Zvezda 1/100 Ferdinand and Sturmtiger

I bought these two (and a few others besides) early in 2018 with a view to building them up to review and add to my collection. I started this piece of work in May, but then forgot about them until last Sunday when I found them whilst was looking for something else!

 As ever the box art gives you an overview of assembly, which looked to be straight forward enough.
The parts come on two sprues moulded in a hard grey plastic. Parts are easily clipped from the sprues though (as ever) it is hard to do so without leaving tell-tale marks on the track surfaces.

These five parts are required to build up the chassis. Beware there are right and left hand track units....check before you glue!

 The chassis once it was assembled.

Next stage is to assemble the fighting compartment and attach this to the upper hull. There is a separate front armoured plate to fit with locator pins so you get it the correct way up. The fighting compartment has some nice detail including the interlocking armour joints at each corner of the superstructure.

Finally attach the completed upper hull and fighting compartment to the chassis and attach the 88mm gun/mantlet and the model is finished.

Very quick to assemble and a lovely little model of an early (pre-bow machine gun) Ferdinand. I guess this would be best suited to Kursk era battles, though the MG and a STUG III type cuploa would be easy enough to add for later battles (i.e. Italy) turning it into an Elefant!

 The other model was the Sturmtiger Heavy Assault Mortar/Rocket Launcher.

This time the box artwork just showed the finished tank as the assembly instructions were on a printed sheet inside the box.

 They obviously thought it too complex to rely on an exploded diagram on the box!

 Once again all the parts are on two sprues, moulded in light grey polystyrene.

Starting again with the chassis, the kit uses what seems to be one of Zvezda's rather over complex means of attachment. I guess this is to make the model truly snap-fit, but does seem just a little over-engineered.

 Once assembled it looks like this, ready for the track units to be attached.

 Also there is a front armour plate at the bow to be fitted along with the tracks.

 Once again, I have a tendency to mark the tracks when removing them from the sprues, no matter how hard I try not to.

The body of the hull comes in one piece. Nicely detailed with interlocking armour plates engraved. All that needs to be done is to add the main gun etc. and the winch for spare ammo.

 With care the back piece can be held in place whilst the front is glued.

 This then enables the gun to elevate freely.

There is a large gun mount surround to add afterwards, and a mantlet, before the barrel is fixed in place. There is a finely moulded bow MG mount (take care with the barrel!) and the aforementioned winch to attach. The rear plate has the exhausts already moulded in place, but there is a part of the air ducting to add to the engine plates.

 Finally attach the completed hull and rear plate to the chassis to complete the model.

Another really nice little kit. Simple enough to build and gives a nice rendition of a rather rare Panzer. The late type steel rimmed wheels of the track unit, might prove to be suitable to produce a late model Tiger 1 when combined with another kit?

To finish these off I gave them a spray coat of Vallejo Air Desert Yellow over a coat of white primer. Then followed Vallejo Air German Green over spray, and in the case of the Sturmtiger, Vallejo Air German Brown too.

The Sturmtiger was given desert yellow flecks to the green and brown areas to create an "Ambush" finish and then both models were weathered with Vallejo Sepia wash and high-lighted with Vallejo Iraqi Sand. They were both based on sand covered mdf bases (as all my AFVs are) and markings added from my ever diminishing supply of surplus Dragon decals.

Excellent little models, fairly straight forward to assemble and enough detail to lead to a good finish. These are such good value at approximately £3 you cannot go wrong. What's not to like...?

Pacific – 15mm Crossfire Scenario

I was sifting through my lead mountain a few weeks ago and came across several Peter Pig packs of figures I’d bought some 4-5 years ago.

These were a mix of WW2 Japanese infantry and USMC inspired by having watched the HBO Mini-series “The Pacific”.

Re-discovering these figures prompted me to re-watch the programmes and together this got me thinking about how I could create a wargame based in this theatre of operations. The obvious choice of rules (for me anyway) was to use Arty Conliffe’s Crossfire to refight a company level battle.

As I’d just built two mdf landing craft from Original Laser Designs, I wanted the scenario to be an opposed beach landing. So with that sliver of a plan I set out to decide what had to be done.

I had an idea that this game would lend itself to a demonstration/participation game for use at either club level or a gaming show. Therefore I planned for it to be both compact and portable.

I had four ready cut sheets of 6mm mdf, each 30cm square, left over from my HOTT project a few years ago so I decided that this would form the beach and interior jungle area of the game. I’ve played Crossfire on several occasions over quite small boards and found it still to work fine.

The actual beach area at first caused me some concern….but then I hit on the idea of printing out some beach graphics I found on-line. I printed them to a size that allowed them to be cropped to 30cm x 25cm. and then laminated them with gloss finish pockets. These were then stuck onto 5mm Foamex board (a scrap sign) and the sandy beach area sprayed with matt varnish. Job done.

I then turned my attention to the four mdf sheets. Firstly I varnished them on both the upper and lower surfaces to avoid warping.

Then I devised the shapes of sand dunes/banks I'd incorporate using paper templates. The design I came up with allows a little variation with swapping the tiles around.

The sand dunes/banks were added using 5mm Foamex board.

These were blended to the main board with decorators caulk.

Then everything was coated in PVA and sand scattered over it. To seal the sand in place another coat of varnish (Oak stain colour) was given to the upper surfaces of the four boards.

