Month: September 2020

Test

Many moons ago, my friend Greg game me a couple of extra sprues of German WWII infantry in winter dress. It was enough to make two squads. So, I ordered a box from Warlord so that I could make a full platoon. As with all these plastic sets of Germans, there are never enough rifles and too many assault rifles and submachine guns. I wanted the Germans to fit from 1941 to the end of the war.

I had barely enough rifles to make four normal ten-man squads, and I had to use a couple of semi-automatic rifles that will mostly go unnoticed on the tabletop. I also used a few extra rifles from the later war Panzergreandier set. Each squad has one machine-gun, a squad leader with a submachine gun, and an assistant squad leader with a rifle or submachine gun. The rest of the men are riflemen.

There were enough figures and parts to make three more machine-gun teams. So for late war, I can swap out two riflemen in three of the squads for a gunner and his assistant gunner. As the quality of their infantry deteriorated, the Germans sometimes put extra machine-guns in their squads to compensate.

Some of the heads came with cloth covers on the helmets, so I painted them in white.

I have a bunch of Russians in winter kit for my Winter War games, so I am looking forward to putting these on the table when the plague subsides. I also have a couple of squads of American infantry in greatcoats, so there might be a 1944 Western Front game in my future as well.

I have begun working on a platoon of Germans in winter kit. These are for mid- to late-war. The problem with most of these plastic kits is that they come with WAY too many submachinguns and assault rifles and not nearly enough standard rifles. I had to work hard to fill what I think are reasonable squads. Since they are in greatcoats, they will paint pretty fast.

Depending on which pictures I looked at in different books and on-line, the color of the greatcoats varies greatly. I did two painting tests to decide which color scheme I liked best.

The figure on the left was sprayed with the darkest of the Krylon green camouflage paints and then dry brushed with Howard Hues field gray. The one on the right was sprayed with the lighter green camouflage paint and then washed with Agrax Earthshade. I decided I like the one on the right better.

I was gone last weekend at the beach with a high school buddy and our wives, so I haven’t picked up a brush in a week. I am going into withdrawal symptoms. I sprayed the platoon of figures the lighter camouflage color. I block painted the flesh. Most of each figure will be block painted with an Agrax Earthshade wash at the end. I will post pictures when I complete them.