Dad's Army 1

I'm just about finished the figures I'm working on (pictures soon - I've still got the bases to do), but have already started preparing the next group.

This will be a group of Foundry WW2 Home Guard figures, specifically the British Home Guard Heroes (excluding the bloke with the pistol) who just happen to resemble the main characters in Dad's Army. I also have the British Characters set for the rest of the main players, but I'm painting them separately.

The plan is to create a diorama of them in the town hall, with various groups chatting to each other, as shown below. The actual placement will likely change, as it in fact did between taking the following two photographs.

and from above

Figure Preparation

The figures took quite a lot of cleaning as there were some bad miscasts and mold slippage to repair. This was rather irritating, as Foundry are normally better than this. There were also some very badly placed mold lines, including one right through the left eye and cheek of the not-Pike figure.

Most annoyingly, however, were the rifles, which were just really, really bad. They were the wrong shape and had very little detail on them - some bits just half-heartedly etched in. I decided to replace the rifles of not-Jones and not-Fraser (especially as there was a blob of metal at the top of his rifle that messed the whole thing up). Not-Wilson's rifle wasn't quite so bad, and would have been more difficult to replace, so I left it.

I had a look around and decided that the Warlord Games 28mm British Infantry would be my best bet for spares (the figures exist, although I can't find them on their web site), so I picked up a set at Carronade.

After I got them home I had a look at the box-art and decided that they didn't look that great, and the guns looked really thin and rubbish. I decided to stick with the original ones on the figures and consigned the 28mm plastics to the loft.

Later on, however, when I finished cleaning the Dads Army figures, I changed my mind again and decided that the rifles were too poor to use, so I might as well see what the Warlord figures looked like. Upon opening the box (having retrieved it from the loft) I was extremely happy to find that the models inside were excellent - it was just some incredibly bad box-art that they'd used. There are a number of weapon sprues, each containing: rifles (including ones with bayonets and a sniper scope), Bren guns, Sten guns, Tommy guns, pistols, a PIAT and a 2" mortar. Not only that, there are extra heads in the box and the heads are separate from the helmets, so can be used for anything. Given the facial expressions and range of ages depicted, there's a lot of potential for conversions. The rest of the parts are up to the same high standard, and it actually made me want to do 28mm WW2, just to paint these guys. It's not something I'll have any time to do in the near future, but I highly recommend these figures - just ignore the box art.

So, having found excellent rifles, I cut the junk ones away from not-Jones and not-Fraser and replaced them. A quick bit of ProCreate to repair the slings and everything was as good as new.

As the figures will all be standing on a wooden floor (representing the church hall), I removed their bases, filed down and drilled their feet and mounted them on corks for painting.

As the figures kept on falling over, the only other thing I did was to attach the corks to 50mm diameter plasticard for stability.

Next steps

I will start the flesh this week, and I'll try and post regular updates, although, to be honest, there's not much involved in WW2 British uniforms, so I'm hoping they don't take too long.