They say when it rains it pours. Only two days after I received Blood Red Skies, What a Tanker arrived in my mailbox with a resounding thud. If you haven't been around, What a Tanker is Too Fat Lardies' answer to the Tanks game that was released about a year ago.
There's a German tank with the commander in the open hatch on both covers. The similarities end there.
First I'd like to apologize for my absence, it's been a long while since I wrote anything. This is because my personal life is going through some changes, and therefore my hobby time has been quite limited. When I have had some spare time I have used it for hobbying and to a some extent gaming, not writing on the blog. Here, have a kitten as compensation.
Anyhoo, I'm still buying stuff in hope of better times to come. Here's what I have been up to, in no particular order.
After getting back from Gothcon (still need to do a photo report I know) I decided to reinforce my Deutsche Afrika Korps with another box of Perry figures and a Panzer IV. Having received the Warlord Panzer IV from my Secret Santa I ordered the Rubicon Models' kit which is a more recent release. Rubicon models are 3D designing their kits as I think almost everyone are nowadays, but they share the design drawings on their forum, which gives a lot of people the chance to chip in their view and expertise. I have been frequenting it for a time and was really interested in trying of their kits. I will be comparing it to a Warlord Games Panzer IV which I realise I haven't done a proper review of yet, but you can find my first thoughts about it here.
The first sprue of Rubicon's Panzer IV. Note the tracks assemblies.
The Rubicon Panzer IV comes in a standard sized box with three sprues; one smaller than the others, along with a set of decals and a comprehensive assembly guide. The kit does not feature a crew or commander figure. The plastic seems a bit slicker and of a different kind than the ones used by Warlord games, Italeri and Renedra for example.
Continuing from yesterday's post, here is the last item in my self-gratulatory shopping splurge:
German Pioneers, or assault engineers.
A box of German assault engineers, pioneers, or Sturm Pionier.
Opening the box reveals a lot of plastic frames and two zip-lock bags with metal bits.
The box contains 31 plastic and metal miniatures, allowing you to build german assault or combat engineers. These were highly trained, highly motivated and heavily equipped assault troops as well as regular field craft specialists. They operated in their own platoons or companies within an infantry regiment, often spearheading an assault.
For some reason I only got 20 Renedra bases and five Warlord bases... for 31 figures!
So what do I think about this set? You get a lot of stuff, right? No... not quite. Or yes you do, but most of it is not stuff that is useful for pioneers. Useful for regular infantry yes. Incidentally the price difference is only £2 between the sets and they contain the same number of sprues, making the Pioneer set a very good buy if you are after regular infantry because of all the extra bits you get.
I got a raise at work, retroactively six months back, so I decided to splurge on some toys from Warlord Games. I originally intended to buy a Sarissa Precision mansion in MDF, but it was out of stock, so I just randomly added stuff to the basket until I felt content. Well, not entirely random, but almost, since my original plan was foiled.
I'm slowly working my way through my backlog, but I can't resist adding to the lead and plastic pile now and then. As I needed some more riflemen for my DAK I ordered a bunch of Perry metal figures to accompany the plastics I already have. However, the order were processing for two weeks and only just got sent; in this internet age of instant gratification I naturally lost patience and bought something from my friendly local hobby shop to keep me occupied.
I decided to plonk out on a set of Italeri 1:56 German infantry. You can never have enough germans, right?
So, the last day of 2014, and the last chance to accomplish something. Some of these were finished some time ago but lacked basing, or just one splash of colour or... well, the days since Christmas I have really tried to finish as much stuff as possible. What I really wanted to do was to paint my Secret Santa panzer IV, or start building the Stompa I bought for the Christmas money I got from my mum.
Can't wait to build this bad boy for my orks. Question is... Zimmerit or no Zimmerit?
So today comes a mixed bag of stuff really. Pictures after the break as usual.
So, for some October is Orctober, for others it's Zombtober, and for yet another bunch it's Tanktober. So which is it for me? Well a little bit of both (but no zombies yet).
