Hi guys! First post I’ve been wanting to do this for ages, record and share my hobby and finally with the encouragement and help of friends and family ( my daughter is responsible for the web design) here I am. Couple of false starts leading to this point, but hopefully this is going to build into something I’m happy with and is of use to the community.
I’d love to say that there will be a logic to the progress of projects or topics but, there won’t be. I’m a fickle hobbyist and I follow where my mojo leads. So, with that in mind in a blog that focuses on North West Europe in World War 2, lets go East to Stalingrad to introduce you to what I do.
As I suggested my focus is North West Europe and the Normandy campaign and I bought the Warlord Games Bolt Action Stalingrad box set mainly for the Sarissa Factory with the aim of using it for the Colombelles industrial area near Caen- more on that in posts to come as that’s still the plan. There are a lot of troops in the set and while I never aimed on doing an Eastern front army, now I have 2 growing fast.
This is the first and most progressed, 22nd Panzer Division. Selected from the Bolt Action Stalingrad campaign book, I wanted an excuse to include multiple examples of the hotly anticipated Rubicon Panzer III kit and this list fitted the bill. I’ve tried to achieve a mainly plastic army, there’s only a few resin and metal pieces. There is also no definitive list. Bolt action is my game of choice, but I do intend to give both Chain of Command and Battlegroup a go. So rather than just sticking strictly to the BA list and the single choices of the list options I’ve gone for the ‘I want one of those’ approach. Just thought I’d mention that before anyone goes ‘you can only have one artillery piece!’
The following pictures give a flavour of how the army is developing, a few Work in Progress photos will hopefully show how I’ve achieved the look. I’m very much aware that I need to up my photo skills. That’s another reason for this blog, to push myself to do better. These are all done on my phone (and they can be a bit hit and miss- but they still manage to make odd errors stand out!) As with most of my Armies (the German ones in particular) I’ve used pieces from various box sets. In this one I have used pieces from across the full range of Bolt Action German Plastic sets, I also used some winter soviet parts, the prone great coat figure and of course captured weapons as examples.
A few troops on some of the Sarissa Terrain.
My 2 gun options, depending on what I’m likely to face
The bases for the whole army are created from scratch using embossed plasticard and components from a number of sources, Rubicon industrial walls, Renedra sandbags – on the mortar team, Italeri battlefield accessories
Warlord Games Resin Stug D with metal modified- (MG42 replaced with a PPSH41) Stug riders.
These 2 MMG teams are all plastic. Rubicon Tripods, Bolt action MG34’s from the early war/Blitzkrieg set and crews from across the German range.
The New Rubicon Panzer 3. I cannot recommend this enough, with 22 variants across 3 boxes this is a fantastic kit and a pleasure to put together. Read the instructions properly though.
More Rubicon Vehicles. Battalion HQ and recce.
Illustrating the mix of parts I use, Pioneer section, with parts from the Blitzkrieg/pioneer set, Grenadiers and winter sets, with some additional components from the Afrika korp and Soviet winter infantry. The wire cutters are an MG34/42 bipod.
All the completed infantry- HQ, FOO, Sniper team, medic, 3 sections, pioneer section, 2 MMG, light and medium Mortar (again an option depending on what I’m up against) and an anti-tank rifle
Another WIP this time Section 3 with captured LMG
And to finish off this time, 2 of the support weapons- supplied in the Afrika Korp set – the anti-tank rifle and light mortar
Hope you like it, one thing this first post has revealed for me is that I need to redo some of the pictures I have ( I also need to look at each figure more closely before I call it done).
So, again welcome. I hope you will want to revisit and will encourage others to take a peek and please, if you have any questions, drop me a line. More than happy to explain how I’ve done things and I aim to do more work in progress posts with new and progressing projects going forward.
Cheers
Andy
6,5 out.
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