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.

A Few Random 20mm WW2 Germans

20mm WW2 German infantry- figures from Wargames Foundry and AB

After a long run this summer painting 30k stuff, it was time to switch painting gears.  I haven't painted any WW2 stuff in quite some time, and I have an appreciably sizable "pending pile" of the stuff, so I thought I would paint a few bits just to keep in practice.

A handy panzer faust out front...

These figures are mostly 20mm Foundry WW2 Germans, with a few from AB mixed in for kicks (and because the little range of Foundry WW2 stuff is profoundly limited). The AB castings are a little smaller (18mm, I think?) but mix in just fine overall.

On balance these would be mid-to-late war Germans, I think - particularly the chaps in camouflage smocks.

Iconic MG team pose - those fellows are AB castings

There is no particular plan involved in painting these figures - generally, they will help round out a German Panzer Grenadier platoon for games of "Chain of Command" or "Battlegroup", but I picked them because they were already primed and had been sitting around on the painting desk for a while.

Some chaps sporting rifle grenades mixed in the back

I found it to be slightly tough sledding to recall which colours I had used to paint these guys previously, but after a bit of trial-and-error I pretty much got it matched up and was able to finish them off without too much trouble.  I usually struggle with German camouflage, and this was no exception, but I aim to get "close enough" and this pretty much does that for me.

Ready for action on the gaming table

The Foundry figures were sculpted by the Perry Twins, I believe, and are wonderful figures.  But the AB castings are a true joy to paint - I don't have many of them, but that will change soon! I just wish some AB Russian infantry were out there somewhere...

Overall this was a reminder to me that I need to spend some more time writing down my painting "recipes" for different periods and settings.  While I'm tearing through a particular project, I settle on paint combinations that I get comfortable with, and just assume I will always recall them.  That didn't happen too easily this time around, something that will probably not change as I look ahead...it didn't seem THAT long since I touched a WW2 figure, but I guess it was (the 2014-15 Painting Challenge maybe?)...can't trust the memory forever :)