15mm QRF Crusaders

 My desert British needed some armour, and what better than some Crusaders. It is a shame the PSC don't do them or I'd have been strongly tempted. Among the metal offerings, QRF are by far and away the best value, £11.50 for a 'troop pack' of three, compared to £9 for a single Skytrex one. Forged in Battle are sort of contenders, but I really don't like the moulded on bases. Anyway, QRF it was.

I got six, as six is a useful number, whereas nine would just be silly. I mainly play grand tactical and operational games, so this is plenty for the sorts of things I'm likely to be doing. I tried quite hard to make sure that every single vehicle ended up different, for that rather individualistic British desert 'gypsy caravan' look.

The QRF Crusader I/II models come with MG turrets or hatches to close off the aperture. I didn't go for the models with sand skirts as I didn't fancy trying to stick those on. I did two with turrets and one without. 

They come cast with the hatches moulded shut and I spent a fair bit of time trying to find photos of early model Crusaders with open hatches. There aren't vast numbers of photos of the tops of Crusaders, but I did find some. Apparently the early hatch can either slide (and lock) back, or hinge, but the vast majority of pictures seemed to have it slid back, so for one of this trio and made up some plastic card the same size as the hatch and added it on top. The commander is a cut down PSC one.

There are a few bits and pieces to stick on apart from the turrets/hull hatch. There is a separate fuel tank and the exhausts are also separate and proved quite fiddly to fit but I got there in the end. Although the castings aren't brilliant (I think the moulds are a bit old), there is a fair amount of moulded detail which you can see on the engine deck etc. which works well with my preferred method of washes and drybrushing.

They sit quite nicely and look fairly racy, rather like the Airfix one albeit without the overlong hull. I spent a long time thinking about colour schemes but in the end decided against Caunter (which was more of a Battleaxe type scheme for Crusaders). 

I did the three of them in plain Light Stone, as favoured by 22nd Armoured Brigade in Operation Crusader. Essentially VJ Desert Sand heavy wet brushed over a dark grey undercoat, then a brown inkwash, a heavy drybrush of Desert Sand again, followed by a very light drybrush of Pale Sand. I normally use Iraqi Sand for the final drybrush but on these desert vehicles it is too dark.

I did the other three in one of the sand/black patterns which included painting variable numbers of road wheels black.  They got the same Light Stone paint job as the plain ones, and I added the camo afterwards but before I did the Pale Sand drybrush. The final drybrush weathered it down nicely.

These three also got two commanders, done the same as the plain sand one, with one PSC commander and my last Peter Pig British commander. Must buy some more of those. I painted the open hatch recesses black, and following a very useful painting tip, edged one side of the aperture (or at least, asymmetrical sides to represent catching the light) in a light highlight colour. Astonishingly they suddenly became 3D recesses into the turret.

As these vehicles are camo'd up they really would not be Mark Is with MG turrets, so I did them all with plain hulls, although I did mount a spare Bren on the turret of one of them in AA mode. 

For all of them I went very light with the national recognition symbols. I went with Crusader Stripes (white/red/white) but just on the lower glacis plate, and only on a couple of them. Crusader stripes were more prevalent on I tanks, presumably due to their proximity to infantry and trigger happy AT gunners!

I didn't bother with formation signs, squadron markings etc. I might do those one day, but after having painted them out on all my Shermans and Churchills I probably won't bother with these either. I also thought about doing radio aerials, but again, didn't bother in the end. They are easy enough to add later.

I'm pleased with how they came out, and it was interesting how much better the ink wash worked over metal instead of APL, which stained the latter terribly. With the various combos of commanders, armament and paint schemes, they are all different too.