From KenR - What a Tanker 28mm A9 Cruiser Tanks (45 points)

Following on from last weeks Desert Transport I had a couple of Tanks lined up for one of our early War Op Compass Campaign games and decided to get them done so I would have an entry in the "What a Tanker!" Challenge.

The tanks themselves are from Warlord Games and as far as I know are the only examples of the A9 Cruiser Tank in this scale, sadly they don't do a desert version with sand guards and my modelling skills are too limited to make any, so let's pretend they fell off !

They are painted in the Caunter Scheme which was common in the early Desert battles and was designed to disrupt the shape of the vehicle rather than camouflage it. The paints are from AK Interactive who do a specific Caunter paint set, I have added some decals and a Tank Commander (to one vehicle).

The lines are all hand painted, I really can't be bothered with masking and Airbrushes, it's just by eye till it looks about reet. There is a little bit of weathering, with some chipping and a wash in the recesses as well.

With a frontal "armour" of only 14mm it was vulnerable to an angry man with a pointy stick, if he had a decent run up. Just to make it better all the armour was virtually vertical and there were shot traps everywhere. Thankfully they were up against some equally poor Italian vehicles, by the time the Germans turned up with some proper tanks they had virtually all disappeared.

British tanks were named, often with the first letter of the name representing the Company they belonged too, so my A Company tanks are "Archer" (I am watching Enterprise at the moment so after the Captain) and "Amos" a classic Yarkshire name and a famous character from the Yarkshire TV Soap Emmerdale (when it were proper before t'plane crash).

A nice little deviation from the Italian Wars Project, I have some Italian Motorcycles to hopefully add to the WW2 Desert stuff before the Challenge ends.

Points wise, 20 points each plus a couple for the commander is 42 hard earned.

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Oh my. These are beautiful and right now I'm green with envy! I'm a well-known tread-head, having done pretty much every desert tank in 6mm, but these make me want to throw them out and start over in 28mm. Like you I think Caunter is best painted by hand as I have tried masking tapes and just couldn't get on with them. 

I'm going to throw in a couple of extra points because I love these (playing to the Judge again!) and three for the driver bringing the total up to 45 points for these. 

Lee