Bob’s Going ‘Nuts’

Well this got out of hand , it was going to be just the section done previously , paint the lone Chruchill (note with 95mm Howitzer for support) and an armoured car!

1st the Churchill, this was one I tried initially with the heavy white dabbing with a sponge mainly as I was trying to emulate this famous photo

I now know that I should have base coated it white and then dabbed the green on with the sponge . The next 3 will use this method !!!

It had been sitting in a box for best part of 2 years to be painted so there is that.

The Humber was brought on the same foray to Questing Knight in Wellington that I brought the Easy 8 , and as I thought recon unit, which probably (in my mind) never stayed in one place long enough to be whitewashed , was ok with a white dry brush and the old sponge, post having done the base colours and addition of decals.

It was as I was doing the above that I was looking at Rubicons latest model selection and though I Don’t have a Firefly !C composite in my collection (know I know most would be happy with I’ve got Firefly’s and whats the difference and probably only John would notice  but!!).

know at the time I did this model (just before the Achtung Panzer Rabbit hole) I for some reason thought I’d gone a bit too heavy on the white dabbing , and it looked a bit heavy as compared to the Easy 8.

I had meant to put a light sprinkling snow effect , but think left sponge to rough,. I had reasoned that the my favoured unit 11th Armoured Division had been in the process of re-equipping with the new Comets and had been withdrawn for refit. They were one of the few units that Monty had avail in reserve to push into defend the Meuse River During the Ardennes Campaign, They had sent their old Sherman’s into reserve and had not received more than a couple of Comets for training and had to rapidly re-quip with their old tanks when they shove back in nt he line , so I reckoned they would have ha little chance for whitewashing their tanks.

Anyway here its is, doesn’t look to bad know I re-look at it, but it does lead to the next part of blog !

Other than the Germans, most of my time has been spent on British armour, which took a bigger if not deliberately edited out part in the Ardennes battles than I originally knew.

Now it had originally only been a plan to do one infantry squad and some light recon forces ,with a Firely as back up, but has grown, partly due me suddenly deciding to buy the Achtung Panzer starter boxk, to which I added a troop of Cromwells and now Churchills !!!!!!!

It did mean that I started off by painting the Bolt Action British Winter Infantry squad and the Churchill 95mm , that I had brought some time ago.

The British infanatry were painted in my tried and tested method for Khaki
of starting with GWZandri dust as a base and then layering washs using GW Sepia Wash, wiht only only one coat on webbing but 3 coats on the maing uniform and greatcoats .

For the rest of the starter box, didnt go far off Gerry’s force for the remainder of figures  , though I do have another boxe of Americans to build.

1st off I did a command group, to aid in identificatiion , I changed the base colur of thier Greatcoats to the brown , using GW Zandri Dust as the base, and then a brown wash for shading

I then did a group of artillery spotters , with the same greatcoats or could be used as extra command if needed.

Then I did a bazzoka team with standard coloured greatcoats and a sniper .

For the last 5 figures I did half a standard rifle squad .

This is the force that has had the least done on it as I got sidetracked with Achtung Panzer , though I have finished the starter box , both Infantry and Armoured car . Thes were the 1st of the standard cammo vehicles that I tried the sponge dabbing method on , and funnily enough got it fairly ok on these 1st attempts .

On a trip just before xmas to Questing Knight I picked up an Easy 8 Sherman, I resisted doing Fury and making Brad Pitt a game pts bonus, but that may change now I have the U.S army boxfor Achtung Panzer !

Why part one  , as this bit is o going. Now I originally was going to avoid the Big Cats,  but as I said I brought the Achtung Panzer Starterset,  which had 2 Panthers. In part 2 I will detail the Tigers and Armoured cars I added from the Actung Panzer Waffen SS set.

As these were supposed to be from 2nd Panzer Division, they may have a more regimented cammo scheme   and as I wanted to also be able to use then for Winter Russian front so a more regimented winter look

For these I decided to reverse the process and went for a white base coat, again a suggestion during the Discord discussion.  I Then painted over in a coat of Apothecary white , and then re dry brushed them white.

