Der H's `not-T-34-88`

Welp, its been a busy few weeks. Lots of work, lots of real life shit going on, and a lot of time out of the bunker. However, we do have progress!

First off I'm keen to show off my T-34-88 (Brother Handro: "....or T-34-not-88"). I showed off this tank idea here, and was keen to get cracking once my T-34/ZP arrived.

To recap, the issues were nicely summed up by Tanks encyclopedia:

"The T-34/85 turret is hardly a likely candidate for holding such a long, heavy gun. It would probably cause the suspension serious problems – it is widely known that the attempts by the Soviet to fit a 100mm gun to the T-34/85 caused the suspension to buckle and break during firing. Secondly, there would have to be extensive and incredibly precise engineering in order to actually fit the huge gun in the T-34’s gun mount (and being able to give it any elevation or depression), something probably not available to any units outside of heavy factories of Germany. Thirdly, the gun itself was huge and complicated. In fact, the KwK 36 L/56 took up most of the internal space for the Tiger I turret. It is extremely unlikely that there would be internal space in a T-34/85 turret in which to accommodate such a large gun."

So....perhaps not....but the Pz IV-X kit did give me the opportunity to steal a Pz IV H barrel with a similar style muzzle break - Kindly donated by my good buddy Handro!

Behold...

The barrel was attached with some brass rod for assistance and gave the Pz IV H gun barrel and extra step up to the mount for the standard T-34-85 gun.

Spare track attached to the side of the turret with DIY track holders.

DIY plasticard stowage at the rear of the turret to match that seen on Wargaming.net's T-34-88 here:

So guys what do you think? Nice conversion or fictional nonsense?! Time to get it primed and painted! (Brother Handro: "HA!")

Der H

Thought for the day: "Seek no reward but the satisfaction of your Master!"

Plastic Soldier Company Spray - German Dunkelgelb; A Review

I picked up a can of Plastic Soldier Company's Dunkelgelb from Element Games back in February, at a reasonable  £7.50...probably should get around to trying it out then....

Firstly the good; I have seen people claim that PSC Dunkelgelb spray is both a perfect match for Vallejo's Middlestone, which is generally accepted as a decent approximation of Dunkelgelb, (and more pertinently, pretty easy to get hold of) and nothing like it at all, with photos to prove it. As far as I can tell, for me it is spot on. The finish is also very nice.

Pretty bang on!

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Next, the indifferent; I had seen a video on Youtube of someone applying this spray to several tanks in numerous gentle passes, over and over and over. (Admittedly this is a fair technique for avoiding clogging the details). Turns out it was more to do with the spray itself than any technique. The spray seems to be very low 'velocity'; very little paint comes out with each pass, so you do indeed find yourself slowly building up layers of paint on the model, spending time that would no doubt have ruined your model if you'd had a GW primer can in your hand.

The other issue is that aforementioned time; I could have sprayed nearly 1000 points of models with a GW primer in the time it took me to do one halftrack. As always, more haste, less speed!

It strikes me that the paint could well be best used over a primer, but I could find no real consensus on that. Regardless the finish it provided for me over bare plastic is more than good enough for me to continue to use it in this fashion. Equally the finish was flawless in ambient conditions that have seen GW sprays produce horrible grainy textures. 

I would question how much of the propellant is used up with the multiple light passes technique however. It could be using very little each time as very little paint comes out or I could end up with a very heavy paint-full, gas-empty can one day. I'm not an expert in these matters so will just have to wait and see...

Not fun...

Now sadly the bad; the whole reason I finally got around to using the spray in the first place was that I picked it up on a whim last week whilst on a tank-building drive. Unfortunately the can was stuck to the shelf by a horrible, sticky, yellowish gunk stinking of aerosol that was leaking from the bottom inside rim of the can. I bought the can in person too and it gave no indication of being defective for 6 months, so I can't blame it being blind-delivered, nor any abuse on my own part; it has merely sat on a shelf since the day I bought it.

This is probably just a case of bad luck but I have been using GW's overpriced sprays for 20-odd years like a good little fanboy and I have never had any physical issue with a spray can.

The other thought is that the leaking can is the cause of the low velocity of paint spray, but I have used it multiple times now and got the same consistent results; the paint comes out gently and evenly, with no degradation of pressure or change in paint flow. One can is hardly a great sample to judge by either way!

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Overall I have to say I was very pleasantly surprised by this product. Having picked it up on a whim and not expecting much save maybe a half-decent base to work from I was half-hoping once I found out it was leaking that it would be trash and I could get rid of it - now I have to keep it somewhere - a pleasant little (aerosol-induced) headache to have...

