JTinQT - Week Nine - More VBCW Government Forces - The DFF's

Hi All

Few more government forces in VBCW genre and pleased to get on to a unit I knew I definitely wanted to field, although militarily they had a terrible record. The "DFF's" or Damm Fine Fellows! This was also a play on the initials of the unit commander Dominic Farrar-Foxley, old Etonian, City of London banker and socialite with royal family links. A brilliant publicist Farrar-Foxley made sure that the unit had plenty of newspaper coverage where they were often referred to with the other nickname of "The Chaps".

Here are the first six figures, from Footsore with an additional very old Western "Doc Holiday" gunfighter figure from somewhere, anyway he had the appropriate head ware!

    The Footsore figures represent the unit at the start of the conflict in civvies dress, although with his royal influence Farrar-Foxley was able to gain access to army equipment very quickly and later they adopted a more quasi army look. However the suits were typically from Marks and Spencer and very hard wearing so remained popular as a uniform throughout. I included the Footsore fictional "Bertie Wooster" figure with a few small adjustments and painted to fit in with the overall DFF unit look.

As mentioned the DFF's did have a terrible and incompetent military record. This is typified by the units destruction, hit in a friendly fire incident from its own mortar section during the Wimbledon Common skirmish. Still great to see more modern revisionist accounts stressing the value the unit had as a symbol of conservative English fightback.

Hopefully more to come next week .........

All the best Jez

From StuartL - Dutch Mill

Another small post from me this week. I have stuff on my workbench, but can't seem to find the time to get it done. Fingers crossed it'll be finished by next week.
In the meantime, I have painted up some more MDF terrain from Sarissa Precision. I picked up this windmill a while back. It's a truly massive piece of terrain. The top of the mill itself is about 9" off the ground. The sails add another 6" or so to the height and to the width on either side.

When I finished the kit, I didn't like the empty spaces in the sails so I glued some tissue paper over the backs and painted it with watered down PVA glue mixed with a drop of buff paint from vallejo. I think it gives a nice impression of canvas.

To try to add some extra detail to the piece, I wanted to make the MDF look more like real wood. To that end, I scraped a modelling saw across the panels to make some small grooves, then went over them again with a hobby knife to add some deeper marks. These stand out quite nicely after I painted the model in a watered down brown paint. I added some washes to add some colour to the wood. I tried drybrushing, but it didn't work out to well and now one side (above) is a bit messy. I may go back over it with brown at some point to tidy it up.

For all it's size, the mill building isn't that big in terms of AHPC terrain cubes. At 9" x 3" x 3" for the main structure it's only 81 cubic inches. However, since I'm feeling generous, I'll add a bit extra for the stairs, the wide base and the sails. That should round it up to 10 points, giving me a slight boost 809.5 (unofficial) points scored for this challenge so far.