Ariete, Awreety, Awrighty! The Italian 132nd Armored Division in 1/600

Go Rams!

Figuring out how to portray the 132nd Ariete Armored Divisions takes some thought. Though the unit was one of the major combat units in the Axis forces in Africa, it's relatively difficult to find clear order of battle information for it.

It's universally agreed that the Division's two major front-line combat units were the 32nd Tank Regiment and the 8th Bersaglieri Regiment, but it's somewhat harder to discover what was the exact composition of these units at any given time. Did the 32nd have three battalions or four? As for the 8th Bersaglieri, it seems to have started the campaign with two motorized and one motorcycle battalions and then moved to two motorized and one weapons battalion. Some sources have the regiment at 3 motorized infantry battalions, however.

For our purposes, the Ariete will have the following company-sized units:

2 HQ

1 FOA

9 M13/40 companies

3 L3/38 companies

2 AB41 recon troops

1 Motorcycle recon company

6 Infantry companies

2 Machinegun companies

1 Mortar company

4 47mm Anti-Tank Gun batteries

3 75mm Artillery batteries

2 Engineer companies

It will also have 2 German 88mm ATG/AAA batteries attached. I wish O8 would release the Italian 90mm AAA guns, but for now, these will do.

Basing is underway as I right this.

5th Panzer Regiment, DAK

Planning this unit was fairly simple as there are excellent and acessable OoB sources for the 5th Panzer Regiment on-line. Again, I'm following my "universe slightlty to the left of us" philosophy and building an historic-ish 5th PzRgt rather than a perfect snapshot of the unit. The original mix of tanks is set for the Crusader-Gazala Battles period and includes 2 companies of Pz Mk II, 4 companies of Pz Mk III short 50s, 2 companies of PZ Mk IV short 75s, a Headquarters unit (on the circular base) and a composite recon company (on the house-shaped base).

O8 Pz IV shorts come with two different command tanks (both have the commander un-buttoned, one sitting and one standing in his turret) and they make nifty 1939-1942 command tanks. I added a MkII on the HQ's base as well. The recon unit gets one Pz Mk II and two motorcycle-sidecar combos.

The process for building this unit was much the same as that used for the British. First off, bases were spackled with Vallejo Sandy Paste, then the tanks were glued down and a base coat of Orange Ochre acrylic paint was applied. Once this was dry, Skin wash was applied over everything, followed by Sienna wash near the tanks. At this point, I was going for a light-colored tank on a dark-colored base.

The tanks and bases were then drybrushed with Sand, Highlight Afrika Korps and finally Dark Flesh. Note the needle in the picture: it's there to pluck out bruch hairs which detach during drybrushing. At this scale, they are very noticeable.

Finally, I pin-pointed highlights with Higlight Afrika Korps. The purpose of this is to smooth out the drybrushing and make the figure look less scratchy. You can see the effect in the above photo as the recon and command stands there have already been through the process while the combat companies haven't. Here's a picture of the whole regiment after the treatment was completed:

Now on to detailing. As was the case with the Brits, I'll paint black under gun barrels and sienna wash any bare or light spots on the treads. Tank commanders are painted black, highlighted grey and given a Dark Flech face. I then add in some red and white highlights here and there. Again, this scale is too small to see numbers and national markings. The bits of red and white, however, really make the models jump out and so are worth adding, even if they are too big for history. After detailing, I varnished the models with flat varnish.

Base flocking turned out to be difficult for this unit. As I've mentioned before, my philosophy is to base darker or lighter than the model, in order to make the miniature stand out. As you can see, above, this didn't work well in this case.

What I finally decided to do was a three part flocking method.

About 70% of the base gets covered in fine yellow flock, with 20-25% (generally the areas closest to the tanks) covered in fine dark brown flock. Another 5-10% of the base is left unflocked. Finally, bits of green flock are added here and there. The result is as follows:

Photo of two regiments in the palm of my hand

A regiment from the 4th Armored Brigade and one fromthe 22nd Armored Brigade in the palm of my hand.

