Team Yankee: Kampfgruppe Mueller

Well, it's fair to say that here at Conscript HQ we've gone in for Team Yankee in a big way. Although we've already posted a few battle reports and lots of pretty show-off piccies, I wanted to get into the act myself with some posts on my West Germans. First up is the basic Bundeswehr box set - Kampfgruppe Mueller - five Leopard 2 tanks and two PAH helicopters.

The big cats are gorgeous models. Easy to assemble with several crew options, these models make it easy to build your West German battlegroup. Decals are included too!

I painted these tanks using the techniques from Battlefront's Leopard "codex", basically undercoating with green (in this case GW Catachan Green) and painting in the camo with my own interpretation of "teerschwarz" (tar black - Abaddon Black with a bit of Mechanicus Standard Grey mixed in) and rot-braun (red-brown - GW Doombull Brown). It's important to note that unlike the WW2 Panzer forces, the Bundeswehr camo is applied in a particular prescribed pattern. Battlefront has a page that demonstrates the patterns quite clearly.

After applying the camo pattern, the whole vehicle is washed with GW Agrax Earthshade to tie it together a bit. The green is then highlighted with Catachan Green again. Decals are applied, then the vehicle is lightly drybrushed with GW Ushabti Bone. 

Some "spot weathering" is applied in the form of metallic chipping and brown-black sponging.

Lastly, some general road dust is applied with a drybrush of Ushabti Bone along the lower parts of the vehicle.

The PAH helicopters were pretty easy to paint in their two-colour camo scheme of teerschwarz and green. I used the same colours as for the Leopards.

HOT missile tubes were painted GW Steel Legion Drab. In lieu of an Earthshade wash, panel lines were painted in with Nuln Oil shade.

So there you have it - the basis for a Team Yankee West German battlegroup. I really enjoyed working on these vehicles, there's something about the three-tone NATO camo that just appeals to me. The Leopards are beautiful tanks and even the PAH helos are starting to grow on me with their whole "TC" vibe.

Anyway, stay tuned for the rest of the battlegroup, there's much more to come!

Team Yankee Battle Report: Soviets vs. West Germans

My current mania is Team Yankee, Battlefront's new "Cold War hot" game set in the 1980s. While Conscripts Greg and Mike have extensive 15mm modern collections, and Conscript Byron is amassing a 6mm horde, my only forays into modern gaming in a small scale has been my 15mm Yom Kippur War Egyptians. However, fond memories of Airfix 54mm Bundeswehr figures I had as a kid, plus the fun of painting NATO three-colour camo, sucked me into collecting a force of West Germans.

Anyway... in honour of my completion of my first Bundeswehr troops (the "Kampfgruppe Mueller" box from Battlefront) Greg kindly brought his toys over for a game.

We set up the first scenario from the Leopard book - "At the Forward Edge of the Battle". This involved the West German forces trying to blunt a Soviet spearhead with a rearguard action. We used the five Leopard 2's and PAH helicopters I'd painted, reinforced by some truly lovely models (Marders, panzergrenadiers and Gepard AAA vehicles) that Greg had obtained from "tacobat", a modern wargaming enthusiast blogger well-known to many of us.

We deployed the West Germans mainly behind the treeline holding the first set of objectives for the Soviets. After a set number of turns, the objectives shift to locations near the West German home table edge. The Soviets have to motor on in order to gain these objectives.
 

Here are the Soviets - a horde of T-72 tanks supported by an entire Motor Rifle Regiment in BMPs (at least it seemed that way). Also seen here is my "period" copy of "Aim to Kill - Warsaw Pact Equipment Recognition Manual" previously owned by one "Captain George". A very cool piece of Cold War memorabilia, the manual comprehensively sets out the WarPac vehicles and equipment of the day, their recognition features, armament, strengths and vulnerabilities.