Finally when all was dry, the upper surfaces were dry brushed with emulsion paint from a suitable sand coloured matchpot. This was then left to dry while I tackled the other items.

I was going to scratch build some defensive positions and get a Sarissa mdf jungle hut, but fate intervened when at Colours in September. I found on the Products for Wargamers stall a box of ex-Mainly Military resin pieces being sold off for a song. I came away with 5 defence positions and a jungle hut for less than £6!

These were simply painted to match the base boards.

The foliage was the next item on the list. I firstly bought 25 palm trees from China via ebay for £2.50, which arrived surprisingly quickly! Then I found a pack of Games Workshop jungle trees in my pile of things to do – this gave me four more (large) palm trees.Then whilst at Colours I found some nice jungle plants that cost me a further £5.

These were all mounted on mdf terrain bases (random shaped) from Products for Wargamers. With sand, and some resin boulders (from The Square) added they look the part and form the areas of cover for the figures to move around the table in a Crossfire game.

With the base board finished, it was time to paint the figures.

To boost the Peter Pig miniatures I bought the Battlefront USMC platoon. These at first looked to be very rough and ready. I guess they were quite old sculpts as the castings had a lot of flash and mould lines to be cleaned up.

Eventually I was left with sufficient  figures to form two rifle companies with command figures. To complete the organisation, I had bought support weapons from Peter Pig so had .30 MMGs, Bazooka teams and 60mm Mortars to add to these as well as a Zvezda M3 Stuart.

The Japanese figures were all Peter Pig. The quality of which is excellent. Little to clean-up and very characterful sculpts that make it easy for you to paint them up.

The Battlefront figures are actually 18mm not 15mm,  so don’t mix well on the same bases as the PP figures, but once painted proved to actually be very well detailed with a good mixture of weapons etc.

I’ve ended up with more figures than I really need (I’ll use them on larger games using my 6x4 desert mat) as I only need one company of USMC with some support and a platoon of Japanese with 2xMMG support for this scenario.

Now it’s all completed the terrain fits into one Really Useful Box (bottom one in the picture) and the figures into another. All very easily transported. Now all I need is to try out the scenario…..anyone fancy a game?

Painting Tutorial 15mm German Late War Infantry

As a diversion from my Zulu Wars 28mm figures I decided to paint up a few Plastic Soldier Company Late War German Infantry figures.

I’ve had this box of figures for a couple of years now and every so often paint a few up. I think for pioneering sculpts of 15mm hard plastic figures they’re not too bad at all and represent fantastic value for money as you get something like a 1:1 Company in a box for around £20.

In case it’s of interest, I’ve split the process into stages to show you how I go about the painting and basing process.

Step 1: Priming. After cleaning the figures up and assembling them where required, I cover the base with bird cage sand stuck with PVA.  I then stick them to a lolly stick with PVA and let them dry. Then I spray them with white primer. For many years I’d only use GW Primer. Then I was converted to Army Painter products and then recently I discovered Wilko’s own Matt White Primer …an absolute bargain at £3.75 a can!

Step 2: Using slightly watered down Vallejo Field Grey acrylic I give the whole figure an all over coat. This is down quickly, but ensuring no uniform parts (or field caps) are missed.

Step 3: when this is thoroughly dry I give the Field Grey a coat of Army Painter Green Wash and leave once again, to dry. This settles in the folds and creases and gives the figure instant “Depth”.

Step 4: Next I paint the base with cheap craft acrylic paint by Anita (the shade is called Coffee). When dry I give this a Vallejo Sepia Wash. While this dries I painted the helmet cover in Vallejo Desert Yellow and added splodges of acrylic grass green and red brown. Finally once the base was dry I painted the boots in German Camouflage Black Brown.

Step 5: On the rear of the figure I block painted in the bread bag in Light Grey, the gas mask container & mess-tin in Panzer Grey and the poncho the same colours as the helmet cover.

Step 6: Next the Rifle was painted in Vallejo Matt Black as were the belt and Y straps. When dry the woodwork and entrenching tool handle (plus any stick grenade handles) were painted in Vallejo Leather Brown Game Colour. When dry the hands and face were painted in Vallejo Flesh which in turn was washed with Vallejo Flesh Wash.

Step 7: From the rear you can see the securing straps on the equipment have all been picked out in matt black as has the strap around his helmet. The mess tin, gas mask container and metalwork on the rifle all have a light dry-brushing of silver at this point.

Step 8: Now the painting is complete, the figures were based in groups of 3 on 30x30mm laser cut mdf bases, I use this basing convention as it fits in with all the major rule sets I'm likely to use - Crossfire, PBI, BKC, IABSM etc. They are glued in place with superglue and then the base covered in sand stuck down with PVA. When the sand has dried the base was given a coat of Anita's Coffee coloured paint. Then coat of Vallejo Sepia Wash and finally a dry-brush of Vallejo Buff.

Steps 9: The final finishing. I spray coat the bases with Army Painter Satin Varnish followed by Army Painter Anti-Shine Varnish to protect the figures. Then when dry I apply patches of static grass with PVA and the bases are finished. I tend to paint figures in batches of 15-20 at a time to avoid getting too bored painting the little details on figure after figure. Below are the finished items.

Hope you found this helpful.