New Project! North Africa 1941

Hi all, it’s been a little while since the last post on the blog (almost 3 weeks!). Most of that delay has been because of preparations for this new project I’ve embarked on. This new project (if you’ve read the title you know!) is for some more WWII action, this time in North Africa early-ish in the war.

It’s become clear to me that finishing my 2ème DB army did not in fact cure me of the want to paint more models of the period, and in fact made me keen to move on to the next theatre instead! So why North Africa, and why 1941? There are a couple of answers to these questions so here we go.

North Africa has always been one of those theatres that drew my attention, my first model kit way back when was a spitfire in desert camo and clearly that made an impression on my younger self. Fast forward a few years and I started playing the first Battlefield game (Battlefield 1942) and spent hours playing the El Alamein and Tobruk maps, which wound up being some of my favourites of the game. When my friends and I decided to start playing Bolt Action we settled on late war Europe as the primary theatre we would all put armies together for, but North Africa was also well into the running and I was always keen to do something there.

What sealed the deal was series of conversations I had with my Dad and his Mum not long after finishing the 2ème DB models, which revealed to me that one of his Grandfathers had fought in North Africa and Italy as part of the Buffs (Royal East Kent Regiment). Once I learned that I went on a good old internet scour looking for any information I could find on what the Buffs had gotten up to during the war. By extension that meant reading a lot about the North African campaign in general and well there was no saving me from painting armies for that campaign after that!

That tackles the North Africa part, but why 1941? That answer is a lot simpler, I wanted to paint early war tanks!

So here we are with the first models done for the project: some British infantrymen. I wanted to start with these as my Great-Grandfather was an infantryman and it therefore seemed right to start here. They’re not modelled after any regiment in particular although they could definitely stand in for the Buffs! These are Warlord Games’ 8th Army Infantry Plastics.

Painting-wise these were relatively simple, they’re mostly one colour after all! I created a record of the paints I used, as usual mostly so I remember how I did things down the track, but if it helps someone with their models then that’s always a nice bonus!

I broke away from my usual black base rims for these, but I really wanted to communicate that sun-drenched look and the bright rims really contributed to that I think. They’re painted in Vallejo Iraqi sand.

The reason this post isn’t called 1941 8th Army in North Africa is that as part of this project I plan on painting two armies: an 8th Army force, and their opponents the Afrika Korps (Sorry Italians! I’m sure I’ll get around to painting some). So look forward to seeing some of these painted up too in the near future!

Anyway this should keep me busy for a while! I have a lot more models to get done for this project, including many more British infantry, some Australian infantry (as a nod to where I now live), german infantry, trucks, tanks, artillery etc.