On to the game... Conscript Hugh rolled his main body of T-72s up on his right flank, aimed at the Panzergrenadiers dug into the treeline and guarding one objective (red die in photo). As the Soviet tanks approached, the Leopards swung the gate and lit them up. The PAH helicopters popped up to join in the fun...

...but suffered the fate of many a newly painted model, shot down in flames before blowing anything up.

The Hinds duly appeared, but fortunately for the West Germans they suffered the same fate as the PAH helos, two Flakpanzer Gepard AAA tanks were on the case and duly evaporated them in a hail of 35mm shells.

But then it started going a bit pear-shaped for the West Germans.  Stuff started blowing up and the weight of Soviet numbers really began to tell. The Marders began to pull back from the woods at left and the Leopards were getting dinged too... a bad morale failure for the Leos sent the remnants of the platoon skedaddling to the West.

Here's how the game ended. The West Germans really didn't have anything left to block the Soviet advance. The remnants of the Leopard platoon, of course, will regroup farther west to fight on (right?)... but for now, the Soviets won the day, but at a high price...

The scenario was the first game in a longer campaign, and of course the results have ramifications later on. I'm looking forward to playing out the rest of the campaign, adding in my own models as they get painted - so far I've added two Gepards and three Fuchs transports. Still need to paint some infantry and the Marders that are now assembled... not to mention the M109G SP howitzers I left in Brandon a month ago (long story...)

Painting Challenge Entries so far... Update 1,2,3, and 4

Greg asked that all of us in the Analogue Painting Challenge that Curt runs, also post entries here in our own blog.  I have been forgetting to go that, so am posting one post with all of my entries to date in an effort to both catch up and to not flood the blog with 4 updates in one day.  So, here goes....

I started off with a good plan (The madness begins again...) and then like any plan, it started falling apart right away.  Oh well.

Entry #1 - 15mm Sherman Tanks (30 Points)


I started off the challenge with a really quick 1 day (3 hour) paint job on 5 plastic soldier company Sherman tanks for a quick 30 points. The tanks were really fast as I did some base highlighting on the primer level (airbrushed on black and white primer to pre-shade) and then a few thin coats of glaze consistency green through the airbrush.

I then only had to touch up details like the tracks, guns, and ports, and then use some pigment powders to weather them, and done.  Quick and dirty, but think they came out pretty well for the time spent.

Entry #2 - 'Nostalgia' from ByronM - Eldar Farseer 

This was a theme week entry for Nostalgia and I figured what better thing to do than something from my first 40k army.  Well, ok, maybe there was something better out there, but I couldn't think of anything so this is what I did!

The first Eldar army I did (I painted several over the last almost 20 years) was the Ulthwe colour scheme which is a simple black and bone scheme to show that they come from a world with very few living souls left. Black is always hard to pull off and have any depth showing so I actually painted the whole model a neutral grey and then layered in black ink in glaze coats. I still had to go back and add some hard edge highlights on the staff as the glaze method would not work on the really hard corners, but I think it worked out ok on the rest of the model.  

The gems were easy to get back to as well, since I had painted hundreds of them using a very simple 5 colour method from an old Eldar book, that I expanded to 7 colours.  After painting probably 1000 of them over the years I played Eldar, it was like riding a bike doing them again.

 
Entry #3 - French WW1 rifle sections (95 points)



My third entry was an expansion to my World War 1 project to add some colour to the table.  This meant adding some really nice French early war figures from Renegade miniatures to my collection.

They were base coated with the airbrush and then the horizon blue was layered on with the airbrush as well.  I then moved into detail work to finish up.  I know many of our club have an aversion to airbrushes (looks at Greg!) but really, they make life so much easier for this mass kind of work.  The layers go on faster and more evenly than what I can do by hand, and it makes the job so much quicker.  Now if only I could do the super fine work that people like Angel Giraldez do with an airbrush!

Anyway, once the blue was done, it was onto some details and faces and then base work. 

I did the bases in my normal WW1 mud style but added a bunch of yellow and brown vegetation to show the effect of the gas being used in the area and to keep them different looking than my Canadians and Germans.

