Some GREAT News!

 Hi All

You may have already seen this but just in case Plastic Soldier Company have recently made an announcement regarding their future plans for Battlegroup.  You can find it here:

PSC Announcement

The paragraph that may be of most interest to readers of this blog is as follows:

As we progress further we have releases planned in consistently over the next few years. We have very definite plans in regards titles for Battlegroup, but also expansion with two new rules systems within the Battlegroup family. One will be looking at the Cold War again, this time matching up the Cold War to the original Battlegroup level of play. So as Battlegroup Commander will mirror NorthAG and its play level, so a new title will do the same for Cold War and the original level of game that Battlegroup aims for… its time the 15mm/20mm Cold War gamers to also get some love! We have other titles pencilled in to expand NorthAG too so all our existing fans will be getting new content regardless of the system you play.

 I'm very excited about this!  Sounds like exactly what I've always hoped for and more in terms of using the Battlegroup core system to play out Cold War games.

Can't wait to see what happens next!

Richard

Best News Ever

Best news ever!!!!  Battlegroup NORTHAG is coming!!!

This was announced last night (my time) on the PSC Facebook site along with PSC's standard website.  On the website is says this:

I have given the go ahead to finish off Battlegroup Northag - a cold war version of our popular Battlegroup WW2 rules system. We have a "work in progress" set of rules and army lists, the basis of which has very kindly provided  by some Battlegroup enthusiasts.


I don't want to brag, but I'm relatively sure the "work-in-progress" set of rules and army lists mentioned here by Will Townsend are the ones I've been working on for a while now and supplied to Warwick Kinrade and Piers Brand earlier this year (and the rules again on Friday my time - houre before the announcement when another copy was requested).  At the very least, my rules and lists have contributed to their WIP set of rules and lists.  Apart from the rules I've supplied them over a dozen army lists.  Anyway I'm more than a little chuffed by that and hope to be involved into the future.

Again in super positive news PSC have decided to release this:

3 x T-55 in a box! I believe it's up for pre-order now and as soon as they get 200 orders they'll start producing it.  PSC have also announced they are working on a plastic 15mm Leopard 1 kit that you'.. be able to make a huge variety of kits from.  It the 20mm T-55 kits sell well, they'll produce the Leopard 1 in 20mm as well.

So enough gushing from me... Go order your 20mm T-55 box sets now!!!

Thanks

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

Plastic Soldier Company German Infantry

Just a quick post today.

Recently I painted a KGN platoons worth of PSC German figures. I'm not a real fan of plastic 20mm (1/72nd scale) figures, but for the price I thought they were probably worth getting - even if just to bulk out forces centred around metal figures.

Anyway - I was more than just pleasantly surprised. Apart from a couple of chaps with horrid poses (which I simply ignored) I was basically impressed with the figures and some of the poses are excellent.

I also loved the ability with plastic to make some basic conversions such as changing arms or heads.

Moreover they were very easy to paint and I think came up pretty nicely.

The only other thing I think is a bit questionable about the figures is for some reason the gas mask cannister on each chap is wrapped in some kind of blanket or something. I've never seen this on another figure or can remember seeing it in pictures. Well, I'm not expert but this just struck me as being a bit odd.

So here are the pics









Thanks and have fun...

Richard