Painted Stridsvagn m/41 (the Swedish Panzer 38 (t) )

The Stridsvagn m/41 I converted two weeks ago have now been painted. It is in the quite cool Swedish camouflage scheme which, unlike most others, used quite a lot of black. The real look was probably a bit more drab than this, but I like the look, and it's more visible on the table top.

The Swedish made Panzer 38(t): Strv m/41

During the 1930's Sweden hummed and hawed about whether to buy tanks, and if so which type. As so many other countries they got worried in the latter part of the decade, and finally ended up ordering a number of Czech tanks. These, however, were ceased by the Germans before dispatch, but they did agree to let Sweden make their own tanks from the drawings as compensation. In total Sweden made about 200 of the now renamed Stridsvagn m/41, most of them by the truck manufacturer Scania in the town of Södertälje.

It still looked remarkably like the Czech variant, the differences partly hidden or not visible on a model. The weapons were Swedish instead of Czech (so I've turned the main gun upside down and I'm still using the wrong machine guns), and the motor were Swedish. The Swedish tower had two periscopes instead of one, some small parts are different (most of them I don't know what they are), and the Swedish tanks always had extra road-wheels behind the tower. I've also turned the front plate upside down; hopefully it's such a good conversion you can't even see it.

You can read more about this tank here and if you read Swedish I recommend this excellent site.

The French Char B1 bis tank

This is a French Char B1 bis I bought at the same time as the Schneider P16 and the 222 from Warlord Games. It's a plastic kit, made by Italeri, and I must say that I prefer it to both resin kits. The only thing I'd complain about is the construction of the turret; the slots stick out too far to the side, so it can't actually rotate! If you want to shoot to the left or backwards you actually have to take it out, turn it 180 degrees, and then put it back backwards...
The guns came with pre-drilled barrels, a technique I hope Warlord takes after any year now. ;) 

This was the first time I experimented with putting mud in the tracks (oh, and that's another complaint, the tracks look quite flat in between the wheels and the tracks). It's just made with mixing fine sand and brown paint, easy peasy, and looks quite good I think!

At first I tried to replicate a brown and green camo pattern I saw online, but when that didn't look as impressive as I'd hoped I changed my mind and added the beige as well. Looks much better now. Hope you like it!