(found on the web and on is featured on various other blogs too)
Talking about tanks I couldn't resist the new Italeri 1:56 scale models.
Ahhh... happiness in a cardboard box, complete with glue and paint.
Phew, I managed to paint all the figures and finish nearly all terrain for GothCon, the biggest gaming convention in Sweden. But I will tell you more about that later on.
First I want to mention that Chain of Command has been nominated for an Origins Award in the Best Historical Miniatures Rules category. Rich is celebrating the good news with 15% off on Chain of Command until 1st of May. Now is a good time to pick up those tokens or jump off points you need, or why not the campaign supplement At the sharp end? And if you are like me and already have the rules and all the tokens and bits you need, then you can always splurge on one of the 28mm starter sets available: late war Germans and British.
Yep, you heard me, I have bought late war 28mm figures... I wasn't going to do that, it was an honest mistake. I was just going to complete the early war figures I already had, late war was always meant to be fought in 20mm... but those Crusader figures are just so damned nice, and 15% off an already discounted price was just too hard to resist. Add to that the fact that Italeri is collaborating with Warlord Games and will be releasing a line of 1/56 scale models -- rumours have been flying that Italeri already was doing the plastic hanomags and M3 halftracks for Bolt Action, but this new info is confirmed from both Italeri and Warlord Games. They will start with a Sherman, a Cromwell, a Panther and a Puma eight-wheeled armoured car, all late war stuff fitting for Normandy. There has been no announcement wether the kits are upscaled versions of their 1/72 models or not. I was also expecting some new terrain items, but instead Warlord Games will be selling Italeri's 1/72 scale stonewalls as 28mm, increasing the price without increasing the size, something that didn't go down well on The Miniatures Page.
The original kit...
...and the Warlord Games set. It's even the exact same pieces rearranged slightly.
So how did the convention go? Read more after the break. (Warning! Pictures of hairy wargamers!)
This will be a quick build and I will let the photos do the most of the talking. Afterwards I will give you my thoughts on the kit.
The finest Krupp steel, but in plastic.
For those unfamiliar with The Plastic Soldier Company, they do fast build affordable WW2 models and figures aimed at Wargamers. They recently released a kit with two Panthers with Zimmerit in 1/72 (or 20mm) which is what we will be looking at today. You get two model tanks in the box for £13.95. Presumably the Zimmerit is harder to sculpt and mold since you get three tanks for the same price in PSC's other kits.
I have been making progress on my PSC StuGs. I managed to find the side skirts which I had placed "somewhere easy to find" -- which of course meant it wasn't. But I digress. I bought three sheets of the GW Kampfgruppe Normandy transfers when they were on sale but of course I can't find them now either. Luckily I managed to find some transfers in an old Esci StuG kit.
The skirts camo pattern and decals done. Now they just need fading and weathering.
The Esci kit had four sets of crosses and different numbers but in the same style. This meant that they were sufficient for all my PSC StugS and I will have one set left for the Esci kit. Eventually it will be the fourth StuG in my unit.
In Sweden everyone is celebrating the midsummer solstice today by dancing naked around a phallic summer idol, consuming alcohol, mushrooms and copulating in the woods. Just like in ancient Viking times.
At least I wish it was so.
In reality we do dance around something vaguely phallic-shaped, although you have to have a dirty imagination to really see it. And while it is a fertility symbol it's mostly for children and everyone have clothes on. Although it is true that a lot of people get drunk and a lot of babies are born nine months from this weekend.
Swedish midsummer according to the germans (sure it's a commercial made for IKEA, but it's made for a german target audience and panders the myths I think):
Swedish midsummer according to the british:
There are some truth in both clips but you have to come here to find out for yourself.
Instead of staying out partying me and my family went to visit my wife's parents today for a quiet dinner instead. There my father in law presented me with a bag of Revell boxes as a nice surprise!
A Stummel! I have been thinking of buying this myself. Now I don't have to!
