something else random - home made weapons pit

Another rather random result of a couple of spare hours in the wargames room. This one started with a rat that was terrorizing my compost bin. Said rat was duly poisoned, the poison came with several little plastic trays to hold the poison but I only used one. The others I kept because they looked useful.

A couple of weeks ago I turned one of the plastic trays into a weapons pit for use with my Valiant 1/72 Germans. Here's how

1) cut a whole in the tray with scissors to make an entrance

2) glue tray to a hardboard base with superglue

3) cover the outside of the tray with Das air drying putty, borrowed from my daughter's jewellery making set. Leave to dry over night

4) find out Das putty has cracked up during drying seal and fill the cracks with PVA glue and sand

5) add balsa wood to the inside of the tray and score with a sharp pencil to represent planks

6) add greenstuff sand bags

7) paint and flock

All in all a nice piece of scenery that cost not a lot.

Cheers Jon

Kampfgruppe Emmenthaler

Hi all,
thought I'd take and post up some pictures of my completed late war SS Kampfgruppe Emmenthaler. This my first ever 20mm project (not counting the boyhood dabbling in Airfix)and I think it's turnned out quite well for a first attempt.

Having said that I've wanted to do some rapid fire wargaming in 20mm for years and to that end I have squirreled away various plastics kits and diecasts in 1/72 scale for some years. Getting my hands on a box of Valiant Germans finally got this project going (and kept it cheap). To keep costs down I decided to use as much of my hoard of kits as I could the result is something that resembles one of those horrible cheesy/power gamer armies that German players are always accused of. Loads of big cats and elite panzer grenadiers. To balance things out and prove I'm not some sort of uber gamer my next two Kampfgruppe are going to be based around a infantry battalion and a Volks grenadier regiment.

Anyway on to the photos all infantry are Valiant 1/72 plastic miniatures and the vehicles are from all over the place I'll try and give details if I can remember the source.

The whole Kampfgruppe laid out.

Kampfgruppe HQ led by Oberst Emmenthaler decide on their next move. The radio truck is a conversion of an old Esci Opel ambulance the car is a Ready to Roll resin. The table is scratch built.

Sdkfz222 from the Kampfgruppe HQ, an old Airfix model with a valiant crewman

SP 37mm AA attached to the HQ to give some cover from allied air power. Model is Haswega(?) with Valiant crewman.

The inevitable Panther tanks, these are re-painted diecasts off the front of a magazine about tanks sold in the UK last year.

Attached Tiger 1s from one of the SS heavy tank battalions. Again re-painted diecasts from a magazine. these came with the first issue and cost £1.99 each bargain!

Mobile fire support in the form of a Stuka zum fuss plus a spotter in a kubelwagen. Esci made the half track with rockets and Airfix the Kubel. Lack of research meant I stuck a crewman in the halftrack a few weeks latter I found out the crew retired a safe distance and fired the rockets remotely ...........

Panzer grenadier battalion HQ , the car is from the Ready to roll range

panzer grenadier company with truck. the Opel blitz is again a resin Ready to roll vehicle. I really like the ready to roll stuff cost wise they cost the same as plastic kits but there is none of the annoying sticking together to do.

The second Panzer grenadier company.

The third panzer grenadier company.

The Machine gun company and truck. the Ford truck is another Ready to roll offering.

Well that's the lot I really enjoyed this project and still have loads of Valiant Germans left so more Kampfgruppe are on the way.

Cheers Jon

German Infantry

Having finished my first Rapid Fire battle group (the obligatory SS panzergrenadiers and big cats). I have now started on the next battle group based around a bog standard German late war infantry battalion.

These models were finished a couple of weeks ago and are about half the battalions infantry component. I still have 16 more infantry, 2 machine guns, a 81mm mortar and a couple of guns from the regimental support companies to paint up.

These guys are valiant 1/72 miniatures a mix of the classic Germans and Germans in Normandy box sets. I want to use plenty of zeltbahns on these guys and paint them in Heer splinter pattern. I found a great painting guide here

http://www.elhiemfigures.com/files/splinter.pdf

I think the camo has gone quite well all though it seems to show up less in the photos than when your holding the models in hand.

