1940 BEF - Matilda II

Yet again another entry in the Annual Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge. At the moment I'm experiencing a rather uncommon quiet time at work meaning I find myself with more time at my hands to pursue the hobby.

I meant to get round to paint the plastic Matilda II's by Warlord Games for a while now. In actual fact I built it a while ago already but didn't get round to paint it as I wasn't able to get my hands on the appropriate colours first. Help finally came in the guise of the AK Real Colour range. They're easy to use with the airbrush and allegedly give you the exact colours as used on the actual vehicles. Well, if the latter is true I actually don't know but it looks good enough in my opinion. Unfortunately the range doesn't yet include the Dark Green No. 4 as used from mid 1939. It was to be painted on top of the base colour of Khaki Green No. 3 which was used from February 1939 onwards.

So the colour I used probably was a little too dark but the contrast works rather well I think.

About the plastic kit itself I'm in two minds really. On the one hand it's nice to finally get some more Early War vehicles in plastic, especially not as Shitaleri kit, but unfortunately the instructions provided are a little ambiguous at some places. It didn't help I managed to glue on the wrong set of tracks for the theater in question. That said I prefer the look of the lowered suspension anyway, so all in all not too much of a tragedy. The decal set provided with the kit doesn't compare well with those provided by Rubicon Models. It has only a few options and you're not able to reproduce a specific tank. So for example the war department numbers don't fit with the tank names. Neither in style nor the numbers themselves actually. So the tank Griffin, the name I settled on for my tank in the end, should have the number T6753 but the only number which would fit at least style wise was the T6761 which was apparently not a number used for Matildas in France.

While this probably is bordering on button counting I find it still annoying as it would have been just a minor thing for Warlord to provide the accurate war department numbers.

Thanks for viewing, stay safe and hopefully till next time!