This should give readers some notion of the... er... compact nature of 1/600 scale figures.

Note that the 22nd Brigade stands still need to be flocked.

Painting the British 4th Brigade (three of three)

Final touches
As I mentioned in the last post, I decided to put sangars around the artillery and machineguns. These are built up with Vallejo Pumice and allowed to dry. They are then painted with Burnt Umber and dry brushed with Mahogany.

Some of the painting is also touched up - particularly a few of the flashes and some treads. More Seinna wash is applied under the tanks to give the effect of shadows at high noon. The Armored Car company's base edge is painted in Sand. The other bases, being commerically bought transparent acrylic, don't need this final touch. In fact, they look better with out it.

Flocking
Woodland Scenics Fine Earth flocking is laid down in patches to cover up any obvious base lines or hairs that inadvertently got painted into the base. After the glue dries, small splotches of Green Blended turf are stuck on here and there - about three or so per base. Again, this is mostly done to highten the contrast between the tanks and their bases.

Finally, the miniatures are carefully brushed off to remove any lint or hairs and two more coats of spray varnish are applied.

Here are the final results (again, apologizing for the poor lighting):

The entire 4th Brigade, 7th Armored Division, finished. Three armored regiments and an armored car squadron lead the way, followed by a motor rifle battalion and an artillery battalion.

A tank regiment, Honeys in front, Grants in back. Looks like I missed a hair on that lefthand Honey base. More flock!

Motor rifle battalion. Infantry and machineguns in front, 2lb portee ATG and carrier company in back.

The 25 lbr artillery battalion.

Total elapsed time on this brigade was probably about two hours. Now onto the next brigade, which I have decided will be the 22nd Armored and not the 2nd, after all.

Painting the British 4th Brigade (two of three)

Detailing

Now that everything's basically painted, I grab my smallest brush and go for the details.

Again, one must recall what scale you are working in. Details should only be those things that can clearly be seen at arms length. This means, basically...

1) Painting treads and wheels black and (depending on the model) lightly drybrushing them grey.

2) Painting under the barrels of guns. In order to support gunbarrels, O8 leaves in a bit of flash. This can't be removed without breaking the gun barrel. There are three ways to deal with this:
    A) Cut off the barrel and the flash, drill a hole in the model and mount your own barrel. I can't be bothered with this as O8's alloy is just too strong. It's too much work for too little effect, IMHO.
    B) Leave the flash the color of the model in general.
    C) Paint the flash black. This is what I do, as I feel it looks better. YMMV.
In any case, the detailing step is where any painting of the flash is going to be done, if it is done.

3) Paint windscreens black or dark blue. If you're a real nutter, highlights can be added, too.

4) Other details as come to mind. In my case, this means painting the Honeys' back storage bins varying shades of green, painting their auxilliary gas tanks light grey and painting any jerry cans green or grey-blue.

5) For the infantry, asms and legs are painted Dark Flesh, rifles and shoes get a coat of Brown and machinguns and other heavy weapons are painted Black. I occaisionally outline prone infantry figures with a Sepia ink wash in order to give a better contrast with the base. This being the Western Desert, I paint weapons crews' torsos in dark flesh, too.

6) Finally, little colored bits are added. It would be reasonable to assume, at this scale, that one wouldn't see national markings, unit badges and the like. But you want at least some color to further break up the camouflage effect discussed in the last post. In this case, I make little red and white scribblings on the tanks' front bumpers. Honeys get a white-red-white armor flash on their left turret side and Grants get the same on the left sand skirt. Finally, the infantry brigade's vehicles get a green motorized infantry flash.

Here are the pictures and I apologize for their quality (I REALLY need to build myself a light tent, but with the xmas bills coming in, that may take a few more months)...

Figure 1: The entire brigade in battle order.

Figure 2: The motorized infantry battalion.

Figure 3: Tank regiment, seen from above.

Figure 4: Tank regiment seen from the side.

