Challenge Submission #3 - WW2 German Panzertruppen

My third submission for this year's painting challenge is a selection of early to mid war units appropriate for a German Panzer Division. They include a squad of Kradschützen (motorcycle troops), a Sd.Kfz. 222 light armoured reconnaissance vehicle, and a platoon of Panzerkampfwagen I Ausf B light tanks. The last vehicle is an iconic Panzerkampfwage VI Ausf H or Tiger I.

The Kradschützen are a mix of Black Tree Design and Bolt Action miniatures for a total of nine figures on five motorcycles, with two where the passenger is riding in a sidecar, and two where the passenger is riding pillion. I picked up the two Black Tree Design motorcycles a number of years ago at an estate sale, and the assembly looked rather daunting with the bike, the handle bars, and the riders all being separate pieces. I wanted to flesh them out a bit, and ordered two motorcycles from Warlord Games where the passenger was riding in a side car. One more motorcycle was ordered a few years later, again from Warlord Games, but this time with the passenger riding pillion. If I thought Black Tree Design bikes were daunting, the ones from Warlord Games consisted of 10 separate pieces, and didn't come with assembly instructions. I was able to find those online, but to get everything to fit correctly was really tricky, especially since the handle bar and the driver's arms came as a single piece.

With much patience, I was successful in getting everything together so that it all looked right, although the drivers still don't seem to be sitting properly on the seat. The instruction for the bikes with side cars showed stowage satchels attached to the sidecar, but none came with the kits. I did get enough for a single bike in the kit with the passenger riding pillion. These got moved over to the sidecars, one to each, and the second stowage bin coming from my bits box along with a gas mask canister. Three of the bikes were mounted on long bases that came from Warlord Games, while the bikes with sidecars were mounted on bases cut from old plastic gift cards. Everything was primed in black and then painted with Vallejo or AK Interactive acrylics. They are now ready to take the field as part of the 8th Panzer Division.

 

The  Sd.Kfz. 222 light armoured car was another acquisition from the above mentioned estate sale. It was a multi-part metal casting which I think is an old Battle Honors kit. The scale looks closer to 1/48 than 1/56, and although the body is hollow, it still weighs in at 266g (almost 9.5oz). In fact, it is so heavy that the axles that came with the model were unable to support the weight without bending. I had to pull the wheels off again and replace the axles with lengths of florist wire that were much stiffer.

The fit of the pieces was pretty wonky, and I had to fill a number of gaps with epoxy putty. The rear fenders were a single piece that were difficult enough to fit to the chassis, but the front fenders were even worse. They came as two separate pieces, and the fit to the chassis just didn't work as all the angles were slightly off. Eventually I gave up and fashioned the front fenders out of a single piece of thin plastic card. Once all the fenders were in place, I made some headlights out of the heads of pushpins that I have filed flat on one side. Finally I added the shovel and the rolled tarp from my  bits box. The commander that came with the model was wearing an Einheitsmütze, which is more mid to late war, so I replaced him with a figure from a Bandai tank kit. The vehicle was painted in a similar fashion to the Kradschützen, and then some AK Splattereffects Dry Mud was applied. It will make a useful addition to my early war Germans.

 

Next I have a platoon of three 1/56 resin Panzerkampfwagen I Ausf B light tanks from Warlord Games that I purchased as part of a bulk order along with DallasE. I liked how he mounted his on bases to make them a bit more compatible with 1/48 and 1/50 scale vehicles, so I did likewise. Assembly was pretty straight forward with the tracks, etc, fitting well to the chassis. I used magnets to attach the turrets, countersinking them into the chassis and the turret itself. The only flaw was that two of the exhaust pipes were not well cast, so I carved the partly formed bits away, and rebuilt the exhaust with some copper wire and the insulating sleeve. These were then painted using the same technique as for the armoured car. They were then mounted on the bases that had already been prepared with most of the sand, paint, and flocking before gluing the vehicles in place. The red vehicle numbers and German crosses on the tanks are appropriate for the France 1940 campaign.

