Paiting Challenge Submission 17 - Random 20mm WW2 Items

20mm WW2 odds & ends - AB, SHQ, Elhiem, PSC.

Early in this edition of Curt's Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge I had been finishing off some long-delayed 20mm WW2 projects which had been sitting on the side of the painting desk for too long (years).  As I work to complete the task set before me by the Snow Lord, I am also trying to finish off a few of the odds and ends which had been sitting on my painting desk back in December when Challenge X got underway. The assortment of 20mm odds & ends in this submission is a product of those ongoing "side efforts" - might as well collect the points while I can!

Random 20mm German Infantry

This small collection of German infantry here covers three different figure manufacturers. The German NCO is from AB - an excellent casting, as always.

German NCO from AB Miniatures...great sculpt as always.

The MG42 team is from SHQ.  When I first opened up these packs of figures, I was kind of disappointed...I thought they were a touch skinny/small.  But now that I have painted a few of the SHQ figures, I am warming up to them a lot, and will probably add more SHQ castings to the collection.

MG-42 team from SHQ miniatures.

The SHQ sculpts have really grown on me...I quite like them.

The German sniper is from Elhiem Miniatures.  The sculpts from Elhiem have a lot of character, and this fellow is covered in all sorts camouflage, including a canvas mask of sorts...I tried to make the colours pop a bit - something the actual sniper would not want, but I wanted this fellow to stand out a little bit from the muted colours seen elsewhere among the German infantry.

German sniper from Elhiem Miniatures.

Lots of little camouflage features on this sculpt...very nice.

He'll provide some scary marksmanship in 20mm WW2 games to come. 

Raupenschlepper Ost

1/72 RSO kit from Plastic Soldier Company.

This little plastic model kit is a 1/72 piece from the Plastic Soldier Company - it comes in the same box as their PaK40 AT guns.  I painted one of those back in the fall, and I thought for fun I would paint up one of these little "RSO" vehicles to transport the AT guns around the table.

Lots of room to carry ammo, spare parts, fuel and other supplies - or troops.

One can see how this little vehicle would have been important while fighting in the vast and challenging eastern front of WW2.  They towed guns, carried supplies and even troops. Naturally there were never enough of them available, but the Germans built thousands of these things and so I thought it would be a nice addition to my 20mm collection.  It was also good to keep in practice painting non-winter German WW2 vehicles.

SU-76 

1/72 scale plastic SU-76 kit from Plastic Soldier Company.

Over to the Russian army now, here is a 1/72 plastic SU-76 assault gun - another little gem from the Plastic Soldier Company.

The Russians built boatloads of these vehicles, using them for direct fire support, anti-tank efforts and mobile indirect fire in support of Red Army formations.  It seems the vehicle was difficult and uncomfortable to operate - nearly every set of hobby rules refers to how this vehicle was nicknamed "bitch" by its crews.  But getting a 76mm gun into action never hurts, and this vehicle was able to bring the weapon into frontline action in difficult conditions.  Given how many of these were built, it made no sense not to have them on the table, so I thought it was time to get one done.

Crowded fighting compartment in this vehicle...have to paint the crew and gun seperately.

It's a great little model kit - complete with interior detail and options for crew.  Certainly the compartment is cramped and so I suggest you will need to paint the crew and the weapon seperately and complete final assembly when you have finished painting them.  But it all worked out pretty easily, and this is another great kit from Plastic Soldier Company.  I still have two more vehicles from the box, to put an entire battery on the table.

The USSR built thousands and thousands of these vehicles during WW2 - so good to finally have one available for my 20mm Russians.

That's all for now - thanks for reading, and stay safe out there! I hope to be able to share some more Painting Challenge submissions later this week - the 2019-20 edition of the Challenge will conclude at midnight on Friday, and everyone will be doing their best to get a few more entries in under the wire.  Be sure to check it out!

Painting Challenge Submission 3 - 20mm German WW2 Panzer Grenadiers and Hanomags

Some more 20mm Germans for my WW2 collection.

More WW2 output for this next Challenge submission, but in a different scale this time - yes, I love WW2 gaming so much, I paint it in pretty much every available figure/model scale.  These are 1/72 scale/20mm models and figures, German Panzer Grenadiers from WW2.  There is an eight-man squad of Panzer Grenadiers, a tripod-mounted MG42 team and a pair of Hanomags.

Panzer Grenadier Squad

20mm metal Panzer Grenadiers from AB, purchased from Eureka Miniatures.