At this point, it's a good time to pause and do two things: check for problems and apply a coat of matte spray varnish.

In the photos above, I can see two main problems that I'll want to fix in the next stage.

First of all, I live with two cats, so there's always fur and lint in the air. As you can see in Figure 3, the smallness of 1/600 scale means this stuff shows up even more than usual, especially on the naked bases. No matter how much I clean, some always gets in and this means that I'll have to flock these areas over.

Secondly, the bases of some of the figures - particularly the artillery - didn't get as covered as I would wish during the basing stage. I plan to solve this by judicious use of flock and by building sangars around the artillery pieces. This will be what I do next, using Vallejo White Pumice paste to build up the sangars. For better differentiation, I'm also going to add sangars to the machinegun unit's base as well. Mortars will be sangar-less..

Regarding varnish and 1/600 scale figures

DON'T brush on varnish: DO use a spray varnish.

While it is possible to brush on varnish in an emergency, you need to water it down and pay careful attention while its drying so that it doesn't pool. Tiny pools of varnish which could be overlooked even on 6mm figures are disasterous at 2-3mm.

For this reason, you should use spray varnish, wherever possible. Even then, you need to be careful to not over do it. Multiple light coats is the way to go here.

At this point, I prefer to put down one or two light coats to protect the figures' paint jobs from my fingers during the flocking and final basing stage. After that's done, I'll touch up any (hopefully few) raw bits and apply more varnish, after carefully brushing away excess flock and cat hairs with a dry brush.

Painting the British 4th Brigade (one of three)

We'll take the 4th Armored Brigade as our test unit here.

So far, everything's gone mostly to plan and I have perhaps 4 hours of my time invested in the project. The next steps take about 10 minutes per brigade each and, drying time aside, an entire brigade can easily be completed in an hour's painting.

First of all, we need to take a step back and discuss some technical aspects of painting 2-3mm scale miniatures.

When I first began collecting 1/700 figures, I painted them as I would any other kind of miniature. This is a mistake. While O8's figs are definitely detailed enough for one to paint them very realistically, if you do this without thinking, you'll create a very bland effect on the table top.

2-3mm gaming is about looking at the grand scale, not the details. Because of this, one needs to be aware of three different visual planes when one paints: the ground, the base and the figure. Figures need to contrast with the base if they're going to be seen at arm's lenght on the table. Ideally, the base should blend with the ground, but this is not always possible.

One can't do much with regards to the ground except be aware of the general theater and season. In our case, it's the Western Desert so we don't have too much leeway. Ground can be brown, tan, sand-colored or greyish and bases will generally have to follow. There will be minimal flocking and very little - if any - green.

Now, this is a problem because both sides obviously painted their vehicles to blend in to the desert. If you do the same, you're going to end up hiding your handiwork and you might as well be playing with counters. For this reason, one should generally paint the base to contrast with the figure. In Africa, though, our palette is strictly limited.

The solution to the problem here, again, is not to try to adhere too rigidly to history. One wants one's troops to look generally correct and to stand out from the back-clutter of base and ground. One should thus choose a plausibly historical paint scheme for the troops which allows them to stand out. In my case, I also want to be able to tell each of my brigades at a glance.

Now, the most common British color used in the desert was plain sand or light stone. However, just before the period in which we're playing (1941-1942), they used what was called the "caunter scheme", and used up to six colors (including light blue) applied in straight lines. Towards the end of the period in question, the British went with "Desert Pink", occaisionally broken with green blotches.

What I've decided to do is to paint the Fourth Brigade in a pinkish plain sand scheme. The Second Brigade will be done in Desert Pink and Green while the 201st Brigade's vehicles and guns will be cauntered. In general, all of these schemes will be light, so the base will be painted relatively dark in order to create a contrasting effect. Of course, all of this probably was never together on the same battlefield at the same time. It's not screamingly out of place, however. My personal line is drawn when it comes to paint shemes that were probably never applied to given unit types. For example, you'll never see my Grants in caunter.