 

Lastly I have  a Panzerkampfwagen VI Ausführung H, also called the Tiger I, of the 502nd Heavy Panzer Battalion. The battalion was the first unit to receive and field the Tiger I in August 1942, and it was one of the most successful German heavy tank battalions, claiming the destruction of 1,400 tanks and 2,000 guns.

The model is a 1/48 scale Bandai kit that I picked up on eBay. It was obviously a second hand kit as it had already been started, but what the original owner had done was glue both the inner and outer road wheels on all the odd numbered axles before realizing their mistake. I contacted the seller about the problem, who refunded my money without wanting me to send the kit back. It languished for many years in my pile of unfinished projects until I thought that a repair was possible. I used a fine saw blade to cut off all the outer wheels from the odd numbered axles. Now all the inner wheels could glued onto the even numbered axles. I drilled holes into the axles and the back of the wheels I had removed with a pin vice to take a short piece of florist wire to provide strength to the joint when I glued them back in place with a little bit of epoxy putty to fill the slight gap. Once all that was done, the rest of the kit was assembled as per the instructions.

Prior to this, I had already acquired a Solido 1/50 diecast Tiger I in grey. It is visible in the background of the pics below, but not part of the submission. Other than a bit of tweaking, new decals, and adding a muzzle break, the Solido model is as I bought it. Since it was already painted in Panzer grey, I wanted to use the same paint scheme with the Bandai model to make them part of the same unit. After priming it with black, I used AK Interactive acrylic 704 Dunkelgrau, and then drybrushed the raised areas and corners with a lighter grey. Special parts like the tools and tow cables were painted appropriate colours, and a few parts got either a black or a dark brown wash. Once the tracks were on, I hit the lower areas with AK Splattereffects Dry Mud. 

 

Thanks for reading.

Challenge Submission #2 - Early WW2 Polish Reinforcements

I started painting an early WW2 Polish army two years ago, and wanted to flesh it out with a few more support weapons and vehicles. For this submission I have completed a Polish 10th Motorized Brigade Squad, a Polish Army Medium Motor Team, a boxed set of Polish Army Marksman, Anti-Tank Rifle, and Light Mortar teams, and a Polish Vickers E 6 ton Tank, all from Warlord Games. All are 28mm or 1/56 scale with the foot figures cast in metal and the Vickers 6-ton cast in resin. The armoured car is actually a 1/48 scale plastic model of a Soviet FAI-M light armoured car by Ace Models, a company out of Kyiv, that I picked up from a local hobby store. I painted it in Polish camouflage to stand in as a proxy for a Samochód pancerny wz. 34 light armoured car. As with the Polish Army miniatures I had already done, these were painted using Vallejo acrylics and then treated with Army Painter Strong Tone Quick Shade.

Polish armoured car and Vickers E 6-ton tank

Polish Army Mediuim Mortar Team

Polish Army Marksman, Anti-Tank, and Light Mortar Teams. The bases for the prone anti-tank rifleman, and the light mortar are cut from recycled plastic gift cards.

Polish 10th Motorized Brigade Squad consisting of a squad leader in the unit's distinctive black leather jackets, a BAR gunner, and eight riflemen. When the brigade was formed, the men were equipped with WW1 vintage German and Austro-Hungarian helmets.

 Thanks for reading.

Challenge Submission #1 - Ruined Hamlet and Stone Bridge

 This the first year in which I have participated in the Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge. My submission for the first week of painting consisted of a variety of terrain pieces in 28mm scale to be used with Bolt Action or The Great War.

