Hi fellas,

A few months ago, while talking hobby related stuff, myself and Immolaattori decided that we should go to the Art of War -tournament held in the UK. We had not really played early war before, nor did we have armies ready for such an event, but it was such a great idea that we started to plan lists and look for flights around the weekend of 18th and 19th of april.

Both of us had our busy lives to tend to, but we managed to paint two new shiny armies in a relatively tight timeframe. Of these two armies mine was based after Rommel’s Afrika Korps campaign. My original plan was to build and paint something else, but time had a pretty nice chokehold on me so I had to look for alternatives. I have had my Afrika Korps for several years, but I never painted them further than basecoat. Now it seemed, that I finally had a good reason to finish the job I once started!

I had previously built alot of 251 model C halftracks from battlefront, and also the Afrika Korps infantry along with some guns and warriors, including Rommel himself. I also wanted to have a Stuka bomber, so I built one of my revell stuka kits and painted it up for the apropriate theatre. While painting, I didnt want to underline any specific point in the desert war, so I could use the army all the way from early war to midwar if needed.

I have alot of tanks for afrika too, but for this tournament I wanted to keep it simple and go with a halftrack -heavy mechanised list with a good defensive potential. My support consisted of a PaK38 platoon, light infantry gun platoon and a mortar platoon, along with two patrols of 8-rads for both offensive and defensive recce. My plan seemed solid and list seemed interesting, but being new to early war and not playing actively had its toll on my games. I placed 3rd from the last spot, but learned alot about early war and what to bring next time. A few tanks couldnt hurt.

All and all I am happy with my army, even if its not my best work. I spent roughly 2 weeks painting it, of which the last 5 days I spent painting pretty much all of the details other than light edge work and pin washing on the vehicles (including pretty much all of the infantry stands). Time spent vs. quality was definately one of the factors in this project.

I hope you get a dusty kick out of them!
– Juha