Step One: blocking in the base colors
Step one for the Fourth Brigade consists of painiting vehicles and equipment in Vallejo Dark Flesh, a pinkish tan color. The human figures are then painted in white and all is left to dry.

PROTIP: Taking care to paint within the lines during this phase will pay off in lowered clean up time later. However, if you do paint something you shouldn't. don't waste time correcting it now: you'll have opportunities to make good your mistake later.

The Fourth Brigade with its base colors blocked in

Step Two: wash

Now washes are applied. First of all, a heavy, dark wash of Vallejo Sepia Ink is applied to the base of the units and allowed to thoroughly dry:

Then, a light wash of Vallejo Skin Wash Ink is applied to the vehicles and equipment:

PROTIP: When you apply this wash, make sure you use the tip of the brush to work it into treads and along undercarriages. These should be very dark.

Finally, a very light wash of Vallejo English Uniform is applied to the human figures:

PROTIP: when washing the base, make sure that the immediate area around the figures in very dark for maximum contrast. You may even want to run another coat of ink around the vehicles after the first on has dried.

Washes applied.

Step Three: dry brush
Dry brushing will bring out the detail on the figures. First, I drybrush with DAK Sand. Following this, I mix up Vallejo Deck Tan and Dark Skin, about 50/50, and dry brush with that. Then I take my time and go back and pick out details on the vehicles with my smallest brush (this is probably the most time-consuming part of the whole project). Finally, I dry brush everything once again with DAK Sand.

Drybrushed.

Next up: detailing. Here's a small (and unfortunately not very good) shot as a sneak peek...

Basing the British

Bases
One needs to walk a thin line (literally!) when it comes to bases for 1/600 scale figures. Too thin and you can't pick up the base: too thick and the base ends up distracting your eye from the figures. I find that a thickness of 1/32nd of an inch (roughly .75mm) is just perfect, though thicknesses of up to 1mm are fine. Beyond 1mm, however, and you run the risk of having your figures look like they're standing on platforms.

Because of the smallness of the scale, I try to make stand types immediately apprehendable to the eye. I use 25x25mm for armored targets, 25x15mm for unarmored targets and round 25mm for headquarters. FAO and FAA stands are mounted on equilateral triangles, 25mm to a side. Recon units are based on 25x25mm stands with an angled front edge. Finally, COs are based on 30mm round stands. The first three stand types I buy from Litko in 1/32nd inch thick transparent acrylic with rounded corners. The next three types of bases I cut myself from plasticard or artists' matte board (I use a fingernail clippers to trim the corners to Litko's standard.

Figure Preparation
There are two basing methods: one for freestanding vehicles and the other for units which come with a pr-molded base (generally infantry and guns). Both start, however, with basic cleanup and separation of the figures.

O8 uses some ultra hard and fairly brittle alloy in its figs. If I didn't know better, I'd even say it was aluminium. It has ZERO give, so you can't correct (the thankfully almost uneard of) casting errors by bending the metal back into place. If you try, the metal will snap. The strength of this allow is enormous, however, and it takes alot to get it to break, which brings up another problem: the tiny bits of flash on the figs can easily pierce your skin like little needles if you grasp the wrong.

I use a fingernail clippers or a small wire cutters to clean the flash off of my figs. First I clean the helmets of any spurs (they generally have some because that's where O8 likes to put some of its flow vents), then I snap off the big bits of flash. Finally, I break off any stands mounted in strips. To do this, I wrap the strip in cloth and simply snap it along the molded separation lines. The cloth is necessary to avoid mauling your fingers - as I said, this metal is strong stuff!

Fingernail clipper for cleaning up a 25lb gun. Note the molded separation line between the lorried and unlorried gun. Enough pressure will snap that cleanly in two, but make sure you protect your fingers while applying pressure!

Bases for free-standing vehicles are simple to prepare. I paint them with a thin coat of Vallejo "Sandy Paste" and Bob's yer uncle. After it dries, you glue down the vehicle. If you want to get fancy, you can drag a toothpick tip through the goop before it dries to create tread tracks. Be careful, though! Remember that you're working in a very small scale: tread tracks that are acceptably deep for 6mm will look like veritable canyons here! The key is using a very thin covering of sandy paste: almost a wash.

