No, tinier! It was time to get the Kübelwagen painted. As with all the previous 1940-41 German vehicles, it was a straight forward job: pretty much the entire kit was painted with cLifecolor's Panzergrau. I got some pots from Lifecolor when we bought an airbrush for the club, and I've grown to like them more and more. The seats and the rolled up canvas roof were painted khaki green (Dunkelbraun). Finally I did some highlights with Tamiya's grey pigment powder. The driver included in the kit was dressed up for Africa, so I used kneadatite ("green stuff") to add some sleeves. I assumed that the short pants would not be visible once seated, and ended up just painting the legs Feldgrau. You can kind of see it if you hold up the model and peek in, but then I would like to know why you're peeking at miniature legs in the first place. Once I painted the Kübelwagen, I put on the decals. In this case the kit only came with Luftwaffe decals, so I did some googling to see how an army version would look. It turned out that there were all kinds of versions, but I found several examples with the Balkenkreuz on the rearmost right side door, so I went with that. Again, the kit didn't come with the cross, but I had some left from when I built a Panzer II, so I used that one. This time I remembered to put on micro sol on the decal before painting gloss varnish over it, which was a big improvement over last time. Finally, I weathered the kit with some yellow, sand, and mud pigments. This is the part that I feel the least comfortable with, and I think I put on a bit too much this time. I really should take the time to learn how to use these pigments properly. But in the end it's good enough for tabletop standard in my opinion, so it's off to Stalino with this little driver, along with the Pz.Kpfw. 38(t). -Jonas
0 Comments
Building terrain is fun, but sometimes you need a break from building houses and telegraph poles. There are tons of things to add to your battlefield that suits the WW2 era, so I went and built an anti-air cannon! The German 8.8cm Flak gun, or "eighty-eight" as it got known as, was a weapon designed to shoot down planes. However, it quickly became obvious that it was deadly when used against enemy armour or fortifications. Able to deploy in less than three minutes and fire at both ground and air targets, it was both mobile and versatile. Chain of Command is a game that is played on much too short distances for weapons such as large flak guns to be a relevant playing piece. When used against tanks, these guns could penetrate armour two kilometers away!. However, there's nothing stopping you from putting an anti-air emplacement on the board, either just as scenery or as an objective. Can the enemy overrun your guns to pave way for an air attack on the nearby HQ? Or are your opponents going to stop your gun emplacements just as they are about to obliterate an approaching tank column far outside the tabletop? Or will you be able to smugly end the game with "I'm afraid the acht-acht will be quite operational when your friends arrive"? I had bought an oval base for the gun that turned out to be too small. However, luckily enough, I found an old carved out MDF base that was supposed to become an island for Trafalgar many years ago. It was just large enought to fit the gun and the two parts of the carriage. I applied a blob of spacle to the MDF base, and smeared it out. The gun and carriage was firmly smooshed onto the thick paste, and I used an old brush to make wheel marks from the carriage and to make sure that the gun was not completely covered in spackle. In the end there was still a bit of spackle on parts of the gun, but I blame the thick, Russian mud.
Anyway, I hope that it will be more fun for my Jerrys to take cover behind this instead of another stone wall. If you ever feel that you want to add a truck or artillery or something that doesn't suit your ruleset, you can always try to field it as objectives or terrain instead. Cheers, Jonas There's a Swedish saying that whatever is hidden under snow, will be revealed when it thaws. So no wonder that some of the plastic Germans that Shirty knew he had but couldn't find would turn up now that Summer arrived in full force! So I got a bunch of sprues to investigate. It turned out to be more than expected! A mix of Warlord Games' Blitzkrieg and Late War Germans, all in all 28 more troops. This was quite a pleasant surprise, as that means that I could be up to a full Rifle Company once these are built and painted. I decided to build two full squads and make extra SMG infantrymen and ammo carriers, just in case some disappear in the future.
I also finished some more campaign reference cards, including Soviet and Finnish plutoons for the Winter War. You can find them in the dowload section. Cheers! -Jonas |
WW2 Campaign BlogThis blog follows the second Chain of Command club campaign, set in the intense fighting over Stalino in October 1941. Archives
January 2018
Categories |