German Recon Platoon

I have been in a bit of a protracted hobby funk recently.  I have struggled to get motivated to pick up a paint brush, let alone blog about it.  Steve has been carrying the blog for some time now.

I have finally got around to painting up a recon platoon to go with mu Fallschirmjager army.  Mobile recon is helpful with the FJ because they are a pretty static bunch.  A lot of lists for them have infantry scout platoons for recon, which I did not like the look of.  The Ersatz FJ in Bridge by Bridge have the option of a halftrack platoon, with a sdkfz 250/1 as command and 250/9s in support.

Battlefront were out of the 250/9s, so I sourced these guys from Forged in Battle.  They have the built in base which I am not a fan of generally, but the quality of the casting was quite good and there was a lot of detail on the halftracks.  Here are the pictures:

Hopefully it will get me motivated to do some more painting!

Hell on Wheels gets its First Outing

Steve's American Armoured Company saw its first action last week.  Work commitments (otherwise known as four days of fishing in Golden Bay) have got in the way of this being posted, so my apologies for it being a little dated.  But last Wednesday Steve was able to put together a 1300 point American Armoured Company known as "Hell on Wheels".

We played "surrounded" with my Fallschirmjargers holding the middle of the table.  I was using a Bridge by Bridge list of Ersatz FJ, with Panthers in support and those rather handy panzerfaust teams that Colonel Von der Heydte comes with.  Here's some pictures:

The FJs in the centre:

The American armour lined up:

 Panthers lie in wait:

The view on the right flank:

The aftermath:

 After some initial gains, the American armour was dealt a heavy blow from the panzerfaust teams in the woods.  We muddled through the rules a little on them, but they hit a hard blow against the Shermans.  The Panthers took care of another platoon on the far side and Steve soon called it a day.  He had taken out two of the pak 40s and a number of infantry teams, but was on the brink of having most of his platoons destroyed.

It was all played in a good spirit and Steve was a good sport despite my panzerfaust guys being a little too strong it seemed...  He has plans for next time, which include a better terrain arrangement.  On that note, the eagle eyed of you will see that there are the new Battlefront buildings there - the corner store, the large house and the Bastogne Church.  All looking good on the table top.  The paint job on the church is a bit average but the others are all very good.

German Camo: Waddaya think?

So I am painting up some nebelwerfers (nebs as they are lovingly referred to) and thought I would whip up some different camouflage styles for my Germans.

As a support platoon to my Fallshirmjager army, they are not part of the FJ or Luftwaffe branches of the Wehrmacht, but rather the "Heer" or land based.  So I thought I would do some different camouflage on them.  I have painted each team a different style, and will mix them all up at the end.  Team one was painted with my "traditional: FJ camo (even though they are not FJ):

The three teams as a WIP

As an aside, does anyone else make up silly names for their German military paraphernalia: - panzer-stuffer, panzer-muncher, panzer fluff chucker.  I hate to think what we are going to do with nebelwerfers - noodle chuckers?

Team One with my usual FJ Camo

Then I used the camo tutorial over at the Flames of War site (see: here).  Yes I know that they are SS, but they just look cool.  First team using the "Plane Tree" pattern:

Not their final position - going to mix them all up at the end

Then I did the "oak leaf" pattern:

So what do you think of my noggin-wackers and the various styles?  Still have the command and observer to do, so open to all new suggestions.

German Reinforcements: Panzer IVH Platoon

After prevaricating on what late war German tank platoon I should get as a support platoon to my Fallschirmjager army, Steve effectively made the decision for me.  He bought a large bundle of stuff on Trade Me (NZ's ebay) and among them was the Panzer IVH boxed set.

Like most of us wargamers, I love a good boxed set - decals, sprue and five tanks.  They had the plastic schurzen add ons as well, which were a fricken fiddly faff fest of a thing to put on.  But after getting through that (and without a super glue finger print on the side), I got around to painting them up pretty quickly, using by and large the WWPD painting guide for these guys: see here .

Aside from the schurzen, the turrets are going to need some work filing them down as they sit too high on the tank, making the gun barrel look like it is in need of a bit of viagra.  Should have done that before I painted, really as there is going to be a bit of resin dust generated from that.

Here are the guys painted up - still with some stowage to add on: