8th Army Indian Infantry

Gonna give you a brief outlook on what is coming in the course of this project. I am starting with just the core plastic box of 8th Army infantry by Warlord Games with little addition of figures by Blacktree (a Medic) and Stoessie’s Heroes (Laird Stirling) and a Bedford 3 ton truck, also by WG. So my starting army is made up out of these units:

HQ:

Lord Stirling (as himself)

Lt. + Radio Operator

Medic Team

Support:

2″ Mortar Team

Boys AT Rifle Team

Transport:

Bedford 3 ton truck

Infantry:

10 men w rifles incl LMG

8 men w rifles incl LMG

8 men w rifles incl LMG

For the future I am planning on adding another 15cwt truck, a Matilda II tank, a Bren carrier and an armoured car of some sort. Plus one squad of Royal Engineers…

Now time to put some paint down onto the toy soldiers. Here’s the list of paints and their purposes in making the little men look the business…or at least I hope so. For the basics: I primed with Army Painter Skeleton Bone spraypaint and after applying all colors I use Army Painter Soft Tone and then brush up and highlight all over again. A little time consuming, but I’m used to that process of painting and it gives me the opportunity to redo the flaws and correct the mistakes.

Skintone:

Indian Shadow (Scale 75)- Base

Arabic Shadow (Scale75) – mix in for 1st highlight

Golden Skin (Scale 75) – addition to the former mix for 2nd highlight

Uniform:

Iraqi Sand (Vallejo Model Color (VMC))

Socks:

Khaki (VMC)

Turban:

Khaki (VMC) for the regular guys

Stone Golem (Army Painter (AP)) for the NCOs

Webbing / Backpack:

German Camo Beige (VMC)

Metal:

Gunmetal Grey (VMC)

Natural Steel (VMC)

Wood:

Beige Brown (VMC)

Beard / Hair:

Black (VMC)

Black Grey (VMC)

London Grey (VMC)

Boots:

Black (VMC)

Water Bottle:

Flat Brown (VMC)

The Bases:

First sanded it with’some very fine bird’s sand and then used Dark Sand and Iraqi Sand plus Stone Golem for a drybrush highlight.

Next on will be some pics of my test model. For the pale skinned englishmen in my force I will give another example in a future update.

As we all know, painted men fight better. But they do need something to fight over, for sure. For the upcoming Western Desert battles I stumbled over a real bargain at a local gaming store. MDF laser cut arabian houses. Nice kits, easy to assemble, really sturdy to be pushed around on the tabletop at a price I would call “reasonable” at the least…6 Euros (about 4,50 British Pounds)!! For the small house that is, bigger ones go for 9 – 16 Euros each. Just have a glance yourself…

Here’s the kit, before assembling….

So this was fast and easy to put together. There you go! And after that I took some very watered down pva, put that on the walls and just threw some very fine bird’s sand on. Almost ready to go. The painting  – and pictures of that – will follow in another entry.

So, I’m going to call this finished. In a few words, I primed the house with Skeleton Bone primer by Army painter, used Vallejo Beige Brown for all the wooden parts and Vallejo Mahogany for the bricks. Then just drybrushed the edges and some parts around the windows and wooden panels with a very light stone grey color from the hardware store and that’s it. Ready to be used on the tabletop. Of course one could really go to town with more washes and drybrushing and such but for me, the state it’s in comes close to a “realistic” look and suits the tabletop perfectly.

Sorry for not reporting for quite a while…but the “real life” got in my way during the first weeks of 2019.

So, what was I up to in a tabletop way? I was at least able to paint the first whole squad of my brave Sikhs. When painting the first batch of models I always really get to grips with some of the flaws of my initial plan. Then, what was it in this case…?

1.”The Wash”

I use AP Soft Tone for Inking / Washing my models and this time I had to realize…even soft was way too hard. The contrast was too strong on the vanilla / sand / yellow(ish) uniform. Problem was solved by thinning down the Soft Tone with water…aproximatley 50/50 (water / wash)…that really did the job and gave me the result I was looking for. Toning down the Iraqi Sand without having a contrast that stark.

2. “The Highlight”

I then soon felt like even though Iraqi Sand after all is a very light color on its own it still needs some brighter highlights to give the models the final touch. To get the result just mixed in plain white to get to a 30 / 70 mix (30% white / 70% Iraqi Sand).

3. “The Skin”

Even though I felt okay with my test model I soon came to the opinion that too light is not the way to go, so I simply didn’t light up the skin tone as much as I did before…

Now, that is it…and here you go with my No. 1 Sqaud of Sikh soldiers for my 8th Army project…C&C very welcome.

Huzzah!