 The Ruined Hamlet consists of four models of a Ruined Farmhouse in hard plastic from Warlord Games that I bought during a sale of 'four for the price of three'. They can now be purchased individually, or as a 'Ruined Hamlet' box of three. Each set consists of a two story building plus a one story shed. While they are quite generic for 'somewhere in Europe during the last 400 years', they will work best for either WW1 or WW2. Assembly can provide some variation as to how the walls fit together, I would say that there is definitely a 'preferred way'  that results in a 'best fit'. Once all the building and rubble piles were glued together, I mounted them on bases made from some pieces of scrap 3mm Masonite board onto which I had scored lines to look like floor boards. I then glued down some coarse sand around the walls to blend them into the bases. The ruins were primed in black using a rattle can, and then painting using Vallejo acrylics. Once the painting was completed I added some flocking along the edges.

 

 The Stone Bridge is manufactured by Italeri, but marketed by Warlord Games. It comes as a 6 piece hard plastic boxed set that goes together very smoothly to give you a single arch stone bridge that would work on any battlefield in Europe for the past 500 years. After assembly, like the ruined hamlet, it was primed black using a rattle can and painted with a selection of Vallejo acrylics.

 Thanks for reading, and good luck to my fellow Conscripts who are also participating in the Painting Challenge.

Painting Challenge Submission 2 - General Wolfe and the Louisbourg Grenadiers

New forces for the Quebec 1759 Project - General Wolfe and the Louisbourg Grenadiers.

Happy New Year folks! Last year I unveiled another project - painting forces for the Siege of Quebec and the Battle of the Plains of Abraham in 28mm. Progress on this project is...let's just say it is moving at a "stately pace", but there has been some painting happening and I'm pleased to share recent results with this second submission to Curt's Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge. Here is a command base for General James Wolfe, commander of the British forces on that fateful day in September outside Quebec, and the "Louisbourg Grenadiers", another unit for my collection of British forces for the battle. All of the figures are 28mm metal castings from Wargames Foundry, save for the figure of Wolfe himself, which is a 28mm metal figure from Warlord Games.

The Louisbourg Grenadiers

The "Louisbourg Grenadiers" - figures from Wargames Foundry.

The "Louisbourg Grenadiers" were a provisional converged battalion comprising the detached grenadier companies from the 22nd Foot, 40th Foot and 45th Foot regiments of the British army. The name comes from the French fortress of Louisbourg (on Cape Breton in Canada), which the British had captured previous to mounting their campaign against Quebec, and I believe all three of the regiments saw service in that action. 

Beautiful sculpts from Wargames Foundry - note cast details on the mitres - this is a huge help.

The converged unit went on to see heavy action during the Siege of Quebec in the summer/autumn of 1759, and were prominent in the right of the British line during the Battle of the Plains of Abraham outside the city in September. Wolfe counted on the grenadiers to be a reliable strike force for his army.

The left of the grenadier line...also a shot of General Wolfe leading the unit...

To represent this unit on the gaming table, I opted for miniatures from Wargames Foundry's Seven Years War range - not only do they include grenadiers in firing poses, but the Foundry range also offers a number of officer and musician poses for the grenadier units that you cannot find in Warlord's current French and Indian War figure range. The Foundry figures have two other advantages - the details on the mitres are cast on to the figures, giving me at least a fighting chance of creating a consistent - if vague - representation of the insane and intricate symbols the grenadiers wore on their head gear. The second advantage is that Foundry still offers free shipping at a reasonable order level!

View of the rear detail on the figures...those hefty Wargames Foundry figures are crowded on to the bases...

Painting these figures was certainly a bit of a headache, and the finer points of detail are clearly beyond my brush skills. But the excellent quality castings from Foundry allow the opportunity to give a nice, consistent "look" from a couple feet away, which is what I generally aim for with my painting.

Two of the Regiments - the 22nd and the 40th - wore "buff" facings. "Buff" is a colour I struggle to get right, as I'm...not really what sure what colour it is bloody supposed to be - not quite white, not quite tan...who knows...anyways, I muddled around with different combos of flesh-tones and faded khakis from GWs range to get something I was happy with. The 45th, with dark green facings, was a little easier...I opted to paint the musicians in the colours of the 45th, as the green gave a better chance to show off the bonkers details of the reverse uniforms worn by drummers/fifers during that era. Being a provisional unit, I understand (from much smarter people) that there was no colour party for the Louisbourg Grenadiers, so there are only musicians and no flags here with this unit.