This group of Panzer Grenadiers are metal figures from AB, sculpted by the incredible Anthony Barton. There are eight figures here, organized as a squad for the "Battlegroup" rules, but of course useable in any set of WW2 skirmish rules.  As with the 15mm figures, the NCO is mounted on a square base, to aid in easy tabletop identification for players during a game.

I have a "love-hate" relationship with the AB figures. In terms of the "love", well, these are simply the finest sculpts out there, period. They look amazing, and they are metal figures, the proper material used for all true and honourable wargames figures.  These miniatures are a joy to paint, and I try to work in AB figures to my growing 20mm WW2 collection wherever I can.

Panzerfaust gives the squad from AT punch.

Yet the AB figures are also extremely frustrating.  For starters, you are not able to purchase LMG teams separately from the infantry squads/sections.  AB/Eureka is hardly alone in this, but it is very frustrating if you are looking to accumulate a more accurate platoon organization, which in the case of the Germans will often require multiple MG34s/42s for each squad.  So for AB miniatures you end up needing to purchase entire extra squads of infantry just to a second LMG team.

MG34 team - one of the few non-prone, non-marching, non-relaxing German MG team sculpts available from AB.

Even more frustrating is the preponderance of sculpts in the AB range of figures just standing around. Generals standing around. Tank crews standing around. Infantry sections standing around.  These sorts of figures look wonderful in glamour photos in fancy wargame rulebooks, but look like crap on an actual gaming table. It's WW2...GET MOVING!  There are, of course, beautiful - stunning- action-oriented figures to be found as well, but as a proportion, the number of non-action sculpts is something you have to work around.

"Grenade!" - love the action on that sculpt.

Even more frustrating is the number of LMG poses that feature the crew just standing around and/or marching with their weapons, even as the other poses in the accompanying infantry section are more action oriented. Makes me nuts...I can imagine the guys coming under fire, and wondering desperately why their own LMG team isn't getting the damn weapon into action...

But that said, I am no figure sculptor, and the AB figures are the product of world-class sculpting talent, simply amazing.  Awkward as it is to put it all together, I will continue to try and figure out ways to get more and more AB sculpts into my 20mm forces - they are just so nice. 

Tripod MG42 Team

1/72 MG team from Plastic Soldier Company.

This is a plastic kit from the Plastic Soldier Company.  The models are set for 1/72 scale, and as such are a touch taller than the AB metal sculpts. Fortunately these fellows are kneeling down around their (very deadly) tripod mounted MG42, so the difference in figure size doesn't really show on the table.

The plastic infantry figures from PSC really are well done.  While I was disappointed with the crispness of their 15mm offerings, their 1/72 stuff is generally fantastic, especially considering they are plastic.

Hanomag  251D Transports

251D Hanomag - model and crew in 1/72 scale, from Plastic Soldier Company.

The Hanomag is an iconic piece of German WW2 kit.  If you are playing Germans in any WW2 miniature game, you are probably going to want to play the panzer grenadiers leading some manner of assault out of these vehicles - at least I certainly do! These are the later variants of the Hanomag, the 251D, which I believe entered service in 1943, and were in use right to the end of the war.

Easy to build, with lots of detail - fantastic kits.

As with the MG42 team, these are 1/72 scale plastic models from Plastic Soldier Company.  PSC sells them in boxes of three models - I painted the first one back in 2015, and the other two have been sitting in my pile of shame ever since.  I decided to clear that up, finishing these two during a quiet New Years holiday this week.  Three 1/72 models over five years? Yikes...not a great rate of production :)

Very basic cammo pattern painted on the vehicles.

Iconic WW2 vehicles.

Anyway, these are fantastic kits, very simple to build, with great details.  I would love to do some more of them, but PSC has been sold out of these for some time.  Still, since I took five years to get these first three vehicles finished, I guess I have only myself to blame, as I could/should have ordered more of these things a long time ago.

For points, we have 12 infantry, one crew served weapon (although it's just an MG, so I'm thinking just 4 points for that) and two vehicles in 20mm, which should work out to something like 86 points.  A little more progress towards my point goal, and some long overdue progress on my 20mm WWII collection.

Another 1/72 T-34 from PSC

T-34/85 in 1/72 scale - plastic kit from Plastic Soldier Company, metal barrels from RB Models.

I hate to switch back to WW2 after there has been so much awesome Adeptus Titanicus escalation, but here is another bit of 20mm armour - another T-34/85 in 1/72 scale from the Plastic Soldier Company.  The commander is popped out of the hatch, a useful gimmick to indicate a platoon or company commander as required within various rule sets.

