More Revell Leopard 1A5s

Originally I had planned to have these two Revell Leopard 1A5's finished for the Guild 2012 Task 4 Build, but alas that wasn't to be.  What it did mean though is that I have managed to finish them early on in the timeframe for Task 5 - so I should be able to get a few more Cold War goodies done before the end of November.

These Leo's are part of a commission for Simon and I literally finished them and headed over to his place to deliver them, along with the two Marders.  Before I left I tried to take some quick photos with my camera, but it had run out of battery power, so I had to turn to the ipad for the photos.  So they're not great...  One day I really will try and sort out the best settings for my camera...

Anyway - here are the pics:

Picked a few really nice things from Simon's in return for these guys - I'm sure they'll appear on the blog at some point in the future.

Have fun

Richard

Plastic Soldier Company 1/72 Late War German Heavy Weapons

Part of the reason I only managed a couple of vehicles for my Task 4 group build was I had just got back from holidays, wandering around some very interesting WW2 battlefields, and just before I left I had got a box of PSC German Heavy Weapons.  Of course when I got back I had to have a go at putting them together and painting them.

I was pretty happy with the PSC Heavy Weapons set when I first looked though it.  Sure there was a couple of slightly odd figures - I certainly didn't really like the way the mortar loaders were holding mortar shells like a pair of dumbells, and the chap dragging a box wasn't really my cup of tea - but the majority of the figures and poses were great.

I had read some concern about the size of the mortars as well, and at first I thought the 120mm mortar in particular was a bit tiny - but having now stood in front of one at the French Army War Museum in Paris, I'm now 100% fine with the mortars.

Anyway - onto the pics (which are very yellow - sorry) with perhaps some explanation.  First the MG42 team:

Totally impressed with these.  They look absolutely normal and accurate to my eye, fit together well and paint up very nicely.  The only change I made was to do a simple head swap with one of the "pointers".

The 80mm mortar team:

Again I really liked these.  I used figures that were "assigned" to both the 80mm and the 120mm mortars to provide a bit of variety on the bases and I cut the second mortar shell from the figure who looked like he might be doing arm curls with them.

Panzerschrek Team

This is just one of the teams - although the other "team" is actually just the gunner.  Straight from the box - does the job perfectly well as far as I'm concerned.

Panzerfausts

The set comes with 4 (from memory so I could very well be wrong) chaps with panzerfausts - 2 standing and 2 kneeling/firing.  That's just enough panzerfausts for the Platoon Commander's squad and the three rifle squads in a standard German platoon.  Personally I would have preferred probably another pose as well (so 2 more panzerfausts) instead of the second panzerschrek gunner - but that's just me.  In fact I used the panzerschrek gunner to make a simple - and slightly dodgey conversion - but I think it looks more like an "action" pose compared to the standing guy.

These chaps provide a fair amount of heavy support to my PSC German Infantry - which I showed here and that's not all.  In the unpainted pile from the same box I have another MG42 team, another Panzerschrek team, and two 120mm mortar teams.  I could possibly build another 80mm and 120mm mortar team but I think they are probably unnecessary at this point in time.

More WW2 Germans to follow soon

Have fun...

Richard

Hello Marders

Sad title I know...

Anyway - this is my Task 4 Entry to the 2012 Group Build on The Guild.  Unfortunately I was away for a fair amount of the Task 4 period - and I had a bunch of competing priorities - some of which involved painting miniatures which unfortunately did not fit intot he theme of my 2012 build.

So - what does all this mean - basically that I only finished a couple of Revell Marder 1A3's for my build, and as they are a commission for a mate of mine, they won't be being added to the collection.  But.. doing this means adding other new models tot he collection so overall - definitely worth it.

Previously on this blog I posted a couple of my own Marders and more on them can be found here

So - just before I jump into the photos - one more excuse... - I ran out of dullcote so they are still a little shiney in my opinion.

Here we go:

And finally a pic of Simon's new Marders with my older, dirtier Marders:

So I have another 8 or so Marders of my own to build, plus a couple more of Simon's so I may be boring you with tons of Marders over the next few months...

Have fun

Richard