Entry #4 - Spectre 28mm Modern African Militia (100 points)

My latest submission was a group of modern militia that was a blast to paint.  Since there were so many different sculpts and each had a ton of character it was hard not to deep dive into the details.  I tried to keep each one different in colour but limited the overall details to the basics.  After all, a ton of these are needed for a game, yet each one is essentially cannon fodder.  I think points wise for a game I need about 40 of these, and only 4-6 professional or elite soldiers, so the time these guys can expect to survive on the battlefield is pretty close to 0.

I did have fun painting a NWA shirt, various hightop runners, baseball caps, and some bright coloured Crocs.

I especially had fun with things like people wearing khaki shirts or pants, but then putting on bright colour shorts of shirts, afterall anyone who thinks holding the gun sideways helps with aim would obviously also believe that baby blue is a good camo colour, right?

Overall so far...

In the last few years I have come to the conclusion that if I want to get things done I really can not try to paint every figure as a character, I need to paint more to a tabletop level. That means doing a bit more of a basic level for most troops instead of worrying about doing 3-5 layers in each colour and trying to treat each figure as a character.

The overall table top effect remains the pretty much the same, but it still feels kind of like cheating as these were not done to a high standard, and they kind of fall apart close up, but from table top level they look pretty good.

I still do some character figures trying to get as much detail as possible, but in general am trying a more "table top effect style" look than a painting competition style painting. I always marvel at how fast Dallas and Greg can get amazing looking armies done and am just starting to figure out that the trick is Don't try to paint everything as if it was going into a competition or to be looked at close up, paint it to be seen from the table top.... not something I am good at.

So, almost 4 weeks into the challenge and only 280 points done, which is a bit behind where I should be since it is only 3 months long this year.  I do have several things in the queue almost done though, so I should be ok.  Here is a sneak peak... 

Oh, and I will try to be better about posting updates here in the future.

Seventh Painting Challenge Entry - 20mm Bundeswehr Panzer Grenadiers

1980s West German Panzer Grenadiers from the Bundeswehr; 20mm sculpts from Elhiem and S&S Models

My Analogue-Hobbies-Painting-Challenge-motivated 20mm insanity continues.  My last entry switched from WW2 into the "Cold-War-Goes-Hot" setting, and this entry follows along - a platoon of Bundeswehr Panzer Grenadiers.  There are three eight-man sections, a commanding officer, a MILAN guided anti-tank missile team along with a pair of Marder 1A3 infantry fighting vehicles.

That's my driveway last week - 70km/h wind gusts driving the snow through the streets.  Seriously, winter can go f*ck itself

It is winter in the Canadian Prairies, and though I know I am so fortunate to call Canada home, Winnipeg in January can be a bit of a sh*t bomb as Army Group Winter encloses the city in a vice-like grip. Case in point last week a small snow storm swept through (one that none of the clowns at Enviro-guess Canada managed to warn anyone about, but anyway).  The bright side of this weather is that I can really fire up my internal painting machine, put some hockey games on TV, and get a lot of stuff done - not quite as fast as some of the leading Challenge participants like Tamsin or Millsy, but still a pretty good pace.

NATO's front lines

As with the last submission, the infantry figures are all from Elhiem Figures while the vehicles are from S&S Models.  The painting/modeling experience is consistent with the last entry as well. The Elhiem sculpts have some soft details and a manic resistance to primer, and yet I just love them as their overall appearance is quite pleasing, and their proportions are excellent.  The S&S vehicles are suspiciously undersized and plagued with numerous small casting flaws that significantly lower the overall quality of the model.

Platoon commander on a hex shaped base

I did not have a precise TO&E for a West German Panzer Grenadier platoon, so I suspect the sections are understrength.  Each one has an MG3 gunner and a fellow carrying a modern panzerfaust 44 AT launcher.  The balance are armed with G3 assault rifles.  And obviously with only two Marder IFVs, it will be a little harder for this lot to get around. Spare BMW will have to be "appropriated"!