Machined barrel from RB models.

The new metal barrel in place on the turret.

There is one slight difference with this T-34/85 - I swapped out the plastic main gun barrel from the kit and used a metal one from RB Models.  I have seen other super cool advanced modeling/painting folks doing stuff like this. I'm no IPMS-type, but thought I would try it out for myself. The metal barrels are awesome, look great, and it is very easy to cut the plastic one off of the PSC kit and replace it with the metal component. This was gonna be SO cool...

View from the rear, tried to have the exhaust look a bit mucky.

Another view of the metal barrel...

And in the end it looks...almost identical to the other T-34/85s in my collection. It's not a huge change...more of a subtle difference. I love the idea of the machined barrels (and will probably try something like this on some 1/72 German tanks I am looking to paint, which have some elaborate muzzle brakes) but, at least for the T-34s, it didn't really change anything. Oh well - still fun to practice!

Decals are 1/72, also available from PSC.

Pretty easy to build, and straightforward to paint...these kits from PSC are addictive!

That's six T-34s for my 20mm Soviet collection.  I still have several boxes of these things from PSC...while I feel like you can "never have too many T-34s" there are some limits...I'll probably paint at least one more platoon, and then start painting some others in winter white-wash camo.  

A column of T-34s moves out on the gaming table...a total of six T-34s finished so far, more to come...

Painting more T-34s might be something I try during the 10th Edition of the Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge, which begins on December 21st! Byron and Mike F are participating along with me this year, and while I encourage you to check everything out over at the Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge blog page, be sure to watch this space as well, to see what existing and new projects are spurred forward by the Painting Challenge!

Even More Random WW2 Painting - Big German Guns

Some serious late-war firepower for my 20mm Germans

More random 20mm WW2 painting as we arrive in December - back to the German side of things. Here is a Pak40 anti-tank gun with crew from Plastic Soldier Company, and a scary King Tiger panzer from Britannia Miniatures.

Pak40 Anti-Tank Gun & Crew

Here comes Ivan...

I have a slowly growing complement of T-34s for my Red Army 20mm collection. To counter the red tide, we start with this Pak40 and crew.  This hard-hitting anti-tank weapon is an iconic part of the late-war German arsenal. The gun, crew and accessories are all from the Plastic Soldier Company.

Gun commander figure on a square base.

I divided the crew for the gun among different bases to accommodate the various WW2 rule systems we play.  The "Battlegroup" rules, for example, have extra loaders as an option available for most crew-served weapons in the game, so I put two of the loaders on a separate base with an ammo box to allow that to be represented.  I also put the gun commander on a separate square base, which will help him stand out as a "junior leader" in games like "Chain of Command."

Extra loaders on a separate base.

Another view of the loaders.

The details on these PSC plastic figures can be a bit soft in places, but these kits are a great value (see more on that below). This Pak40 will be sure to put a few T-34s out of action - or at least it will until the Soviet players either blast it to pieces or simply run the gun and crew right over with one of their many, many tanks!

The crew prepares to load another 75mm shell...I think I positioned the loader a little too "behind" the gun...wouldn't want to be directly behind that thing when it fired...

The PSC Pak40 box set is really remarkable - you get two guns, two crews, and you might think, "hey this is great." But wait, there's more! You also get two raupenschlepper ost vehicles - which can you build using TWO different cabs, and also choose between an open or enclosed rear compartment! OR...you can use the guns and the RSO models to build the very odd RSO Pak 40 SPG! Really an amazing kit from PSC! I'm still working on my first RSO model to give this gun team a tow option and a chance to escape from Soviet retribution after they have fired on a few enemy tanks.

Tiger II

The Tiger II - model from Britannia Miniatures.

I know. Who needs yet another King Tiger for WW2 gaming, right? These vehicles (thankfully!) represented such a small percentage of the overall available German tank fleet in WW2 - and even when available in some force, they suffered badly from mechanical problems and breakdowns, such that very small numbers tended to make it to actual action in the front lines.

On close inspection you can see where the casting had some issues...on the exhaust, and the chain on the hull...not the biggest deal, but slightly annoying.

Even with these factors, what can I say...I have a weakness for scenarios that feature the "big cats" in the late war.  This model is a resin-and-metal Tiger II from Britannia Miniatures. I picked it up as part of a second hand offering on TMP, unable to resist a "great deal" to add some of these ominous vehicles to my budding 20mm WW2 collection. 

