Warhammer 40,000: Ooarai Girls Academy

"We're lucky the school's on a carrier ship."
- Girls und Panzer 1

Vincent van Gogh: Still life (Vase with twelve sunflowers), 1888

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As my opponents seemed to quite like the idea of tanks, the obvious thing to add to our Imperial army was a Leman Russ battle tank. I wanted to do something a little bit different for the model, though, and this is what I ended up with:

The model is a Panzer IV ausf. D from Warlord Games, and it's excellent; admittedly there were a couple of unsightly lumps of resin, but they were fairly easy to remove, and maybe I don't entirely know what to do with almost any of the metal doohickeys, but I think overall the model is very good and definitely worth its price.

Accompanying the tank is in the image above is a Gestapo officer from Warlord's delightful Guarding the Chateau set, i.e. Herr Flick of the Ordo Hereticus.

I'll admit that the reason I chose a Pz.IV for our Leman Russ was Girls und Panzer. Seeing as how I've done my master's thesis on tanks, I was vaguely aware that it existed, and I encountered the full absurdity of the manga when buying a goon a tank-related present. So when browsing 1/56 scale tanks online, I ended up buying the Pz.IV ausf. D that the protagonists use in their tankery exercises in the first manga.

Of course, one thing leads to another. I originally intended to have just a single Leman Russ named Ooarai Girls Academy. However, because it would be advantageous from a rules standpoint to field an entire spearhead detachment of tanks, it seems like it might be a decent idea to collect three more Ooarai tanks, one of them an HQ tank. So I googled for a female tank commander miniature - only to find that something called Company B sells not only Ooarai decals but also anime tank commanders. So obviously I ordered some.

Here's the Ooarai Girls Academy Panzer IV, then, with proper markings and everything:

The running gear was painted Vallejo Gunmetal Grey, and given a wash of Smoke and Black Glaze. The hull color is German Grey.

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One of the most delightful and senseless absurdities of Girls und Panzer is that for some reason that completely escapes me, all of the tankery high schools are based on aircraft carriers. With Japanese entertainment, I find one just has to accept some things. This does, however, make a Warhammer 40,000 conversion remarkably easy from a fluff standpoint. Clearly the 40k Ooarai Girls Academy is an arm of the Schola Progenium that trains orphan girls into Imperial Guard tank crews on a giant starship. It makes as much sense as anything else.

Because the Ooarai tanks will eventually form their own detachment, they'll benefit from a regimental doctrine. Clearly the best doctrine for a detachment of Leman Russes is Tallarn. So if anyone finds 28mm models of Japanese schoolgirls dressed like they're in the Afrika Korps, let me know!

Char B1 bis

This Warlord Char B1 bis represents the Public Morals Committee tank. As it's the obvious candidate to be a Commissar Tank if someone wants to field one at some point, it needed a commander from Company B; I assembled this as a French tank in all other respects, but accommodating the commander in the turret required the German hatch as opposed to the original French cupola.

Here's the finished article with a Commissar tank stripe.

Pz.38(t) ausf. B

Next up: the student council tank, a Pz.38(t) from Warlord. For 40k purposes, I want this to be the HQ tank. Because a Tank Commander has a BS of 3+, it seems compulsory to take sponson weapons here, but they really interfere with the Girls und Panzer aesthetic. The solution? Magnets.

Those are plasma cannons from the Sentinel kit; they look a little big on an actual 28mm vehicle, but then everything smaller would just look like a plasma gun.

Here's the unpainted tank without plasma cannons:

And here with.

I think it painted up all right.

And the plasma guns are delightfully easy to attach and detach.

This is such a cute little tank!

M3 Lee

Finally, the volleyball team. Compared to the other tanks, the M3 is the size of a house.

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I had also ordered a Renault FT 17 from Warlord ages ago, and as part of this project, I painted it up in Ooarai colors as well.

