From MartinN - 28mm WWII Pak 36 & BEF Infantry Section with Command (90 Points)

Not really a points bomb the scale of some of you guys are capable of but for me it comes pretty close. This week I was lucky to have had a block of spare time and so I got some figures done.

First is a 28mm PaK 36 for my early WWII Germans.

As most of my stuff lately it's Warlord Games again but I wasn't really happy with these older sculpts. You can clearly see they're from Paul Hicks but sadly they don't come even close to his newer works. Compared to the new plastic 'Blitzkrieg Germans' they're pretty small and the faces are somehow misshapen.

Originally the PaK 36 had a crew of six but for some reason Warlord Games and most other miniatures companies and/ or rules writers seem not to care about such trivia. May have to do some more figures later on...

I was a bit confused about the troop-function colour for German Panzerjäger units so I made some research that might be of interest to some of you. Probably most will already know anyway...

The German Wikipedia (Haven't checked the English Version) lists 'rose' as Waffenfarbe (troop-function colour) for Panzerjäger, just like for tank crews. While looking for pictorial evidence on the web I came across some photos showing clearly white markings as well as rose or green ones. So I had to dig a little deeper. I found out that Panzerjäger units organic to the OOB of an Infanterie Regiment as 14. Kompanie (14th company) wore white like their parent regiment (same is true for organic 'Artillery' being the 13. Kompanie of the Regiment).

Along these lines, Panzerjäger belonging to a Panzer-Grenadier Regiment had the Wiesengrün (grass-green) of the Panzer-Grenadiere as their Waffenfarbe.

Panzerjäger units belonging to the divisional support however used rose as Waffenfarbe accompanied by an embroidered (or metal pin) 'P' for Panzerjäger to distinguish them from tank crews.

I hope this was of some use for at least a few of you.

And here we come to the second part of this weeks submission: a 10 man section of 'British Expeditionary Force' (BEF) infantry and their commanding Lieutenant with two aides. So 13 men in total.

These figures are from Warlord Games again and were a real joy to paint. Painting was speeded up by using the same brown (VMA Medium Brown) I used for the bases as base colour for the figures.

Looking at pictorial evidence suggests I went a tad too light on the uniforms while the webbing turned out too dark

But all in all I'm pretty pleased with the over all appearence.

I decided not to do any unit markings as most sources suggest the British made no use of it till later in the war. I'm not totally sure on the Lieutenants red cap band as it might be a bit too flashy for actual combat duty. But it breaks up the otherwise quite monotone khaki a bit so I decided to go for it.

The heads come separate for these guys but unlike Warlords other 'Separate Heads System' stuff don't feature those strange over exaggerated facial expressions.

For these guys I had to hand paint the Sergeants and Corporals rank insignia as I forgot to place an order in time for these extremely handy decal sheets.

From Curt:

That is a mighty fine 'doorknocker' there Nick! 

I have a soft-spot for the early-war period as the uniforms were typically more 'classic' in their cut and colours and not so dominated by the bewildering assortment of camo that you see in the later period. Also, as weird as it sounds, tanks were often more scary in the early war as they were still largely uncommon and infantry were limited in the anti-tank weapons available to combat them.  Later in the war every tank, no matter how huge, was at risk of being easily knocked out as the quality and effectiveness of anti-tank weapons (and the doctrine to their use) closed the gap on their dominance on the battlefield. But I blather.

These figures are up to your usual brilliant standards Nick. I am constantly impressed by the detail you can pull out of the figures you paint. Your brush control and blending is off the hook. I actually like the lighter BEF uniforms as it makes them 'pop' and I wouldn't sweat the webbing as their are countless opinions on their 'proper' hue and colour.

This entry will see you topple your initial points target of 400 - Congratulations!  Drop me a note to let me know what final points target you'd like to aim for as we near the final half of the Challenge.

Again, great work!