1/72 Red Devils – done for now

painted-red-devils

It is accomplished. I’ve finished my (minor) contribution to this weekend’s Arnhem game.

  • 4 command model (including a Frost and, almost more importantly, a Tatham-Warter model)
  • 4 10-man squads with NCO w/ Sten, Bren, 2 Stens, 6 Riflemen (though there’s an extra Rifle to the side in case we want to throttle down and only have 2 Stens in each squad)
  • 4 PIATs
  • 3 Medium Mortars
  • 3 MMGs
  • Also ended up with 2 extra Brens

This is a hair more than we’ll actually be using, I think, but it’s a substantial step down from the original plan.  I’ve got another 5 squads’ worth of minis prepped for painting, but I’m glad this is all I needed to do in the end.  Having painted a bunch of these, I’ve decided that I hate this scale.  1/72 combines the drawbacks of 15mm (poor/difficult to paint detail, requires volume) and 28mm (sufficient detail to require attention) with none of their respective benefits (seriously who cares about detail, they’re 15mms and interesting detail enough to merit the effort), hitting a sour spot between hassle and payoff.  That’s why I won’t be sticking these bastards into the lightbox.

I’m sure I’ll finish off the rest of them at some point.  It’s a shame that they’re Paras, and so likely don’t need much in the way of vehicles, which I gather is the point of the scale.

The table, however, is going to be magnificent.