WIP – British Trench Raiders 1917

I thought I’d post a few pictures of some British trench raiders which I’ve been painting in the past couple of weeks, really to keep my momentum up during the long, cold January months for my “Winter Sports” trench raiding project.


I’ve enjoyed painting these guys. They’ve made a real change from simple British and German infantry. I’ve photographed 22 of the figures – there are another 10 to finish off, plus a Vickers machine gun to give long range covering fire if the British attacker is fortunate enough to get the use of that weapon in the pre-raid “Winter Sports” troop allocation. I’ve then got about 20 German trench raiders, which I’ve not yet started.


The standing figures in the photographs are from Great War Miniatures, Musketeer Miniatures and First Corps. The casualty figures are the excellent ‘generic casualty’ from Silent Invader from the Lead Adventure Forum, with the addition of some weapons, helmets and backpacks from MaxMini and The Assault Group. The swarm of trench rats were from Irregular Miniatures.

While the first two manufacturers are well know for their Great War subjects, I don’t think that First Corps have got the same following....at least not yet. I found the First Corps figures (available at www.1stcorps.co.uk) very clean and well cast, size-compatible with Musketeer and Great War Miniatures and very reasonably priced. Delivery was very fast, and certainly within one week to mainland UK. The figures are characterful and easy to paint. They don’t have the same intricate surface detail as Musketeer and Great War Miniatures, and the sculpting is not as fine. However, they look good (at least to my eye) when painted. See what you think. Once I have finished all the raiding teams, I’ll do a shot of the First Corps figures so you can judge them against the others for yourselves.

The figure holding a map in the photograph above is a First Corps figure and to my mind is a great sculpt – reading a map as he tries to navigate through No Mans Land by the light of starshells.

The British trench raiders in the photos are about at the 90% finished stage, just requiring varnishing and the addition of a little more detail on their bases. On quite a few of the bases you can spot barbed wire picket poles of the type which would have been present in No Mans Land in front of trench lines. I went a bit over the top on adding extra poles onto the casualty bases. I hope to post a few more pictures next time of the different sorts of barbed wire you can use on bases when I finish the figures later this week.

Finally, as this is a WIP post, I've posted a couple of pictures of where I started out with these figures just before New Year. You can get a glimpse of the Vickers machine gun team, and some of the German trench raiders, as well as some of the British trench raiders I've not yet finished...