After the German vehicles, I will describe the accompanying infantry. I need two battalions for the Rapid Fire style game I am planning for the battle of Medenine. Exactly how many figures this is I haven’t finally determined – but the starting point is 24 (three groups of 8) plus supporting weapons. I had enough already to cover one battalion-plus, but needed more.

Until now I have been using AB Figures’ standard Germans for further north, and simply painted the uniforms in tropical colours. It’s not too far off. But Medenine is one of the last desert battles, and features the Afrika Korps (DAK). I noticed that the AB range for the DAK did not feature troops in shorts – really not appropriate for the winter battles in Tunisia – so I thought I would give them a try. I bought three packs of infantry (ten in each), one of tripod-mounted machine-guns (two models) and one of officers (6 figures). All of the infantry are in helmets (good from my point of view), though there are caps for some of the others. Some of the infantry have sand goggles (which you don’t see in Sicily or Italy) and some are wearing gaiters, a feature of the German tropical uniform that you tend to see in pictures of earlier in the campaign – but also in the occasional one from Tunisia. These are fine for Medenine, and acceptable for the later 1943 campaigns.

I painted up all of the infantry (two groups of “advancing” and one of “prone”) and the machine-guns, along with most of the command group, along with figures I already had in stock, especially to provide the radios. I painted four command groups of two figures, three with radios. This will serve either as command groups at battalion or more senior level, or as artillery observers.

A closer look at one of the advancing infantry groups:

And the other one:

And the prone section (I entered this in my club’s monthly painting competition – it was voted 3rd out of 3 in its category…):

The main uniform is olive, made from mixing black with Oxide Yellow and white, I attempted a little variation in the amount of white, but this is hardly visible. The helmets for two of the sections are in the Braun used for the vehicles, and the other one was the Grau. Vehicle paint was often used to paint the helmets, and there are surviving examples with both of these colours. I darkened down the skin tones to reflect sun tans – but the result is still a bit on the red side, suggesting a bit of sunburn.

Here are the two machine-guns:

My photography doesn’t bring out the weapons themselves. Normally for medium machine-guns (i.e. medium calibre mounted on sustained fire mounts) I put just two crew on the main base, with a third crew member available on a separate one (rule systems can require individual crew members to be accounted for) – but these AB figures were obviously designed to go on the same base, and separate bases would have made little sense. They are a bit strange, in that they aren’t actually engaged in combat, but rather waiting for the action to happen. They are rather nice, though.

Finally the officer groups:

After the initial paint job, I applied my wash/glaze (a bit thick for wash, but thin for a glaze…) of Liquitex airbrush matt varnish with a little acrylic black ink. I thought the black would work better with the olive colouring than brown, and the brown ink I had was a bit bright. I tried to use less ink than on the previous occasion (with my British) but the ink is so powerful that it didn’t really work. It made the figures too dark. I touched up the uniform high and middle lights with fresh paint, and also the faces, which I think is good enough. The ink brings out the AB mouldings beautifully, almost to the level of the cartoon-style appearance which used to be very fashionable (though often achieved with a black undercoat). But I’ll have to try something less dark next time.

The bases are steel washers or mount board. The latter isn’t ideal as it can warp, and sometimes fray if over-handled. Pendraken do excellent pre-cut MDF bases and I may move towards these in future. Initially (and before any painting) I cover with a mix of acrylic medium, sand and a white-raw umber mix, with the edges painted in the same paint mix – quite pale with the idea that this would act as countershading (but not with the lighting in the pictures…). After painting they are covered with a mix Woodland Scenic flocks and sand. This gives a sort of generic arid finish. I have learnt the hard way how easy it is to make bases too dark.

I’m nearly ready for Medenine so far as miniatures are concerned. I need a couple of 2-pdr antitank guns for the British, and I need to find a way of making my die-cast Dorchester command vehicle table ready. The bigger obstacle is that I’m still working on my hex-based rules. While I’m loosely basing my order of battle on Rapid Fire, I don’t find those rules very satisfactory. I love the tabletop look of Rapid Fire, but not the extreme bath-tubbing of the rules.

So far as painting projects go, I’m being pulled in two directions. Do I continue to build up my Napoleonics for club games – now that I am converted to the Général d’Armée 2 rules. Or do I resume my 10mm 1866 project? Some time ago I prepared a large batch of Prussian Napoleonic artillery. I don’t strictly need these (GDA2 scenarios are quite light on artillery), but I think I’ll do these next anyway. If nothing else I want to try out new techniques on the horses.