Real Steel

I have finished building the PSC Panzer IV tanks and they are now ready for painting.

Three widdle tanks were going to the market...

As you might recall I wanted to build them as the F2 variant and ordered some snazzy aluminium barrels for them. I have also added some metal stowage from SHQ for that gypsy-caravan lived in look.

Notice the Mark II ausf. G assault bucket hanging on the rear the middle tank.

I tried to vary the bits included in the kit, so one tank got the extra track cut up and placed on the front armour plate between the hull MG and the driver's vision port, the spare road wheels on the rear hull and jerry cans on the side instead..

Helmets and water flasks were common, even though the helmets wouldn't be worn inside the tank.

Some crews stacked boxes of equipment on the rear deck and used the spare tracks as extra armour.

I wanted a commander who just poked his head out of the hatch. Some minor surgery was needed though.

All in all I'm quite pleased with the look of these. The metal barrels are beautiful and the stowage adds character to the individual vehicles. I will be marking them up as vehicles from the same platoon so I wanted to tie them together visually but still make them a bit different to eachother. 

As a standard panzer platoon contained five vehicles I will be needing two more I need to buy one more box from Plastic Soldier Company. However, it would be nice to have some short-barelled Panzer IV F1 tanks for those 1940 or 1941 games as well, so I suspect I may order more than one box.