Natal Mounted Rifles Universal Carriers, Italy 1944

My Natal Mounted Rifles carrier troop recently left the painting table: my first attempt at painting a unit of vehicles in series. I usually paint a single vehicle at a time - taking my time over details, baggage and clutter, and markings. But apart from being painfully slow, this organic approach doesn't always result in a uniform appearance. Its easy enough to note paints and pigments used, to aid replication in the future - but the less quantifiable factors - dilution of washes, blending of uniform details, density of pigment loading etc - are very difficult to reproduce.

I can't say the process has won me over. I found the repetitive tasks that are tedious for even one vehicle - say painting the rubber rim of roadwheels - a real stumbling block to progress when painting three. At points in the painting process I just couldnt face the amount of work, and shelved the unit and tinkered with other projects. But I am happy with the result.

I think they are an improvement over my earlier attempts to  represent carriers used by SA 6th Armoured Division in Italy. First of, they depict Mk 1's, which appear to be used by the NMR throughout their campaign. Second, I think the Warlord plastic kit is a huge step up in quality and detail over their earlier resin offering. They are noticeably smaller than the resin Warlord kits - but I get the impression that the plastic is the more accurate.

Some will note that most sources show the NMR carriers in SCC 15 (Olive Drab), but those are dated as taken in 1945, and the order to repaint the Light Mud/Black Grey was issued in late 1944. There are plenty of pix of carriers in the earlier scheme, and one can safely assume the NMR followed the divisional order.

Size comparison: Warlord Games' plastic vs resin carrier kit. The resin version is longer, wider and taller.