Finally, since we were buying World War II vehicles, how could we resist a Salamander Recon Tank from the Imperial Armor index, represented by a Warlord Games Sd.kfz 222, i.e. Lieutenant Grüber's little tank from 'Allo 'Allo.

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I've said this before, but I'll say it again: I really like Warlord vehicles! These little tanks were a lot of fun to paint.

Battlefront: Let's collect 15mm miniatures - or not, I guess

Painting all this Star Wars Rebellion and Armada stuff has made me realize how much I miss 6mm Epic. Now that I have a proper hobby space, I'm going to have to bring what remains of my Epic collection home; until then, the closest thing I have to that is a random collection of 15mm miniatures. I painted them, bought several more, and ended up frustrated by the whole thing.

To make a long story short, Battlefront won't sell me their products. I tried ordering a whole bunch of their World War III stuff to our friendly local gaming store; some of it showed up, and some never did. I made the order in July and eventually cancelled it in December. We also ordered some stuff direct from them, and got it, but when we tried to get several boxes of stuff from their plastics sale in November-December, our payment was declined and after a frustratingly pointless email exchange, we gave up. Judging from other things I've read online, this isn't exactly a unique occurrence.

I'm disappointed, because I liked painting these models, but if they won't sell me any, what can I do? So here are all the 15mm models I made, sadly with the caveat that I can't recommend trying to buy any of your own! We order from quite a few miniature companies online, and no-one else has ever treated us this miserably.

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What I have here is another summer surprise: an ancient Flames of War starter set I have no particular recollection of buying, but here it is. I've misplaced one StuG III, but that leaves one German assault gun and three M47 Shermans. The rest are Zvezda 1:100 snap-fit plastic models, which are very cheerful, decent quality and ludicrously cheap, so I've randomly bought some that have met my eye as I shopped at our friendly local hobby and gaming stores. There's a Pz.38(t), an SU-76M, an M3 Lee and a Sd.Kfz.222, I think.

Here's a selection of the models painted up in Ooarai Girls Academy colors.

I was originally thinking we'd try the ancient Flames of War rules I found, but then they came out with a new edition and a fairly cheap Stalingrad starter set, so I got that instead.

As a curiosity, here's a side-by-side view of a Zvezda T-34/85 and a Battlefront T-34/76 from the Stalingrad set. There's not much to choose from here!

The Zvezda model is obviously easier to assemble, being snap-fit, and the Battlefront one comes with loads more doodads like different stowage and weapon options. The Zvezda hard plastic was marginally nicer to work with. Here's a Zvezda Panzer IV D and a Battlefront Panzer IV with a longer gun. Here the Zvezda tank is noticeably smaller.

All in all, the plastic tanks in the Stalingrad box were fun and easy to assemble. There's a paper guide and more extensive assembly guides on the website, and I had no trouble. Here they all are:

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Because I have no interest in the US Army, I decided to paint the Shermans in Soviet colours (the only alternative I considered was the Brazilians). I'm delighted to report that Vallejo's Camo Olive Green seems to be exactly that slightly unpleasant shade of green drab that I think Soviet tanks were; at least I'm very happy with how they look. Also I had a great time painting slogans on them!

I know Soviet Shermans didn't actually have red stars on them, but they look so cute I couldn't not do it.

And here's the SU-76 and KV-2.

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As for the German tanks in the new starter set, I wanted to do something a little bit more interesting with them. For the long-barreled Pz.IV, I decided to create a completely ahistorical Finnish paint scheme: the very dark green of the winter war era, combined with a late- or post-war roundel. Frankly, I'm no fan of swastikas. I also got a Vickers 6-ton and painted it with the same scheme; the base color is Luftwaffe Camo Green. You could argue it should be darker, and I'm still thinking about it myself.

