Sunday 13 November 2016

Rapid Fire! Blitzkrieg in 20mm - German Infantry.


German infantry prepares to invade another neighbour around 1939-40...

Most of the figures are the normal Italeri, Atlantic, Esci and alike. But I placed a big number of my big chinese copies of the Airfıx German Infantry in these battalions. Unfortunatly its no longer easy to see these copies. They had the big advantage of being cheap,  closer to 1/72nd scale than the original ones and being made in a much less bendable plastic that can help the durability of your painting. On the downside, of course, a loss of detail was obvious which also ruined many figures.

So two new battalions for RF! The HT's are the same of a few posts ago when I showed you my first German armour for Blitzkrieg.


The Tatra Kubelwagen above is an Attack Hobby Kit.


I scratch built the 50mm mortars using four small Evergreen parts: two small rectangles for the base, one support for the tube and the tube itself. I painted all figures in the greener field grey tunics and slate grey trousers of the beginning of the war.


The Esci HMG's had a third support leg and the typical pads to the frontal leg were also added. The figure to the right is the Esci radio man, without its radio. The Mg barrel got extra paint and varnish in order to round the MG42 barrel to look like the MG34.


The 81mm mortar also saw the triangular support roughly added.


And this is the place were the radio of the Esci fıgure went: to the back of a running Revell figure.

The Atlantic mini to the left asks the Radioman  'can you hold alone all ze veight?' The Radioman didn't answer... As you can see wargaming is also the birth place of some great theater literature!


The variety of German infantry on the market is huge. Along the years I amassed hundreds of them that were used to make standard 1944, Afrika Korps, Luftwaffe and Volksgrenadier battalions. So I'm not using the more recent and sophisticated Caesar or Emhar miniatures at least until I have finished my boxes of German extra figures.  

Tuesday 8 November 2016

Rapid Fire! Blitzkrieg in 20mm - Polish armour


The oposition against the Germans from last post arrives. They may not have 30mm armour plating but they have incredible guts and much more beautiful camouflage!

All are Made in Poland First to Fight models.


A Fiat 621 with some Hat figures occupies its position (and in my collection at least they were really the First to Fight...).

I painted the vehicles as they were in real life: first the green colour, and then the camouflage sand and brown. The green was obtained by mixing around 80% Vallejo Russian Green with some Yellow.


A 7TP tank looks for targets. This tank was better than most of its opponents but there were too few of them.

Twin Turreted Vickers E join the defense of father land.


TK3 looks big here but was probably the smallest tank(ette) of WWII.


WZ-34 armoured car with an ESCI French officer from their WWII soft plastic box.

 

The ruined city is made of old and trustable Matchbox parts glued together and with lots of grit around. Everything was black primed and then other colours were added from dark to light.

The First to Fight vehicles are very good and easy to built models. For wargaming though they have some fragile parts namely the MG's and main guns. In most cases I replaced them with a slightly thicker and more bendable Evergreen part.