15mm late WW2 French Artillery

I'm diligently plugging away at a painting commission that news to on the table at the beginning of November. These are some late WW2 French in 15mm for Flames of War.

Today I finished the artillery. A few spotters and command figures are with the infantry in the basing process but the main components of these units are here. There is a four-gun battery of 105mm howitzers. There are US models--from what I can tell, the French forces at this point were a real hodgepodge of equipment and uniforms.

These were fairly good models. I normally despise artillery, ATGS and AA guns as they are fiddle, with poorly engineered and ambiguous joins, The 105s were okay. The 57mm ATGs below were slightly less okay--you have the guess a bit at the angle of the gun shield. One of the advantages of plastic is that the join can be designed in such a way that the angle is forced.

Nice enough figures. I like the guy (left above) with his arm raised and a hard bitten expression on his face. I struggled a bit to find a colour that seemed to match the French uniforms (which were anything but). After awhile I decided to simply go with a brown.

A model I have never built before is the 50 cal. AA trailer above, I've built a lot of the 50 cal turrets, but usually these are mounted in a half-track. This was a fairly straight forward model. Alas, the Bofors gun below was not.

The website described it as a precision model, which I take it is the Battlefront equivalent of airplane models described as "Master kit" (i.e., we didn't make a good kit so you'll have to fix a lot of stuff on the fly--hope you have a dremel and the nimble fingers of a five-year-old).

Eventually I got it together but not before resorting to finding instructions online. If your kit isn't intuitive for an experienced modeller, how is a 14-year-old kid you are trying to attract to the hobby gonna make it? In the end, a nice little gun, though. No gun shield but everything else looks great.

Up next: I have a buttload of French infantry that I am about to base. I also have a few last minute additions to the army (some HMGs and jeeps) to built and paint but this should all be done by the end of next week. We also have the club on Tuesday. After that, there are a pair of late-war German armies in 15mm that I need to build and paint.