Winter Has Arrived Yay! (Not)

More 15mm winter WW2 troops and tanks

Well the winter has once again locked the Canadian prairies with its dreadful embrace.  The current day time "high" temperatures range in the minus 25 degree Celsius range, and once our enviro-guess-Canada weather "forecasting" service adds its random wind chill, the temps are even more awful.  So of course this is all perfect inspiration to finish some more winter WW2 stuff...

Matching the current weather outside my house. Note that an additional 30cms of snow has come since this photo was taken some time ago

Not much to show in this post - I've been away from the painting table for a few weeks, back just in time to take a stab at yet another Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge.  But it was good to get these bits cleared off before the Challenge started - a set of half-tracks, 251/7s, a few more infantrymen and another pair of Panther "A"s.

An SdKfz 251/7 - will need to warm up after starting the engine...

I opted for these half-tracks over more conventional ones to give the option of having an engineer/pioneer force.  Often they have the worst jobs - repairing bridge crossings, clearing minefields and other work, all under fire.

I believe those are meant to be temporary bridging sections on top there, but I have never been too sure...

This force is also semi-inspired by Scwhere Panzer Regiment Bäke, which included an engineer battalion on its roster for at least some of the period it was in action. The Panzer crews would have relied heavily on them to help keep their advances/breakouts moving, particularly in the face of tough weather conditions.

Peter Pig vehicles are real beauties, sharp castings with nice details like the stowage on the front.

A scenario where some engineers are trying to secure some rickety bridges somewhere on the Eastern Front during the winter, then trying to blow them just as the Russians approach - this appeals to me! I think that would make for a good Chain of Command game.

Some foot sloggers from Battlefront.  These castings look depressed, which I love about them.

The half-tracks are from Peter Pig, and were quite lovely to work with and paint. To my mind they remain top-of-the-list when it comes to quality 15mm figures and vehicles.There are enough half tracks to mount up a platoon - three vehicles.

Panzerschrek team.  I bet that was a fun piece of kit to haul through the snow...

The infantry are a smattering of spare castings from Battlefront - a panzerschrek team and a few regular panzer grenadiers. Once again I am impressed with the quality of these particular castings from Battlefront - their winter Germans are really well done.

Another snow cat, weathered to show it has fought its way through several kessels since the snow fell...

The Panthers are "A" variants, and the models are from Battlefront.  These were real beauties to work with and I had a lot of fun painting them.  The details on the hull are top notch.  While they are of course more expensive than the very, very nice models from Plastic Soldier Company, I still think these are tops in my books and a great value.

Panzer 314 ready to roll out.

As with my previous batch of winter tanks, these received heavy winter weathering treatment. Again, it's probably a little too much, but I still have a lot to learn when it comes to being a bit more subtle with the weathering on vehicles :)

Lots of wonderful, sharp little details on the Battlefront Panthers

So the Painting Challenge starts this weekend - I will be a slow starter in this challenge, but I've got a fairly high points goal (although the others are all just low-balling and sandbagging - right, Ray?) so I hope to tear out a few good starting pieces over Christmas.  During the Challenge I hope to do projects in different scales and periods including 28mm Napoleonics and Sudan, 15mm Arab-Israeli Wars, more WW2 stuff of course, and maybe some sci-fi! I know Dallas, Byron and Kevin are in for the Challenge too, so I'm looking forward to seeing lots of great Fawcett Avenue content lighting up the blogosphere!