Continuing the recent reawakening of my old DAK Army project, I got out my pair of 88’s to give them the final touches that I hadn’t gotten to back in the day. Where the Univeral Carriers from the other day had quite a lot left to do on them, these artillery pieces and their crew were much closer to what I’m happy to call a finally completed state.

This (and some infantry stands that will be shown here soon that were in a similar state of almost-completion) led me to a fundamental question – one that would be silly to a non-wargamer or painter, but one that many of us really will intrinsically understand – how many models do I count these as? I mean, these artilley pieces have six crew plus the actual artillery piece. Do they count as one? Or Seven? The individually-based figures that I’m using for markers count as one each, and they are literally the same figures as these crewmen in some cases. After pondering the question for several days, I came up with an answer that satisfies me.

If a multi-based piece requires very little work to complete, it’s one. If I have to do a substantial amount on it, especially to each of the models, then it’s however many are on the base. I’ll worry about cavalry another once I start painting a bunch of them. /handball problem into the future. So for my “counting” purposes, these two pieces are two completed models.

As far as paint choices go, I found that the crewmen of the 88s in the DAK were drawn from Luftwaffe troops, and so they got the slightly lighter tones of the Luftwaffe uniforms compared to the other elements of my DAK. This also leads to the two stands being much more uniform, as the rest of the DAK infantry have a much more rag-tag appearance that I’ll discuss when I show my completed units later on.

These two stands are not the only part of this unit, as I have a few more pieces to come in the future. A pair of transport vehicles, as well as the artillery pieces’ road wheels as a pair of entirely-decorative bases to go alongside the transports.

I also designed just the slightest bit of interactivity to go between the two stands. One stand having a crewman shouting off to the side, while the other with a crewman aligned to be waving in response. Little touches like that (and the road-wheel thing that I’ll finish at some stage) keep it all interesting to me.