Sahel Conflicts: Panhard ERC-90 Sagaie

JJG Print 3D expanded their modern French offerings with a new series of armored vehicles designed by Guaro3d. I took the opportunity to up-gun my Foreign Legion with some support vehicles. First up was the Panhard ERC-90 Sagaie, which was a light wheeled tank/armored reconnaissance vehicle that was used by the FFL from the 1980s through the 2010s. The model can be purchased in 1/56 or 1/50 scale for 28mm gaming, and I went with the larger version. This came out as 10.4cm (not including the gun barrel) x 5.0cm x 4.9cm.

For my vehicle, I based it on the appearance of these ERC-90s seen in western Africa as part Operations Serval and Barkhane, though I didn't have any of the seen stowage to add.

Source: Twitter

Source: Twitter

The kit didn't have all the surface detailing of an injection mold  scale model, but as a wargaming model, the detail was quite respectable. The only missing item that I wish was present on the kit was the machine gun for the turret railing. I didn't have an appropriate machine gun available in the bits box, so had to go without. To create an antenna, I went with some black airplane rigging rather than wire, as I figured the latter was more prone to damage during transport.

For the camo netting, I couldn't find anything in 1/48 scale, so was forced to use 1/35. It looked less refined than I wanted, but for an issue I'll mention shortly, I felt I needed to still use it.

The kit came in three pieces: the turret and two halves of the body, with the wheels printed in place. There were no registration pins to help with positioning and a bit of a gap in some spots, so filling and sanding were needed to get a reasonable seam. 

While the print quality was good overall, there were some issues with the turret that had to be addressed. First up was a missing set of smoke launchers; the green ones were present, but the brown ones only had the mounts and no tubes. I'm not sure if they broke off somewhere or there was an uncaught printing error, but they needed to be recreated. Luckily I was able to do that fairly easily with some plastic rod and paper strips. It wasn't a perfect match, but were close enough that I think  they wouldn't be noticed on the table.

The major issue with the turret was a pronounced upward curve of the gun barrel. I tried reshaping it multiple times using heat and weights, and while I made improvements, I could never get it to remain straight long term. After eventually breaking it with my efforts, I gave up and opted to fill the dip with camouflage netting.  While you can still spot the issue when you get down to tabletop level,  I felt it was much less noticeable from the usual players' vantage. 

 Overall, I'm happy with the final results and am looking forward to seeing how it performs on the table. 

Punic Wars: More Refurbished Units

 

Work continues on refurbishing my old Carthaginian army.

First up is another unit of African hoplites from 1st Corps Miniatures. This unit has the convex shields, so I opted to replace my old decals with some from Little Big Men Studios, as I thought they would apply better than on the concave shields used by the other unit. I was a few short, so supplemented them with some designed for Crusader Carthaginians; the size was very close.

Next up are some Ligurians from Old Glory Miniatures. I received these as part of a mixed bag of second hand figures, so opted to combine the swordsmen with the javelinmen (converted to longer spears) as a light infantry unit. There was no standard bearer with the figures, so I converted one javelinman using a leftover standard from my plastic Numidians. Old Glory can be hit or miss in terms of sculpting quality, but I found these to be reasonably good en masse and the shield transfers helped improve the appearance (It seems they shared shield types with the OG Celtic range). 

I don't know much about the Ligurians, but the online drawings I found depicted something between the other Italian tribes and the Celtic peoples. I went with influences from both when painting the fabrics and also threw in one of Charlie Brown's ancestors for my own amusement.

Last are two units of repainted Libyan javelinmen from Newline Design Miniatures.  They only came with 3 poses and the sculpting style is a bit old fashioned, but I think the LBMS transfers (I used leftovers from the Wargames Factory Numidians) helped elevate them somewhat. 

Here they were prior to refurbishment.

Since my original painting, I've learned they favored red tunics and also were known for their tattoos, so I tried to capture that this time around. I don't know what the tattoos exactly looked like, so used some modern Berber tattoos and Carthaginian icons for inspiration.