German Tank crews

Operation squad rules (and I’m sure many others) call for a de-meched tank crew to be feildable.

For some units, such as Hanomag and Kubelwagen this is easy, as these were crewed by regular soldat.. but for tanks and other AFV’s it’s more of a challenge, because there are very few models out there that represent German tank crews, the iconic Panzer wrap around blouse, is hard to come by, particularly in Op Squad compatible rules, as the ruleset allows each crewman to be armed with an MP40, wheras most models have at best pistols.

The solution? artizan designs Panzer Lehr. not ideal as the gear is a bit over the top for a tank crew, but they have both the blouse and MP40, so I call that good enough..

Some of the facial sculpts are a wee bit goofy, but the posing and attention to detail on the gear is awesome (and it might be my paint amplifying the goof here )

anyway, on to the single shots..

This guy will be one of the vehicle commanders, probably the Stug

This guy is in charge in the armoured car.. I love the coat.. I very nearly painted it black, but a wee bit of googling showed me a real coat, and the colours were too cool not to try and replicate..

 

 

Hope there was something to interest here. I’ll be back shortly, most probably with more Germans.. or Americans.. or maybe I’ll finally get back to some 40k.. hm, really should write an apology to my regular readers about this lengthy diversion from the usual

Treesperiments–part 2!

So as the previous treesperiment post suggests, I wasn’t totally happy with the results..

The one’s I thought looked the best were the “fine leaf foliage”, and as I said in the previous post, it looked like seamoss, painted and flocked.. soo…


I had a few armatures left over…


And a box of seamoss…


I sprayed some dark grey primer on the seamoss. I used my airbrush but an aerosol would be fine too..


Glued up some armatues…


And went to town.. this is three armatures, one with “fine leaf foliage” from woodland scenics, and two with sprayed seamoss. sure there’s no comparison right now, but that seamoss isn't flocked yet..


And it just so happens I have some pretty decent leafy noch foliage I’ve been using for bushes…
I’m quite happy with this final form of tree, and will be getting hold of some more colours of the nock foliage for future trees..


I hope these two articles have been of use, and that we can all look forward to better trees in our future!

Hanomags.. or Sd/Kfz 251 if you prefer

I’m just going to think of them as “rides”.. or maybe “pimpmobiles”.. sorry.. futurama references have no place here..

here’s one “in situ”, hm, makes me wonder if I should start painting my base border edges a more muted brown or something when I see them on a shiny green layout like that… anyway..

These are the warlord games plastic kit hanomag, very easy build, a few options are provided such as MG34 or 42, a crewman and some stowage etc. and very reasonably priced too, especially for someone used to GW prices.

Anyway, I bought two, and may invest in more  but for now here are the individual models with “turnaround” pics..

The crewman on the fore gun isn't painted yet, he waits with a batch of field grey Germans, he's a bit blocky compared to the metal figs I have, but hell be okay upfront here.

 

I know the panzer lehr crewman on that second one isn't right, but I couldn’t bring myself to use the plastic guy again.. so I improvised. also, if I ever decide to field the panzer lehr as a small operation squad force I can give them this ride with impunity

Thanks for stopping by to check this out, hope there was value here for you!

Treesperiments–part one

In an earlier post I showed off some of the terrain I’ve been dabbling with, allbeit in a slightly cryptic and not very “here is my terrain” kind of way… I’m going to try and rectify that in a few forthcoming posts. so let’s use this one to talk about trees.

I was very happy with the aesthetic of the trees I built last time out, but repeated use has seen my initial concern about their fragility morph into their almost total destruction. so I set about trying to find a new way.

first let me say that I’m not a fan of the overly plasticy warhammer wood.. on a themed table of cartoony warhammer stuff it looks great, like you’re playing warcraft for real but when aiming for a bit more veracity it’s harder to see it fitting in.

Model railroad guys seem to do okay, so what I did was buy some woodland scenics tree armatures and a few types of foliage and set about making trees.

The armatures arrive flat, and with their own base plugs, so after some twisting to make them look a bit more “tree-ey” I glued them down to some old tree stand terrain I had already – my “dead forest” was in dire need of refreshing having not been used for some time, so it got repurposed.

voila, trees glued to wood. awesome. a little filler (spackle) was applied next to blend in the trees and some cast rocks glued down as accents, along with the odd dead twig to stand as a broken tree.

spackle applied..

I’ve opted to use three different types of foliage here, partly to test them out and also for variety, I have “bushes” which is a quite dense foam clump product; “underbrush” which is a similar, but looser product and “fine leaf foliage” which seemed to be something akin to the seamoss from my earlier attempt at tree making, but painted and flocked..

Next I used woodland scenics hob-e-tack.. and yes it really is worth buying the wait time is important too. basically, glob it on, wait fifteen minutes or so, and youll have the stickiest tree armatures in Christendom, just ripe for dunking in your flocking of choice.

in the wait-time I applied several types of ground cover and static grass to the bases for the tree stands.

This is the overall result, a reasonably satisfying set of trees and bases to use as woods in games..
I was however not totally happy, and set about refining the process.. look to treesperiments part 2 coming soon!

I hope that had some value to any budding arbourialists.. coming up next, some more terrain, and some painted stuff.. hopefully..

Stug III for bolt action / operation squad

Yeah, I’ve got into the whole armour thing now. nothing but sheer willpower is preventing Panzer 3/4 38t panther and tiger tanks rolling across my desk in a re-creation of operation Barbarossa..

my wallet plays Stalingrad in this scenario.

Pictures!

I must have forgotten to white balance the camera as these pictures are a little “warmer” than the model in RL, but they suffice.

I went to town with the weathering on this one, hopefully not overboard, but I wanted it to look “used”

I’m not sure that, if you asked, I could give you a good reason why I’m basing these vehicles, I’ve never done it before,.

I guess partly, it seemed right.. but also, these do seem quite small in scale next to the figures, and that’s partly because I’ve got quite built up bases on the figures. so to compensate…

All the markings are decals, which once upon a time I considered “cheating” but now wouldn't be without…

anyway, hope this was worth the time you took to check it out, thankyou for doing so.. until next time!