Valiant Germans and diecast panthers

first update for a while as real life has been winning out over hobby time the last couple of weeks. I managed to finish the sea witch (my pirate ship) and base coated in time to play some pirate games at the club against Jim (some pictures here on Jim's Blog http://jimswargamesworkbench.blogspot.com/2010/11/pirate-ship-skirmish.html ) but I want to finish it properly before I post up pictures here.

The Slann are still on going the cold one riders are close to being finished, and I've added some extra scouts and painted up a couple of character models, When the cold ones are finished I'll post up some pics.

In the mean time Jim kindly flogged me a box of valiant Germans at a knock down price so I've been distracted into making a start on the rapid fire in 1/72 project that I've always wanted to do. Up above you can see pictures of my first attempts at painting 1/72 infantry these miniatures are supposed to represent SS panzer grenadiers of the 9th SS panzer division. to be honest once I started researching German uniforms for late war I wish I hadn't lots of different camo gear plus field grey (a colour which no one seems to be able to agree on) and the SS and Heer wearing different stuff it all got a bit confusing. In the end I plumped for a mix of field grey and 1944 pattern shirts in pea dot (I think).

Pictured above are the first batch of 12 infantry there are 18 more on the painting table and then I need to build the support weapons (mortars, Panzershrecks and HMGs). As with most of my projects this is threatening to get out of hand as I picked up two extra boxes of valiant Germans (one of each type classic and Normandy) to go with the one Jim sold me which works out as 204 German infantry. At the moment I'm thinking of four rapid fire battalions one SS panzer grenadier battalion, a battalion from the 21st panzer division, an infantry battalion and maybe a fortress battalion made up with the left overs

As well as the infantry I've added a couple of re-painted diecast Panther tanks to support my SS panzer grenadiers.

Cheers Jon