Now where was I...

Hello!

Well, I've been a busy boy and sadly very little of it involved painting!

In  the weeks (months?) since the last post I have managed to get the grand total of two units painted!  Both are for my DAK army and were partly to supports its use a 90th Pz Div in our local Cassino Infantry Aces campaign.

The first project was a third platoon of Panzergrenadiers/Schutzen.

Schurzen Platoon in the infamous "artillery template?  what's that?" formation

The second platoon was an anti-tank platoon of PaK-40 Anti-Tank Gun for post-Alamein Sherman popping!

"Front Armour 6 you say?  Meet AT 12 combined with concealed in fox holes! Mwahaha!"

There's not much to tell on painting them.  I pretty much followed the painting guide over at Battlefront, modifying it slightly to support a wash/drybrush technique on the DaK's earlier Olive Green ('Yellow Green') uniforms.

The slight flaw in German assumptions on vegetation in North Africa can be seen here

In theory the PaK-40 crews should probably be the browner ('English Uniform') later uniform I imagine, but I didn't want to deviate the from the current colour scheme.

Because, lets face it, the old scheme is better looking than more brown!

For a bit of variety I threw in the occasional 'Desert Yellow' Italian tunic or 'Iraqi-Sand' British Khaki-Drill trousers to represent old hands (or Hans!) who had managed to pilfer some superior desert gear!

The CO didn't nick that Tunic.  He's got a whole Company for doing that!

Somewhere there is a British Platoon looking very embarrassed, and pants less

"Go there and get some proper trousers man!  You stick out like a sore thumb!"

The guns are painted 'TanYellow', the last factory applied paint scheme that was supplied to Africa.  I've tried to keep the tank/gun applied schemes to either the early "Mud over Grey" schemes that work for Early and Mid war equipment (PzIVE, PaK-38, Armoured Cars) and the later 'Tan Yellow' scheme for mid war only kit (Pz IIIL, Pz IVF2, PaK-40), skipping the first factory applied scheme of 'Green Brown' entirely, although its perhaps more appropriate for most of my Early/Mid DAK kit.  That's mostly an aesthetic choice as I like the rough and ready improvised desert camo of the "Mud over Grey".

Keep that ammo coming!

The business end!  Kill marking to be added as they get 'em!

So, going forward what can we expect to see?
Queued up on the painting table at the moment:

• 6 x PaK-36 for Early War DAK
• 2 x FlaK-36 for DAK
• 3 x M3 Stuart for 8th Army Brits

On the horizon is more Stuarts (a whole Squadron!) and some KradShutzen motorcyclists.

I've put the BEF away for the second to concentrate on the desert stuff.  The war in the desert has always been my main focus with the Flames stuff and has also always enjoyed some healthy support amongst the clubs players too.

And lets not even talk about the stuff Plastic Soldier Company has coming out before year's end.  Plastic Sherman V, StuGIII, PzIII, halftracks, possibly even a 15mm plastic Universal Carrier!


Whimper...