The sculpting of the zimmerit was well done...even showing a few spots where the zimmerit has been shot/scuffed off. Some nice character.

I was excited when I closed the deal, but it was a bit of a let-down when I received the goods. The model is OK...but it is small. It seems more like 1/76 scale than 1/72 scale (which is the stated scale of all of my 20mm Plastic Solder Company models).  It is still bigger than my PSC T-34/85s...but doesn't seem quite big enough - even though the MG34 on the cupola is as larger or larger than that carried by any of my other 20mm troops.  The size of the model just seems...off to me.  It reminds me of the feeling I get when I see 1/56 scale vehicles on a table with 28mm miniatures.

There were also some casting challenges on the hull, always a risk with resin casting. A few bubbles, a few holes here and there, and the exhausts were snapped off in shipping.

But for all these challenges, there are many positive aspects to this model too. For starters, the metal accessories all fit very, very well. That doesn't always happen with these mixed media kits. And I have to hand it to the sculptors, they really nailed the zimmerit finish on the hull.  I like the look of the zimmerit on the German tanks...makes them look even more ominous than they already are! Finally, I got a great deal on this tank (and two more which came in the lot), and at the end of the day every Winnipegger loves a good deal.

That 88mm gun, with the huge muzzle brake, looks scary as heck.

I haven't painted WW2 panzer camouflage in several years, so was pretty rusty when it came to executing on this model...but it was good to practice and get back into the swing of painting WW2 panzers in a larger scale.

That's all for now - thanks for visiting the blog, and stay tuned for more.  The Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge will soon be upon us...always some fun stuff there!    

More Random WW2 Painting - 20mm Soviets

Some random 20mm WW2 Soviets.

I haven't posted in a while, but I have been managing to keep the paint brushes going.  For some weeks now I have been really stuck into WW2 painting subjects - this isn't so unusual overall, as I really enjoy gaming the period - but given that interest, output on that topic has been extremely sparse over the past few years.  I feel like I have been trying to make up for that in the past six weeks...and here are some more products from those efforts - some 20mm WW2 Russians.

As with the random 15mm Germans I posted earlier in the month, these models were all sitting in a big pile in a box (see photo), a thing that passes for "organization" when it comes to my hobby hoard.  I was probably "just about to paint" these back in 2015 or 2016 or something, but then tossed them suddenly away as my squirrel-like attention span was swept up into some other project.

Part of my WW2 "Pile Of Shame" - a mix of 15mm and 20mm figures and vehicles. I'm trying to clear up at least SOME of this backlog!

One thing when I move on to something and leave a project behind is that I often forget what paints I used and in which combination I used them.  So these were kind of "test models" to see if I could get back on the Soviet WW2 wagon.

A BA-64 armoured car (from SHQ) and a messenger (from PSC).

The wee BA-64 (sitting primed on my desk for years!) is an all-metal model from SHQ Miniatures. I think the scale of the vehicle is probably more 1/76 than 1/72, but I'm not 100% certain, and at any rate it is hard to tell as the BA-64 is such a wee vehicle! This little vehicle will help with scouting and some light fire support on my gaming tables.

The Russian uniform came out a bit too dark, but I was happy with the green on the armoured car.

There is also a single infantry model - this is a 1/72 plastic figure from the Plastic Soldier Company. He is not armed, but can serve as a dispatch/messenger, which can have a specific application in games like "Battlegroup" or just serve as an objective in general in many of the other systems we play.

I was trying to figure out the mix of colours I had previously used for the Russian khaki...this came out too dark.  I think I have the right colours, but not the right mix.  I'll need to keep experimenting - and write it down after I get it right!!!

T-34/85s from PSC - prepared to crush the fascists!

The T-34s are 1/72 plastic models also from the Plastic Soldier Company.  PSC had a sale a few years ago, and I must have really stocked up, because I found I have like four boxes of these things! Oh well, in just about any scale of WW2 Eastern Front game, you can always use a lot of T-34s...

I rough my tanks up a lot...maybe too much, but I like the battle-worn look.  It seems right for the Eastern Front!

The PSC models give me heartburn at times - why, oh why, are the tracks in multiple pieces?!?! But I suspect that's just me. Most people (any non-bot reading this) will not have the same challenges I routinely encounter...overall, these are EXCELLENT kits, a great value and a great way to build up a big Soviet WW2 armoured force. If you look closely, you will see I mucked up on the tracks...but, that's me - with some common sense, you'll avoid those issues easily.

And hey, paint them and muck'em up, and they're good to go!