The right of the British line takes shape...small but growing collection for this project.

The Foundry castings are lovely - but I was struck by how beefy and tall these miniatures are...I know grenadiers were supposed to be tall lads, but wow! They barely fit on their 50mm square bases...certainly they would not mix well with Warlord Games figures, but as they are on their own unit, it's not an issue. Not so much when it came to General Wolfe...

General James Wolfe

General Wolfe - figure from Warlord Games. The grenadiers behind him are castings from Wargames Foundry.

In any game it is nice to have small bases to represent command figures for the forces on the table. In the era of the Seven Years War, these bases often host officers wearing the finest 18th century garb - big hats, big cuffs, fancy gloves, beautiful horse furniture, and well-dressed flunkies to carry out commands, pass messages, reassure their boss, recite poetry etc.

But the Siege of Quebec was no such campaign. Not only was the North American theatre of operations particularly merciless in terms of what the weather and terrain would do to such nice clothing - if you could even it get it there - but the snipers and warriors among the enemy would be sure to mark you out and finish any snappily-dressed officers in short order! Along the St. Lawrence in the summer of 1759, less was more...

Add to this the reports of Wolfe's character...as I read accounts of him, he struck me as a spartan man. Brave, disciplined, a "military thinker" for the era, but also not much for politics or the finer things of noble birth and rank. Hardly a revolutionary, but he seemed genuine in his care for the soldiers under his command, and in turn was well-liked by the rank and file troops who served under him. He was not the sort to demand fancy outfits on campaign, least of all during the 1759 campaign in the hearts of what was then still called "New France".

Monument to the battle at Quebec city - the Wolfe-Montcalm monument.

In the book "Death or Glory", which recounts in detail the Siege of Quebec, there are many excerpts from Wolfe's diaries and family memoirs, as well as those of his colleagues from the 1759 campaign. The James Wolfe emerging from those accounts is a bit of...well, he seems like a bit of a brittle, indecisive, mopey, passive agressive tw@t. He couldn't stand the navy (and hey, we've all been there, right?) even though the Royal Navy was critical to the ultimate success of the Quebec campaign. As the siege wore on, there was much friction with his senior officers, and Wolfe himself seemed to despair and waffle, looking for opportunities to approach the city which just were not there. He ordered raids that devastated the colony of New France, burning crops and villages up and down the valley, but the few military assaults attempted against Montcalm's defences around the Beauport shore were abject failures. Cartoons drawn by officers mocking Wolfe as a man obsessed with how to properly dig latrines, but unable to give orders decisively, still survive. As the siege wore on that summer, Wolfe eventually fell ill, and despair in the memoirs seems palpable.

And somehow, out of all of this, he led a daring - I would even say "nutter-adjacent" - against-the-odds assault across the St. Lawrence (with, again, critical assistance from the Royal Navy), one that took the French garrison by surprise and prompted a small European-style field engagement on the Plains of Abraham. The risks to the British in this engagement were huge - the army landed, but was badly exposed in the rear even as it faced the fortified walls of Quebec City and the massing of Montcalm's available forces. Really, this British force should have been badly beaten, even slaughtered.

The Death of General Wolfe - by Benjamin West, painted in 1770.

And yet... whatever issues he had, whatever sickness lingered, whatever the friction with his colleagues, Wolfe overcame the odds. He and his officers led the battle wisely. Wolfe himself led from the front - and paid with his life. Shot several times, he is said to have died on the battlefield just as reports of the French defeat arrived that day. Instantly, he became a military hero of the 18th century. His death commemorated in a portrait (which itself has a whole story, given that the scene in the portrait is not exactly "real"), there are schools and streets and all sorts of things named after him in Canada and elsewhere (or, I should say, there are for now).

