Americans, Germans, SS, oh my!
Its been awhile since I’ve found time to update this - I’ve done a bunch of hobby and played several games since then - so I will try to summarize what I can!
Starting with some super-recent stuff I recently finished some more Clash of Steel vehicles.
Absolute beast of a kit, so beefy! Its on my bucket list to go see one of the survivors one day.
Some of my favorite American tank designs ever - this whole series (T29, T30, T34) are all very cool. I was thrilled to see these high quality plastic kits for them in 15mm.
These were also a delight to paint - I’ve heard rumors there are plans to do an “early war” Team Yankee from Battlefront set in the “check point Charlie” era - I find this WAY more interesting than the modern stuff so I would definitely be down, these Pattons would fit in very well in that sort of system.
Finally some explicitly WW2 stuff! These are the new plastic kits from Battlefront. Very easy to assemble and painted up well. As I’ve said before “open topped vehicles with crew” hits some sort of modelling sweep spot for me.
These things are so iconic they hardly need explanation. I went a bit heavy with the weathering on these as they are “scout tanks” in Clash of Steel terms so wanted them to look a bit more “driven”.
I was a bit ignorant about this tank even existing - but it is a cool “evolutionary dead end” in American tank design (the last heavy breakthrough style tank actually built to serve a doctrine requirement). Only a few hundred were made and the Army was unhappy with it so they got offloaded to the Marines who used them for quite some time (their doctrine retained a requirement for a heavy tank for much longer than the Army). I recommend this excellent episode of Inside the Hatch where Chieftain goes in and around one with a USMC vet who actually served on the vehicle.
In a really nice trend from BF, the M103 kit comes with all the parts needed to also make the T57 just with a turret swap (something almost all their newer kits do with vehicles that share a hull). T57 looks like a space age vehicle and is one of the only vehicles designed with the famous oscillating turret setup. Hopefully Checkpoint Charlie will include these as “what if” fun vehicles, otherwise they are going to be added in the final wave of Clash of Steel this summer. Very cool looking.
And now for some small tanks! Stuarts have historically been the bane of my existence playing Flames of War - particularly the veteran kind - so I needed some for myself of course.
Finally I have painted up enough infantry to field either an Armored or regular Rifle company (pictured here is just one rifle platoon). I quite liked painting these - very simple and clean uniform to execute.
I’ve also painted a Sherman company but just realized I haven’t got any nice photos of them - will save that for a later post.
And now - Germans!
Very nice plastic kits for these ones - a big upgrade from the old resin and metal ones. I will eventually want more to field a whole company. I particularly appreciated how easy the skirts were to put on (I have some bad memories of the old metal ones).
My very first foray into historical wargaming was with 15mm Waffen-SS for Normandy so I’ve greatly enjoyed revisiting it (I actually like the ratings BF have assigned them in V4 better than previous editions - they should take heavy casualties). I’ve always found the SS morbidly fascinating as an institution - the combat arm is somehow both an elite and a mass conscript army at the same time.
And to wrap up the post - a quick photo dump from the last game we played. I ran an armored Heer panzergrenadier list against British Paratroopers. The scenario was one with two objectives and defender (the brits) had delayed and scattered reserves where I had immediate reserves.
In true German style I used my spearheading Lynx scout tanks aggressively and immediately attacked, flinging my cannon platoon (how good is this thing by the way - these guys were amazing in this game) as well as an armored panzergrenadier platoon forward.
The right flank turned into a staring contest across an open field, the British paras started to try to infiltrate through the center town while the instant counterattack by the Panzergrenadiers was repulsed! Things turned into a slogging match from here as the British couldn’t make headway in the center and both sides got reserves
The deadlock finally broke thanks to Tiger Is which rolled up the entire left flank on their own.
It was a good and close game! I’ve got a bunch more planned for 15mm WW2/early cold war including a ton of Soviet stuff and a few more bits and pieces for my SS. I’d also like to get back to doing some Old World (or WAP) soon as well. Thanks for reading!