As a bonus, these models come with two turrets, so you can use them for the earlier, more classic T-34/76 variant.  I have not painted the 76mm turrets yet, as my interests are much more late war than mid-war for now.

Curt will often refer to painting in this scale as "God's Own Scale". We all laugh - of course, all of us have our preferences for scales/periods etc - but he does have a point - I find painting the WW2 figures in this scale very, very fun! While my 15mm collection is much larger, my 20mm WW2 collection is growing slowly-but-surely.  These were great fun, and I hope to do more during the approaching Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge. 

Gaslands! Cars, Terrain, Battle Report!

We have to admit to having been a bit remiss lately in updating the blog. Blame summertime, work, life, or what you will... but there has been some stuff going on, honest! So what's going on in the picture above? GASLANDS, that's what!

Gaslands is a miniatures game of vehicle combat, published by Osprey, that uses Hot Wheels/Matchbox-scale cars converted with guns and other fun stuff.

Conscript Kevin H turned me on to the game a few months ago and wow- is there ever an active online community for this game. In fact, it's so popular that the package I ordered directly from the game's author (including the rulebook, templates, dice and markers) was significantly delayed in being delivered.

However, this did little to temper my enthusiasm which was still running at a high temp...

One of the things that I find really exciting about Gaslands is that the barrier to entry is so low, you can go nuts doing all the stuff that makes the visual aspect of the game so cool.

Case in point - the "arena terrain" that I've done up for the game. My vision of Gaslands really tends more towards the classic "autoduelling" I grew up with - Car Wars and the like - rather than the "Mad Max" kind of vision that the game also supports. Don't get me wrong - that's amazingly cool as well and I'll probably go that way too!

This amazing piece is from a company called Corvus Games, and while it may look like a resin piece it's actually a plastic 3D print! It painted up very quickly and looks great. There was even room for some graffiti on the concrete base, visible above.

The barriers are from a Disney/Pixar (!) CARS (!!) playset I saw used on one of the Gaslands facebook pages. It takes two sets to do a 4x4 table but the cost of those sets is only around $25 each, plus time and effort in painting of course. I used photocopies of the playset's advertising decals on the walls, just to dull down the glossy kid's toy look.

Rather than repeat the same billboards twice, I went with graffiti on two of the walls which turned out well. The "tags" are decals marketed to HO-scale train enthusiasts for their freight cars.

I tried them at first on a darker coloured background but they didn't "pop" nearly as well as on the light background. Easy fix.

Back to terrain and the cars... I wanted some LOS-blocking terrain for inside the arena and stacks of wrecked cars suited that perfectly. I smashed some cars with a hammer just to flatten them a bit, then superglued them to each other and to a card base. Sprayed the whole lot black and drybrushed up faded colours, dust and rust.

Here are some cars! One of my favourites - Lamborghini Miura with corrugated iron windows and weapon from the old Dark Future game.

Ford GT40 with gubbins from a 15mm kit of an '80s Soviet tank.

2015 Mustang with DF gun.

Pickemup truck with DF minigun and rams from the 15mm tank kit.

Late '70s-looking cruiser with DF weapon.

So with all this prep work done it was time to have a game! (Note that some of the terrain shown in this post only got finished later)

Conscripts Indo, Byron, and Kevin were over for the inaugural run at Gaslands.

The game itself was controlled chaos, which is perfect for a vehicle combat game! We found the mechanics to be very easy to pick up, and with a view small exceptions they appeared to make sense in terms of vehicle physics.

One of the fun things about the game has to do with the movement, which is all done by templates a la X-Wing and other games of bodies in motion. Players select a template for their move, based on their speed (i.e. templates for different maneuvers have restrictions as to how fast a vehicle may be going to use them). There's no pre-measuring though, and in order to speed play, there's a rule that if you touch template when it's your turn to move, you MUST use that template! and if the speed of your vehicle does not allow you to use that template, the player to your left gets to pick a maneuver for your vehicle, then move your vehicle accordingly! This simulates a momentary lapse in the heat of combat driving, and when it happened to Indo in our game it was most amusing :-)
 

Kevin arrived late from work but got to roll out his ancient "Team Anarchy" vehicles he painted to use with Dark Future when it had first come out (!). They did acquit themselves well!

Without going into a ton of detail on the game (which I have forgotten anyway), it was a great one and fun was had by all - so much so that I'm going to tee it up again this week for the group. I think that this would be a great "convention" game and I'm planning on running it at PrairieCon next year, if not Legio-Con as well. So if you like Gaslands, definitely stay tuned here for more!