The British command base for this hobby project needed to have a General Wolfe, and I opted to use the figure from Warlord Games to represent him. As there were really no "flunkies" in the 18th century sense present on the battlefield that day, I decided to put two grenadiers from the 22nd Foot on the base with him. Wolfe is said to have died in the arms of a grenadier from the 22nd Foot, and he was leading/directing the Louisbourg Grenadiers himself that day, so I thought it would be a way to put a bit more of a "crowd" on to the base of a senior officer and still make sense in the context of the setting. 

I believe that the real General Wolfe was a taller fellow for his time...but those Wargames Foundry grenadiers are huge, so I played a bit of silly bugger with the base to hide the difference.

The Warlord Games depiction of Wolfe is a lovely sculpt...complete with the arm band as he mourned the death of his father. But compared to the giant grenadiers from Foundry, the casting is very thin and very short. Thin is OK...poor Wolfe was puking his guts out for a couple weeks prior to the battle anyway.  But the height difference was a bit crazy, and so to compensate a I modeled a small "rise" into the base for Wolfe's figure to stand on - and I used a ton of ground work and grass to obfuscate the difference...

Thanks everyone - I hope you are all getting a chance to relax over the holidays - all the best in 2021!

Winter StuG III

1/56 scale plastic StuG model - kit from Warlord Games.

As Dallas noted, I have been on quite the painting tear with a 28mm WW2 project.  I got started on a late-war winter German force last December, and the project has come along nicely, starting from zero figures to include a platoon of infantry, some support and even some Hanomags to ride around it.  It's more than enough for a nice game of "Bolt Action" - but there is one element missing - some AFV support.  This new model will address that.

An iconic piece of WW2 kit...the unique front silhouette of the StuG.

This is a plastic StuG III from Warlord Games - it is a 1/56 scale kit (sigh).  I have painted it up in winter colours to match the rest of the force that I have put together so far.

The plastic kit has lots of nice detail, but if you look closely at the bottom right I could NOT get the hull sections to sit together smoothly...f*cking plastic models...I always mess them up...

I don't plan to do a lot of tanks or anything in 28mm - I play other scales for that - but they still needed at least one to feel like my first phase of this new project was truly accomplished. So here we are!

Dallas does seem to have a lot of Sherman tanks, so I might need to add another AFV of some kind...

I left the schurzen plates off of the model, as there was no reasonable way to mount them and expect that they would not be immediately snapped off on the gaming table...

This kit was relatively straightforward to assemble, although I still found a way to struggle with it. That's just me...any normal hobby human will find this kit easy to build. BUT there is one exception to that statement: it's the schurzen plates. I really wanted to have those on the StuG, but as you can see, the Warlord model has flimsy plastic connection points. These closely mimic the real way those plates were mounted, so model is realistic. But in terms of wargaming-table logistics, this approach is delusional, as they would snap off the second someone tries to pick up the model.

Anyway, it looks great without the plates, and I might figure out a more robust solution later.  So I built the plates, but have left them to the side for now.

75mm gun will help take on enemy armour...

I threw my usual painting recipe for winter AFVs on the model...as I have said before, I like my winter vehicles to look like a mess, because winter IS a mess - a total f*cking mess. F*ck winter. Snow is pretty on Christmas Cards (and there are days like that), but anything that drives or moves through the winter will be mucky in no time at all. I like my vehicles to reflect that.

Here is the vehicle along with a couple of the infantry models painted during the recently completed AHPC X.

I wanted to start with a StuG for the Germans because StuGs look cool and they were a pretty common AFV (insofar as AFVs were available to the Germans late in the war).  I tend to neglect StuGs in my WW2 collections in other scales, so I thought I would start with this iconic vehicle in 28mm. My late war Germans now have some AFV support, and are ready for a game...whenever that might be possible...

Ready for action on the table! I'm sure it won't get knocked out on the first turn or anything like that...I mean, when has that ever happened to newly-painted vehicles, right?