The MG3 sure looks a lot like the MG42 from WW2

The Marder is a very cool-looking IFV - the turret sports a 20mm cannon that would provide some scary fire support in a firefight.  I like the sci-fi look of the turret.  Later models of the Marder also included a mount for a MILAN missile launcher as well.  It's too bad the S&S quality is poor, but black paint covers a lot of issues, so that's what I tried to do.  Some decals would be great too, but I couldn't find any 20mm scale modern West German decal sheets, and so I did the crosses free-hand.  The results were very poor, but serviceable.

A view of the Marder 1A3s

Much "Cold-War-Goes-Hot" interest here in North America centers (understandably enough) around the US forces and encounters of M1 Abrams tanks and clouds of T-72s and T-80s in the Fulda Gap.  I love tank battles (a lot - my favourite gaming encounter), but am much more interested in gaming the other NATO countries, and the West Germans in particular - I have quite a bit of West German stuff for Modern Spearhead.

MILAN team lurking

A potent anti-tank system; the MILAN crew set from Elhiem is excellent

In the 80's the West Germans would obviously have been at the very forefront of any resistance to a Warsaw Pact attack. While NATO would have tried to trade space for time in the face of the large Warsaw Pact shock armies driving across the North German plain and through the Fulda Gap, I expect these fellows would have resisted ferociously, motivated as only those who fight with their own homes and families at their backs can be.  I see that as a rich context for scenarios, particularly skirmish encounters.

Assortment of helmets - some plain, some with scrim

For example, perhaps they are disobeying orders a little bit, holding out longer than directed outside a small village to allow more time for evacuation behind them - they will have already lost one or two of their IFVs, and the strength of their sections is diminished, but as long as they have the MILAN launcher and missiles to use, they will dig deep to slow the advancing Red Army.  Should make a fitting opponent for the Motor Rifles I completed in my last entry.

The free-hand crosses turned out poorly - I wish I could find some 20mm decals

I still have a fair chunk of 20mm stuff to paint, but I am feeling a bit of an urge to switch over to sci-fi, so we'll see what comes next for the Challenge. In the meantime I hope we can set up a scrap sometime soon with these fellows at the Fawcett Avenue gaming table.

Sixth Painting Challenge Entry - 20mm Warsaw Pact Motor Rifle Platoon

Warsaw Pact era Soviet Motor Rifle Platoon in BTR-80 APCs

My newly discovered mania for 20mm figures continues but it has jumped to another period, from WW2 to another favourite setting of mine - the fictional "cold-war-gone-hot" of the 1980s.  Interest in this period with the Fawcett Avenue Conscripts goes back to around 2007 or so - I can't remember exactly how it started, but once Eureka released a line of 28mm Soviet troops wearing MOPP gear, it seemed suddenly Dallas and I were in an arms race. To keep it simple, I just blame Dallas. Today we have clouds of 28mm stuff, including a bunch of helicopters, and we enjoy rolling it out for local gaming events. Mike F jumped in as well - be sure to check out his awesome 28mm, 6mm and 15mm stuff elsewhere on the blog.

A Soviet motor rifle section - figures from Elhiem, vehicles from S&S Models

Anyway, my hobby interest in this setting spread rapidly to 6mm (for Modern Spearhead), and because I dabble constantly, I started to play the setting in even more scales, from 15mm down to 3mm. I even have painted 10mm and 40mm.  The last one I haven't tried was 20mm - and since I was diving into this with WW2, I figured why not modern too?