Cheers Jon

Kampfgruppe HQ

At last I've finally managed to get my first painting of 2011 done and finished of my SS Kampfgruppe HQ for rapid fire.

As you can see it has six figures (all Valiant some converted), a Sdkfz 222 A/C (Airfix), a 37mm SP AA (Haswega), a radio truck (Esci) and a Stoewer car (ready to roll).

The HQ should also have a couple of supply trucks and a Bergpanzer, the trucks I'll do some time. As yet though I haven't found a reasonably priced (bearing in mind it's more of eye candy thing than a useful bit of kit) bergpanzer in 1/72.

Next up I've got a German heer infantry battalion to finish (half the infantry are nearly finished, but that still leaves all the support weapons and another 16 infantry) . I've also got my US armoured task force to do. I've put the yanks on a brief hold though while I wait for some stowage packs I've ordered to turn up. I'm using quite a few armourfast kits which while nicely priced and easy to put together are just to plain so I'm hoping the stowage will make them more interesting (and a bit more realistic).

Cheers Jon

Raventhorpe Ready to Roll trucks

Finally my Panzer grenadiers have some transport. I decide to go for trucks as I'm planning to do a genzpart battalion for the 21st panzer division in Normandy (with all those interesting french equipment).

After a bit of research I decided to go for the Raventhorpe ready to roll range

http://www.rapid-fire.uk.com/ready_to_roll.htm

I bought a Stoewer car, a Horch car, three Opel blitz and a ford v300. Generally I was impressed

Pros

No assembly required

Cost (cheaper than metal, similar cost to plastic kits)

Already based (I like to base my vehicles)

Cons

They were a bit rough in places, big lumps of resin are not that easy to clean up.

The area between the vehicle and the base is solid which I'm not keen on

I painted them up using magic wash and dry brushing. I really should do the number plates but at the moment I'm hoping to find some water slide transfers to do them, as painting them is a non starter.

With the trucks done I just need to finish the Kampfgruppe HQ and a couple SP 20mm AA guns to finish my first Rapid fire force, hopefully in time to get some games in the new year.

Cheers Jon

Panzerwerfer and Opel radio truck

A couple more vehicles for my German Rapid Fire project. Both these plastic kits where knocking about in my kits box both are made by ESCI (which probably tells you something about their age). Quite frankly they where horrid kits to put together lots of fiddly bits and instructions that miss out half the components do not make for a fun time.

The first five pictures are of an Opel blitz ambulance that I've converted into a radio truck. Not much of a conversion really I added a bedstead aerial from my bits box and some stowage made from some bits of balsa and plastic covered with some PVA soaked kitchen towel. I also added some plasticard windows to the cab rather than leaving the cab open and having to bugger about with a driver.

The second set of pictures is of a sdkfz 251 with rockets. I saw a picture in wargames mag somewhere of one of these set up firing it's rockets so I thought I'd give it a go. I assembled the rocket boxes and then drilled out the rockets an added wire. I dipped the wire in PVA and covered them in cotton wool to represent smoke from the rockets and then glued them into the boxes. I also added a Valiant miniatures officer for some interest and replaced the original MGs with Valiant ones. I'm quite pleased with the way it's turned out however it's quite flimsy so I don't think this one will be making any trips to the club.

Cheers Jon

First panzer grenadier battalion for rapid fire

Well finally got my first battalion finished for rapid fire. This one is supposed to be a battalion of 20th panzer grenadier regiment 9th SS panzer division. The miniatures are 1/72 Valiant Germans from both the Germans in Normandy and classic Germans boxed sets.

It's a pretty standard Rapid Fire set up three companies of infantry (8 miniatures each) an HQ (six miniatures) and a machine gun company (9 miniatures 2MMG and a 120mm mortar). Of course it's not quite finished as they are missing the battalion's trucks but those will have to wait until payday.

Next up is a German infantry battalion to represent troops from the 716th static Division.

Cheers Jon