As you have seen elsewhere on the blog, Dallas has been really beefing up his collection of 28mm US forces in winter kit, so at some point we'll be able to have a really awesome game of "Bolt Action" set during the Battle of the Bulge, which is something I've always wanted to try! Who knows when that game will take place...but in the interim, collection escalation is always a lot of fun. 

Thanks for reading, and I hope all are safe and healthy out there.

More Dredd: Cadet Judge plus Chief Judge Cal and Retinue

The one (only?) advantage of being forced to stay home is that it has increased production of painted figures here at Conscript Towers. Fortunately I'd just received a mail order from Warlord Games and along with some Bolt Action Americans (which have also been painted and will be the subject of a future blog post), Stallard & Co sent me a Cadet Judge from the Judge Dredd range.

The box includes a Cadet mounted on a Lawmaster Mk 1, which is significantly smaller than the MK 2 that comes with the Dredd and Anderson box sets. I love the aesthetic of the bike and rider, looking like the Cadet just pulled up to a crime scene, or is conversing with a civilian or another Judge.

The bike is a super little model, cast with separate handlebars and shotgun holster. It painted up fast and the casting was particularly conducive to edge highlighting, which I seldom do nowadays...

Since in the game rules, Lawmaster bikes have AI and can operate independently of their riders, I didn't glue the Cadet in place.

Looks good eh??

The box also includes a Cadet Judge on foot. While both models are composed of Warlord's new resin-plastic material, it works much better on vehicles than on foot figures. The Cadet Judge's daystick was warped and wavy, so it was cut off and replaced with a length of wire from the hobby box.

Another pretty nice model from the modern Dredd range.

And now for a throwback to "The Day the Law Died"! This group of models depicts Chief Judge Cal and his retinue of SJS Judges and bloodthirsty alien Klegg mercenaries from 2000AD progs 89-108.

Judge Cal was the power-hungry (and apparently insane) boss of the SJS (Special Judicial Squad - basically Internal Affairs for the Justice Department) and took the Chief Judge's chair in a coup d'etat, supported by his Praetorians in the form of the SJS.

Mongoose made two SJS judge models - one male and one female. Although they're cast in metal, I was able to convert the pose of the leftmost model slightly.

I should also note some potential controversy regarding the SJS uniforms... as 2000AD strips were in black and white only, it's not super-clear whether the SJS uniforms were navy (as we presume regular Judges wore) or black... likewise the eagles and buckle badging could be depicted as silver or gold. I've copied the colour scheme depicted on the excellent Sho3box blog, which is a great source for 2000AD/Dredd painting inspiration.

"Slicey-slicey, oncey-twicey, claw and fang'll kill Dredd nicely!"

Another key to Cal's successful usurpation of power in Mega-City One was his employment of the Kleggs, alien mercenaries who worked for Cal and were paid in... meat (you can see where this is going)

These are also Mongoose castings from the Kickstarter and, truth be told, aren't very good, with lots of awkward flash and miscast areas. To be honest I was pretty lazy cleaning them up too so don't be too hard on them.

"Meaty-beaty, chop 'em neatly, death or glory no retreatee!"

The leader wields a pretty fearsome cleaver as well as the standard Klegg rifle.

The weird rocket-thingies on their backs are straight from the comic, but I have no idea what they are supposed to represent.

Front-and-back of the Klegg trooper. Mongoose apparently made another version of this model that had a better looking rifle, but I haven't been able to track one down yet.

Kleggs have reappeared in subsequent Dredd storylines as well. Notwithstanding my tepid enthusiasm for the rhyming football-chant mania that informed Dredd stories in the late '70s, I actually quite like the look of the Kleggs. In fact, I have even bought some other not-Kleggs (Khurasan's Garn)! So I am a Klegg fan... I just wish these ones were better cast and offered some variety in poses.

Now for Warlord Games to give us game stats for Cal and the Kleggs... I think that gaming the insurrection against Chief Judge Cal would be fun indeed!