Following on from the trio of 28mm Warlord Valentine tanks I finally completed in July for Bolt Action, then the trio of 15mm Battlefront Shermans for TANKS! and then completing my OG 15mm DAK force for Flames of War 1st Edition, I was still keen to work on more of my 15mm models that have been sitting around for ages, and so I pushed on with some renovations to my German Armour as well as assembly and painting of some of the models from the TANKS! starter set (notably the Panther) as well as the Panther expansion set I’d picked up some time ago.

The models (Panther Gs) come with two different sets of skirt armour, though frankly one of the sets is unusable (IMO) unless you’re removing panels to represent damage/wear due to the very visible sinkholes on them or willing to spend the time to model the mess away. Poor form there on an otherwise nice little gaming kit. I (obviously) just added one set to my two Panther chassis.

With the slight variation in painting each model, I did have to make sure that each of the chassis matched up with one of the turrets properly in terms of the stripes.

The alternate build from this particular Panther kit is the Jagdpanther. and well, I wasn’t going to throw half of a perfectly good assault gun or tank into the bits box, so I built and painted them as well. As you’ve no doubt seen, I painted all four of the vehicles in the “dot” version of the Ambush Hinterhalt camouflage pattern.

Not being at all competent with an airbrush, and not having the right physical setup/space combo to be able to use one easily, I went for a brush implementation attempt to somewhat mimic the feathered effects of sprayed camo. Since the Germans in WWII field-applied their camo in many cases using anything from spray guns to rags dipped in paint, there’s a huge amount of variation even among “established” patterns.

For a first try especially, I’m pretty happy with how the camouflage patterns came out. I know there’s more of this stuff in my future, so we’ll see how well it goes next go round!

Oh, and here’s how I put these four together. Rare earth magnets and plastic struts and greenstuff. The numbers on the chassis undersides go with the turret numbers (211, 212) so I know which ones go together. At some stage, I’ll have to get hold of some 3d printed lower hulls somehow so I can turn these models into four permanent armoured vehicles. I’m not sure why, but these kits and their “proper” box set appear to be discontinued at this point in time. Maybe they’re in one of the army sets perhaps?

As I noted in the DAK army post, I did a bunch of work on my never-fully-completed old-school Tiger I to make it fit in with the colour scheme used by the other armoured vehicles I was finishing at the time. When it came time to take those photos, I found that my pair of Stug IIIGs annoyed me in how they stood out with a different, much paler finish – so I created some paint filters and went back over them with those (as well as washes) to get them to a better place.

Since then (early August) I’ve come up with some other ideas for these models, so they may make yet another appearance here down the line with a new(er) look. But for the time being, this update is how they look right now….

So here we are with the post for August Part One. With four… erm… six… um… The Panthers/Jagdpanthers are more than an optional turret in my opinion. They’re neither a single model, nor two models. I think I’ll call them 1.5 each – that’s what “feels” right to me anyway…  And while I’m posting these WAY late, they were also intended to count for the 2021 edition of Dave Stone’s Season of Scenery Challenge.