I know painted the inner wheels sand ( I’d like this image when Google goes winter panthers) and sponged on more sand mainly round the lower parts of the hull for where erosion had worn of the whitewash . I also added a bit of improvised winter camn in the form of GW Basilicim Grey stripes before another white day brush to blend it in.

I then did tracks and detail then added decals.

Finally I again added a liberal wash of Agrax Eartshade to grime up the lower Hulls

I initially was just looking at odd vehicles as support for my Falscrimjager   and went for a hodgepodge of vehicles they had ‘aquired’ for the offensive, ‘borrowing’ bits of kit from various training depots etc.

This allowes for my early Marder  II ( a model Kevin had won at Salute) the built but not painted Opel Blitz, and the final 3rd truck that I got back at rhe BA desert war bootcamp (ooh a 3rd milestone they are finally finished ) .To this I added a Stug and Panzer IV J from Rubicon  originally I had planned to avoid the big Cats, particularly with regards my Falscrimjager despite the famous Ardennes picture of them Tank riding a Tiger 2

I had originally thought of spraying them Army Painter Standard Grey and then lightly spraying over the top with Whitescar  but after some discussion on Discord went for sponge method.

I did wash the models and dry brush , plus paint tyres/tracks and add decals before sponging, as I reckoned they had been hurriedly whitewashed by the Falscrimjager just before the offensive.

Having done that I figured driving in Slush on busy roads would leave  very grubby stain on the lower part of vehicles, do heavily coated the bottoms I  Agrax Earthshade,  and theb re  sponged odd bits of white for ere more recent snow fals had adhered to the wet and rusting running gear.

I was particularly pleased with it worked on the two Opals.

The Stug and Panzer IV J are Rubicon kits, and I dint know if anyone has found this , but they don’t seem to like Tamiya Bottled brush on cement, at all , but happily take Revell cement.

Starting with Infantry figures, I finished the last 8 of the starter boxes Falscrimjager,  Now with these I started my 1st bit of light conversion work  by mixing g some parts from the Winter German Infantry In Greatcoats, mainly arms , as one of the Genediers was carrying multiple Panzerfausts . In addition I used one of the spare Springfield Snipers Rifles from the Americans for a sniper figure ( they hadn’t released the resin one at this point ) as at a distance no one was going to be really able to tell the difference between a bot actin Springfield with a scope and Mauser with a scope!

Having done a standard squad these figures were odd add ons  Sniper, command and Panzerfaust teams

With the Squad of Grenediers, the 1st Sprue  ofwas pretty much done as standard , but the 2nd had a few of the spare wpn arms from the Falsrimjager,  particularly the MG42 as the Winter Infantry only get the MG34 in the firing pose.

The 2st batch of 6 were very much an experiment with speed paints to get Field grey,  Until I dropped on Cammo cloak, which pretty much does the job, though in both cases I used a dry brush of vallejo field grey highlight for a bit of extra depth, having 2st put a thined coat of GW agrax Earthshade.

Boots and most of Webbing was done in GW Basilicum Grey, and the knapsack Skeleton Horde.

Well not posted any updates since before xmas on this project, and a big thanks on the Golden  Button.  Although there have been down weeks because of holiday’s   I have Been ploughing away at it.

Now the project has morphed a bit, and expanded( as mine always do) , partly down to Ben’s comment that my Winter part of project was a whole new WW2 themed theatre. Now it hadn’t intentionally started as that, but he was I  fact right, and enthused with that idea it expanded. This was not helped by the fact that whilst considering expanding with some more armour to my German forces, I spotted that one retailer was selling the Achtung Panzer starter set for £75 , so 5 28mm tanks for £15 each with a free set of rules and Gubbins.  How could I resist!!!!

Anyway at this point I have nearly hit 2 milestones,

1) Everything in the Battle of Bulge Starter Set is built  , painted and  finished including terrain.

2) All but two of the ruins in the Actung Panzer Set are Finished

In addition  various German , British and American Vehicles are completed, though a couple are awaiting crew figures.

A Winter German Infantry squad in Greatcoats is done as is Winter British Squad.