I have been helping him a bit with his computer. He's a real die-hard computer gamer but he's not so well versed setting everything up, especially not the home network, and occasionally he gets stuck at a point in a game. It's something I gladly do since he's a real nice guy and we both like to play games. Last time I visited I showed him my blog and he was curious -- he's interested in WW2 as well, allthough he doesn't build models -- but I didn't think more of it.
And some troops! Reinforcements are always welcome.
Turns out he wanted to say thanks for all the help. Although it wasn't needed I was genuinely thankful for the gifts. Now I just have to fit these into my current projects... oh dear...
These three babies have been poorly neglected since January, when I built them and their Universal Carrier brethren. In a bout of sudden guilt-fueled energy I decided to do something about this. A sunny sunday afternoon was spent in the shade furiously mixing and brushing paint on the StuGs while the kids sloshed around in the pool.
Work on the halftrack continues! In between trying to figure out which part went where I searched for some inspirational pictures on the net, discovering that the notion of putting the gun on top of the half track actually occured much earlier than I thought. For example I discovered this picture of a SdKfz 10/4 from North Africa in 1941:
(Image courtesy of Wikipedia and Bundersarchiv).
Interestingly it's obviously cold as they are wearing longcoats, and they are also towing a PaK38 anti-tank gun. On to the build!
I have had this kit for a while, I ordered it from a Taiwanese model shop on eBay called AlwaysModel. (At the time of writing they are off celebrating the Chinese new year, so their web-shop is empty!)
Beautiful Box art...
The SdKfz 10 was originally designed to be a light tractor, sharing much of the construction and components with their big brother SdKfz 11; the chassis being a bit shorter on the smaller vehicle. They were essentially trucks with the rear wheels replaced by a track assembly, able to tow infantry- and anti-aircraft guns while also transporting their crews. Both vehicles were also the basis for the more famous armoured personell carriers SdKfz 250 and SdKfz 251, which fitted the chassis with an armoured fighting compartment. The SdKfz 10 is often called the Demag since it was manufactured at the Deutsche Maschinenfabrik in Duisburg which originally constructed cranes, excavators and locomotives before the war.
Quite early on during the war someone figured out that if you mounted the gun ON the truck instead of towing it behind, you could start shooting much faster. The trade-off being that the vehicles got bigger and harder to hide and a bit more vulnerable. This variant sports the very common 20mm FlaK 38 anti-aircraft gun.
Two weeks have already passed on the new year. Since it's my goal to update this blog once a week I'm already behind! But I haven't been sitting idle, on the contrary! I have been working on a number of different stuff, snapping pics occasionally for a future blog post, and here I am with two dozens of Work in Progress-pictures... doh!
GHQ SdKfz 11, small but insanely detailed. The base is only 30x20mm.
In the left column you can see I have started a list of painted figures during 2013. So far there's only one item added it to it, a german half-track in 6mm scale shown above. I have even played a game already, but I don't have any pictures of either the finished figure or the game... Double-doh! The game was IABSM, an old scenario of the month called "Two fat ladies -- 88", set in the desert during 1941. It was a blast, everyone had a fun time while being flabbergasted (love that word) by the resilience of Italian troops and tanks at this stage during the war. What about the rest of the stuff I have done then? Well, I'll show you.
When I bought the Universal Carriers I couldn't resist getting a box of SturmGeschütz III (or StuG III for short), also from Plastic Soldier Company. Today, amidst all the christmas preparations I managed to assemble one of them without SWMBO noticing. Well, she noticed, and she didn't look too happy, but I survived. I didn't take as many pictures (because I was in a hurry) so this will be a fairly brief review.
Starting the assembly with my trusty knife, clippers and a cup of coffee.
Another essential release from Plastic Soldier Company is the german half-track Sd.Kfz 251, or "Hanomag" as it was called after the main automobile company that produced it. It went through four different versions -- A through D -- and was in production for the whole of the war. Each version was further modified into different variants depending on the their battlefield role; the /1 is the basic troop carrier and the most common variants. Other variants include the /2 which is a mortar or rocket carrier (given the same designation as they are both mobile artillery), the /3 which is a radio carrier and the /10 which is a platoon commander. All in all there were over 20 variants produced.
