writes:I'm starting to put my WWI British force together. This is my first adventure into WWI in 15mm scale.
The first unit to cross my workbench is this Royal Artillery OQF 18-pdr field battery. It's available in its own pack from Battlefront, but mine came as part of the British WWI starter set.
The unit consists of two medium Flames of War stands, each with one gun and one limber. Ten crew figures are included.
I sent my WWI British for painting to our friends in Ukraine, Old Guard Painters.
I simply gave them the painting instructions that came with the figures. I thought the assembled guns and limbers would be delicate to ship, so I asked them to leave everything unassembled.
When the painted figures arrived, I referred to the online instructions as my assembly guide. (They are for the first-edition set, but still useful.) The wheels were difficult to attach because of the tiny pin-and-hole arrangement, and were easily knocked off. I could not get the gun shield to slide to the indicated position, so it is about 1mm further forward than it should be.
The limbers can be built with the door open or closed. I built one of each.
Then comes the issue of where to put everything. The only option that looked good to me was to put the gun front-left, and the limber back-left. I put three ground-mounted figures in the base indents, and put the plastic disks into the unused indents. There's also a sitting figure that sort of threads into the gun seat, with his feet inside the gun. That left two crew figures left over.
I left the base unpainted, glued on the ground-mounted crew figures, and used fine railroad ballast as the flocking (to resemble mud). After the bases were flocked, the guns and limbers were superglued in place, and the seated figure was glued into place.
LITKO makes FlexSteel self-adhesive bases that match the standard Flames of War base sizes. I stuck a piece under each plastic base, for safe storage later in magnet-lined storage boxes.
For the final step, everything received a coat of spray matte sealer.