bigger hips and bust. The Princess would definitely be in favour of dynas joining the ranks of the Lifeguard, especially in dangerous but cleverly technical tasks such as tractor crew.

As you've no doubt noticed the uniform schemes are very influenced by Napoleonic uniforms. I was certainly thinking about British and French horse artillery when painting the gunners.

Smol Angry Tea Pots

The Princess P'trysha's are now capable of fielding a combined arms Battlegroup. 

The Squeedle tractor, released for the Gloam-Hyyn, is just too adorbs, and looks like a teapot. So I felt it was a natural fit to join my very tea themed PPCLI. Of course I couldn't resist painting two of them red. 

I almost did one glossy brown.

The pink and purple "caunter camouflage" was challenging, especially keeping those straight edges over multiple coats. Which is why I stopped at two, and left the third solid pink.

The Squeedle is meant to be fast, nimble, lightly armoured, and packing a high velocity 44mm Anti-tractor gun. It's also capable of deep wading, at least according to some of the art in this MishMash video.

"Dis way!"

"No, dis way!"

I can field them in two sections, or just as one big fist, and swarm Crusader Baeliogs (or the Coftyran Paerydyns) with numbers. 

"Charge!"

"Eep!"

They all lost their pennants in shipping, so I glued stowage around to try and reinforce the join, but one of them broke off again. I could glue it back on, but so far I can't be arsed.

I also painted up my casualties while I was splashing pink and purple around.

Although whether or not they are wounded, or just hung over after celebrating the Princess' birthday too enthusiastically, is up for debate.

Two of them got a couple of packs I had painted and then not used.

Maybe I should get another Squeedle and give it some Japanese inspired camouflage to support the Gloam-Hyyn?

Up next is a field gun from the PPCLI's Regimental Cannon Company.