Even so, I only bother to scribe in track marks for bases which will have heavy tanks. Light tanks like Stuarts will simply ahve theirs applied with paint.

Units molded to a base need to be glued to the stand first, then have sandy paste applied around them with a brush or a toothpick. The degree to which you want to even out the base is a matter of personal taste. I just try to mute the molded base out rather than make it dissappear entirely. The second option is entirely too much work for me!

Bases being pasted. In the lower left hand corner, a 25lb field gun. To the right of that, you can see a HQ stand. The 40mm bofors has a molded base and so is pasted at this point. Further vehicles will be glued to the top once the paste dries. Moving upwards one can see some of my homemade recon bases and, at the very top, a set of FAA/FAO bases. The recon bases are being pasted now because the armored cars which will go on top of them are free-standing.

When you base, try to base to a standard which allows you to easily identify the units in question at a glance. For example, all my infantry has 5 figures standing and five lying down while engineers are all standing. Further differentiation can be done during the painting process later on, but a little thought now can save a lot of grief later. I should have staggered my mortar support units and kept the machinegun units based in line, but I didn't think of this until everything was already glued down. Oh well... This is mostly a problem with infantry, I find, as tanks are pretty easy to tell apart at this scale. The only difficulties for vehicles might be, say, distinguishing Panther As from Panther Fs. Again, here a distinctive basing method is called for.

I generally put down two vehicles per stand as I feel that this gives an acceptable feeling of mass without makiung things look too crowded. Even so, you can see in the pictures below that my Grants are pushing it. I should've moved these farther out to the base edges. Oh, well...


Applying the first coat of paint

After all the bases are done and the figures glued to them, I then apply a base coat of paint to everything. In this case, I'll be using an old pot of Howard Hues DAK sand that I had laying around (it's probably 20 years old now). The goal here is to get a thin coat over the whole works. One shouldn't get stressed out if the figures don't get covered completely, as they are will have another base coat applied to them later.

Now's a good time to sit back and re-evaluate the project. One will always find some things missing, new figures which need to be bought or swapped in, etc.

In my case, I decided that 4 FAO's were just too many, and I reduced their number to two. To adequately model British fire support doctrine with two FAOs, I'll have a house rule that only FAOs can call all artillery, but that HQs can call in any artillery assigned to their formation (in this case, to their brigade).

I also note that I forgot to buy quad haulers for the 25lbrs. I'll use other trucks for now and swap the quads in at a later date.

Finally, just as I began to type this up, O8 announced the release of a British 8th Army command pack. I will thus not build the CO stand for now and I'll leave space on the armor HQ stands for the anti-aircraft tank which comes in the new pack.

I've also decided against basing the trucks for now, except for weapons haulers. There is one truck with a lorried gun based for every two unlorried weapons in the division.

Other than that, Thunderbirds seem to be go. Here's a photo of the division laid out in all its basic golden glory...

The whole division in company scale (i.e. one base = one company or half artillery battalion.)

The 201st Motorized Brigade. HQ up front, followed by carrier companies, infantry, machineguns, 2 lber ATG portees and mortars. Mortars should have been based distinctively from MGs, so I'm going to have to visually define them better come painting and flocking time.

The 2nd Armored Brigade. Crusaders up front, Grants in the rear. To the left is its organic motor infantry battalion: carriers, infantry, machingun and portee. HQ is at back right.

My personal favorites: the 4th Armored Brigade. I mean, Stuarts AND Grants: what's not to like?

Protips to remember in this stage

1) Base look-alike units differently so that they can be told apart at a glance.

2) Base units with special characteristics (i.e. recon, command) on specially-shaped bases.

3) Leave a 5mm-wide strip clear of figures at the back of the base. A label decribing the unit can be affixed here later, if you like.