New Year New Army – Table Top Ready

Martin back with a final installment on my New Year New Army project and I’m glad to say its finished. The goal was to paint a complete new army and after a bit of a hobby hiatus in March, April has been highly productive with my last 5 platoons being finished.

So lets start with a quick recap of where I was at the end of February. I had a Crusader Squadron with an HQ and all five troops of Crusaders painted as well as a unit of Grants, a Support platoon of 25pdr guns and a pair of Soft Skin Transports. What I had left to do was a Motor Rifle Company!

Now like most lists what I started with, isn’t always where I finish up but on this occassion I’ve stayed pretty close to my plan! In fact what I have done is paint only what I needed plus an extra platoon of Universal Carriers, a Stuart OP and 2 extra Crusader turrets.

Unusally for this project I’ve kept track of my hobby time. I’m not a super quick painter or even a particularly creative one, I simply follow the excellent guides in Colours of War. Overall this project has taken me 60 hours to complete over the 4 months equating to half an hour everyday which is an amount of time most of us could easily find and shows what can be achieved with making a very small commitment to getting it done.

Why Extra Turrets?

I had an unasable pair of LW Crusader AA tanks from a D-Day project in 2024 and these make the MW tank as well. This reminds us of the importance of having a bits box. I rarely just throw any leftover parts away, you never know when they may be useful. This will enable me to rebalance the Formation to be either slightly more shooty with an extra 6pdr tank or slightly less so dropping a 6pdr for a 2pdr gunned tank. It may not sound much different but it allows me to have quite a bit of flexibility with the option of fielding three full Crusader II troops which I can go even more into a cavalry mindset with, by incresing the Cavalry Commander Command Card count. Alternatively I can focus more on the shooting and go with a Scout Tanks Command Card option to improve their ressilance (improved Tactics and Hit on for loss of speed) and make more use of the 6pdr tanks extra AT capability. I’ll probably base that choice on the opponents I’m facing vs Italians with M14/41’s I like the horde feel of the 2pdr option and vs the Germans the smaller more gun orientated list may work better aginst the Panzer III and IV. Here’s what I have with the Scout Tanks option. Overall I swap a Crusader II platoon for a Universal Carrier Patrol and loose one 6pdr gun, not a bad trade.

In the Future

I do have one more expansion planned for the project and it relies on the Pacific release! I have painted my Motor Rifles with a more south asian inspired skin tone and plan to add a second infantry platoon of seikh indians to them to make them into an Indian Motor Rifle Company. They will also get an HMG platoon and Mortar Section as well as a third troop of Universal Carriers. This will enable me to field my Force with more of any infantry focus as well.

So that’s it from me for a while on this, my #New Year New Army project the Desert British are for now done. Martin