My mania in one picture - from left: 3mm modern Soviets from Oddzial Ozmy, 6mm modern Soviets from GHQ, 10mm modern Soviets from Minifigs, 15mm modern Russian from Eureka, 20mm modern Soviet from Elhiem, 28m modern Soviet from Mongrel Miniatures, and a 40mm modern Russian from the Honourable Lead Boiler Suit Company

Another view of the group photo - all scales accounted for :)

So this entry includes a 20mm scale Warsaw Pact-era Soviet Motor Rifle platoon.  The infantry figures are 20mm sculpts from Elhiem Figures, and the vehicles are (supposedly) 20mm-size BTR-80 APCs from S&S Models. The colour palette for these figures is almost identical to the WW2 Russian troops, so I was able to bear down and get this little points grenade finished during my holidays last week.

Ready to fight NATO lackeys

The platoon has three 8-man sections and a small command group.  Each section contains one trooper with a PK-LMG, an RPK-74, an RPG-7 anti-tank launcher, and the balance armed with AK-74 assault rifles.  The commander has a radio man and a trooper carrying an SA-7 shoulder-launched surface-to-air missile unit.

Officer with a radio man and a trooper carrying an SA-7 SAM

Elhiem's Cold War era Russian line is admirably complete, with a wide selection of troops wearing body armour, so most of the regular infantrymen are from that section of their line.  I love the look of the body armour and it really fits the setting to my mind.  One of the things I respect most about this Elhiem range is just how complete it is - most modern collections (or those north of 10mm in size) are very limited, often lacking in key areas, with strange mismatched assortments of figures (Eureka has a lot of this).

NCO on a square base for quick recognition during the game

The Elhiem sculpts themselves are an uneven quality.  Some of them have very soft details.  And the castings themselves are heroically resistant to primer.  But its a strange thing - in spite of the many challenges and limitations to these sculpts, these figures have an excellent overall appearance - I think that is the magic of the sculptor! The Elhiem poses are nice, the figures are not too heavy or too chunky, and there is a great selection. Even with their challenges, I strongly recommend them.

Elhiem figures...they have their challenges, but I really like them

I can't say the same for S&S Models.  My first concern is the size of the model - these are allegedly 1/72 scale models, but it just doesn't add up.

Actual BTR-80 - cramped, yes, but still larger than the men - unlike the S&S Models

Soviet-designed APCs and IFVs are notorious for cramped conditions, but this is still supposed to carry 10 men (including the crew) and the MG in the turret is supposed to be a heavy calibre 14.5mm weapon. Looking at it beside these 20mm figures, there is just no way this is a 1/72 model.  Do you see a whole section of these guys crowding into that vehicle?  This looks to me more like a 1/87 scale model - the effect is similar to seeing 1/56 scale vehicle models beside 28mm figures.

I rusted out the exhausts...make them look a little used

Beyond the size of the vehicles, there are serious quality issues with these models as well.  It is not readily apparent in the photos, but there are numerous flaws and small bubbles all over the vehicles.  Many small details - like vision ports, hatches or headlights, are missing or have holes due to small bubbles that formed during casting. One fender area on one of the vehicles was particularly weak. And at 12 GBP per model (which works out to about $20 Canadian as our stupid third-world-petro-dollar plummets in value, and that's before shipping) let's just say I'm way less than impressed - and this was a surprise as I had always heard good things about S&S.

Note the gaps and holes over the front wheel, and the missing headlight in the same area - an example of the shoddy quality of the S&S casts

The BTRs received a very basic green paint scheme and some mild weathering, mostly on the exhaust, which I can imagine rusting out in almost no time.  The armour on these vehicles is almost non-existent by modern combat standards, enough to deflect light bullets and shrapnel and little else.  I don't think these would have lasted long enough to look worn out!

We must protect our revolution...

Units like these would have filled the armoured and motor rifle divisions from the Group of Soviet Forces in Germany, and would have been at the forefront of any assault toward the Rhine by the Warsaw Pact.  Thankfully for the world this remained a fictional event - but it is great fun to game.  I understand the Too Fat Lardies are working on a modern variant of their Chain of Command Rules - I hope to try that with these fellows!

Up next will be some opponents finished off for these fellows.  Gotta love 20mm!