And now back to the tanks! I’ve finally gotten some time to take a few photos, and so I’ve got some tanks for the European Theatre this time – a platoon of Panzer IIs in the Early War to Early Mid-War Panzergrau paint scheme. As with my DAK Panzer IIs, these models are again from Zvezda (using my stockpile – I feel like we won’t be getting restocks of these models …ever?) I decided some time ago that aside from painting forces for the North African theatre of war, I also wanted to play games set in Europe. No big surprise there, of course. But the question there became – which forces and which front(s) to paint? Being me, I went with “yes”, and so the next force I’ll; be working on (as I try to finish up my DAK, and get to the later stages of my Desert 8th Army will be my Grey Germans. Sure, I’ll do late-war camo schemes and have fun with all of that later on down the line, but I wanted to follow the DAK with something similar and even compatible – so grey Germans it is! Also, because grey Germans is such a classic scheme that harkens back to my early interest in WWII – and with so many of the photos being in black and white, there’s something about them that just looks “right”.
Adding in a fair bit of brown weathering via Green Stuff World’s liquid Pigments also worked well to give them a dirty appearance that also has a bit of a nod to the brown used in the early Grey & Brown scheme used by the Heer’s armour. I don’t pretend that these models would hold up to someone especially knowledgable about the specifics of units and markings and all the rest, but they look the part to a more casual student of history like myself as well as the amount of time I’m willing/able to spend on what is going to be another significant batch of models…
As with the similar Panzer II platoon I put together for my DAk force, I also painted an extra for use as an artillery spotter. This time distinguished by an open hatch with a commander using a pair of biniculars and a different style of tank number. As the Zvezda turrets are one-piece castings, I took the commanders from Plastic Soldier Company german kits, drilling out holes where the hatches are, cleaning them up with a scalpel and then adding in thin plastic card open hatches.
In addition to the Panzer Platoon itself, I also painted an extra PzII to act as an artillery spotter. Since the turrets of these simpler Zvezda models are one piece, I drilled and cut out a small hole in place of the 2-piece hatch and added in a PSC commander, and used a couple of small rectangles of styrene to represent the opened hatch for both the platoon commander and individual artillery spotter. The army I’m building with these will primarily be an early Eastern Front force, around Barbarossa in early 1942, though I’m sure I’ll also be able to vary the models to use in earlier situations and even early war Western Front/France. Technically, these models all fit into the remit of Dave Stone’s Season of Scenery Challenge as vehicles can obviously be used as terrain in a lot of games, though in this case, we’re really going by the letter rather than the spirit of the challenge. I will (or do plan to) have some actual proper scenery and scenic pieces complete soon for the challenge, so that’s something else to look forward to….
Azazel's Bitz Box. 
Looking good, I do like the light tanks, I just found my 6mm ones not that long ago.
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Thanks mate – they must be tiny at 6mm!!
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That was basically why I just found them… in a match box inside another box.
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These look excellent mate, to me they look perfect, and the weathering really adds to the effect of them being in use. Great first entry mate.
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Thanks Dave. I’ve got more armour and some scatter ready to go while I work on even more scatter and a few larger pieces. I’ve run into an issue with the biggest one – trying to work out how I can store the thing once I fully assemble…. 😐
I’d do something with magnets if there were a place to mount them… it’s going to be interesting….
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Oooh, very nice indeed! 🙂 I always think grey suits the Panzer II (and your post has reminded me that I still have one to make and paint myself).
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Thanks John. Looking forward to seeing yours when you get to it! 😄
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lovely work as always, mate.
Cheers Roger.
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Thank you, Roger!
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Those look pretty amazing and I really like the weathering! I can picture them trudging through some ruined towns.
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Oh wow, just dawned on me the amount of detail you put into these 15mm minis. That’s pretty incredible. I look forward to seeing your next roundup so I can get a better sense of scale.
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Thanks mate! There’s some examples in these posts:
Though the PzII’s are a little smaller than most of these things – found my DAK ones – (same kit)
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Kinda funny to see tanks nearly dwarfed by rat creatures! 😂
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Great work Az. I like early war tanks the most.
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Thanks mate. These are about as early as I get, thought there’s a few earlier versions of other tanks and vehicles to come.
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Oh, great. More tanks! 😉 In all seriousness, I really like the color scheme you chose. It somehow fits Germany during this period of history to me anyway. The weathering looks top-notch as always too!
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Yup! It won’t all be tanks and armoured vehicles, but I do have more of these that I very much need to get painted. I’ve got a huge pile of FoW boxes as well as several FoW figure cases that need to be converted & combined so the boxes disappear and the contents also disappear into those waiting cases… Rest assured, it won’t *all* be tanks and the like, though…
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Excellent – I do like the grey early war German tanks…
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Cheers, Warburton. I always liked the look of them as well, so a smallish force of them in FoW seems the best way to take care of that…
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Very nice.
Cheers,
Pete.
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Thanks Pete!
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These and your DAK ones look excellent. I particularly like the variations you add on each tank. Where do you get the petrol tanks etc you use? I’m returning to wargaming after a 30 year gap and so much has changed!
I’m currently collecting archive images of tanks in action to attempt a similar approach as I’m determined not to have squadrons of tanks that look identical in every way.
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Thank you for the kind words. All of the jerrycans – both singular and in the strapped-together groups are from the plastic Battlefront kits, as they give you a fair few of them, and then just varying how many you use and where you put them gives a nice variation.
The bedrolls and tarps were initially taken from a variety of BF plastic kits (German, Brit, US, Soviet) and then used across different models rather than only on the “proper” kits.
More recently, I’ve started to make smaller tarps, bedrolls and duffel bags out of milliput and greenstuff, particularly if I’ve been using the stuff on any other mdoel and have a bit leftover.
I’ve got some Panzer IIIs on the go right now, so when I next work on adding that sort of stowage I’ll take some pics and put up a post on them. I’m hardly an expert (I put off the idea for ages due to thinking I’d be crap) but they turned out to be super easy, barely an inconvenience!
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