Finland never operated Pz.IIIs, though. But you know who did? Turkey. I've had very little success finding out anything about the way they were painted, beyond a picture of a dark green Pz.III at a Turkish military museum, and a claim that early Turkish tanks simply used a red roundel as identification. Therefore, I give you this:

So this is now a Finno-Turkish armored detachment. After painting these models, I learned that several entire corps of the Ottoman Army fought on the Eastern Front in Word War I, as did the battalion of Finnish volunteers; so maybe it's not as far-fetched as I had originally thought!

And here are the starter set Soviets, plus the Zvezda T-34/85.

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Incidentally, I also got this Battlefront T-28.

I find the early Soviet multi-turret tanks absolutely fascinating. Several countries came up with these kinds of behemoths in the interwar years, but as far as I know, the Soviets were the only ones who actually went through with serial production and deployment, which led to a number of T-28s being captured by the Finnish army and put into use. I have a quibble with the Battlefront site, though. It shows the T-28 in Finnish colors, with the shorter of the two main gun options. I've looked through all the pictures in the Finnish military's wartime photograph archive with the keyword T-28, and I can't find a single one with that kind of gun. They all have the longer one. So that's how I assembled mine. Like the Shermans, this is also a resin and metal model, but it's very good quality and I enjoyed assembling it.

Finally, one last Zvezda model: an ISU-152.

During the Continuation War, the Finnish army managed to capture two ISU-152 assault guns. One was refurbished into a recovery vehicle; the other was fixed up, repainted - and lost in combat almost immediately afterward. However, for a very short span of time during the war, an ISU-152 in Finnish colors existed, and so I've painted one.

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While I was at it, I also ordered the Hammerfall starter set for Team Yankee, which they're now calling World War III. I had a look at the previous edition rules earlier, and was disappointed by how badly they modeled the Soviets, but Oil War held out the promise of doing something completely different, so I thought I'd have another look.

I'm somewhat entertained by the fact that Hammerfall is basically identical to the Flames of War starter set: three Soviet tanks and two tanks from the other side, the same cardboard terrain, the same scenarios. I mean I sort of get it, but then I also feel like someone could have made a bit more of an effort? I was going to come up with a different scenario for us to play, but then I never got the central scenery piece I ordered, so...

The models, though, are superb. Battlefront's resin and metal stuff is good, but their hard plastics are excellent. Especially the two M1 Abramses were a joy to build, and gave me serious M1 Tank Platoon flashbacks.

I ended up going with Refractive Green for their base color, as I wanted them to look quite drab.

The T-64s were also fun to build, although to be honest, I never did quite figure out where the snorkel attaches to exactly. 

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That's the starter set; what I was really interested in, though, was collecting an Iranian army. Here's some Chieftain tanks:

And some BMPs.

By the way, I absolutely call bullshit on the M113 having a higher front armor value than the BMP. The BMP had steeply sloped steel armor; the M113 is a tall aluminium box. Giving an APC from the 1950s a higher armor value makes a mockery of the whole concept of the infantry fighting vehicle. What turned me off Team Yankee initially was how the force structures and scenarios in the original book just made no sense from a Soviet point of view. Of course you can argue that a wargame based on an American novel about Americans was always going to do this, especially in conjunction with the deep brain rot that set in a lot of military minds about Soviet hardware after the Gulf War. But still, an M113 being more heavily armoured and no easier to hit than a BMP is beyond absurd.

Here's my first platoon with their BMPs: that's 4 rifle teams, 3 RPG teams and an M47 Dragon team.

Because Battlefront wouldn't sell me any US infantry, these guys were the only 15mm infantry I painted, but I enjoyed it. The weapons are Gunmetal Grey and Black, except for the RPGs in Soviet Uniform and the M47 in US Olive Drab; the uniforms are US Dark Green, and the webbing and suchlike is Khaki. I'm quite happy with the result!

I also painted some M109 SP guns in Iranian colors.

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So that's my 15mm collection; apparently it won't be getting any bigger! My search for a smaller-scale wargame to collect continues.