It certainly provides a means of skipping the first stage of airbrushing a Dunkelgelb basecoat with paint from a pot, and anything that smoothes the course of my hobby progress get two thumbs up from me, and I would buy it again assuming no further leakage issues!

Guess I'll have to spray all my late-war German vehicles then!

Through the magic of the internet....ta-dah!

Handro

Thought for the day; 'To question is to doubt'.

Bolt Action, AKA Shame, Part II

*CLANG* More shame incoming! The second of my three Warlord Games Bolt Action orders turned up today...

The start of a late-war/Konflikt '47 Armoured platoon.

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Huzzah! More things bought! Wait, what do you mean that wasn't the point of the blog?

Oh. 

Welp, I did it anyway. I've always harboured thoughts of doing the British (more accurately Commonwealth) forces in Bolt Action, and doing it for Konflikt '47, and Tank War killed three birds with one stone. 

Today we received;

Armies of Great Britain book, (plus exclusive Captain Upham model), British Army Command, Universal Carrier Section, Allied Grizzly Walker and 3 paints pertaining to the British scheme.

Also the Konflikt walkers are ace, I want all of them!...

The main bulk of the tank force has yet to arrive so watch this space!

A Universal Carrier, minus all the gubbinz just waiting to be piled on.

Carriers are quite diddy! (Panthers are also really big. Like bigger-than-Tiger-big).

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I'm not quite sure how to square away the fact that all infantry in Armoured platoons must be mounted with the five man capacity of carriers...Looks like five man min-maxing squads are the way forward!...Or trucks. Loadsa trucks...

Handro

Though for the day; 

Warhammer World Museum - Terrain ideas!

Warhammer world is all about toys. Whether it be looking at, or buying, or craving....it is about our little toy soldiers.

There is even a museum/exhibition about our toy soldiers...and in that museum there is terrain.

This post is all about that terrain and the bits that I think are really:

A) Good

B) Useful to have close up pictures of

C) Things I want to replicate!

Are you sitting comfortably? Then we'll begin...

Gravel!

This board is in the lobby by the entrance. A reasonably sized set-up, it is clearly made to show off the new Dark Imperium set, with multiples of this started box on display across the edge of a refinery. The pox walkers all have orange jump suits, and the muted flesh tones work really well. The gravel is excellent - In my view mostly due to the range of sizes of talus involved.

Clouds!!

Showing off the new not-dwarf line we have mountain tops covered in clouds - not real use fo my needs but very good none-the-less. Always wondered about an aeronautica imperialis or similar game with a cloud base, and long wire stands for the planes. A layer of garden planter foam 3" thick with and inch of cotton on top. Could work well!

Der H: "If only we played blood bowl"

Brother Handro: "Nooooo, stop it! stop it!"

The prospero board has had a lot of attention in the last few events - rightly so! It is a lovely set up, good scale (not too big to miss details) and with some great damage effects on the plinths/columns. Very tempted to replicate it! 

The star port board is amazing, partly due to the amount of hardware on the board, and partly because of the attention to detail. ZM tiles and some of the realm of battle tiles come together beautifully - I only wish my eventual Grandian starport will be half a good!

Dark angels battling nurgle....yes please! Great board with liquid effects, gravel and shipping grates. Good missile effects too!

Snow, trenches and Krieg! what isn't to like. The snow is interesting and i cant quite work out what it is. White sand? Bicarb? who knows! But it is beautiful!

Der H's T-34-88 (or not...)

Today I am going to pontificate upon a conversion I am planning with my new T-34/ZP. The idea for this conversion came from the World of Tanks T-34-88 - a lovely little beasty that I run regularly!

There are several interpretations and accounts of various tanks (on all sides) using captured equipment in WWII. One of these is the account of T-34/85 sporting an 8.8cm gun from theTiger I. tanks-encyclopedia think this unlikely:

"The T-34/85 turret is hardly a likely candidate for holding such a long, heavy gun. It would probably cause the suspension serious problems – it is widely known that the attempts by the Soviet to fit a 100mm gun to the T-34/85 caused the suspension to buckle and break during firing. Secondly, there would have to be extensive and incredibly precise engineering in order to actually fit the huge gun in the T-34’s gun mount (and being able to give it any elevation or depression), something probably not available to any units outside of heavy factories of Germany. Thirdly, the gun itself was huge and complicated. In fact, the KwK 36 L/56 took up most of the internal space for the Tiger I turret. It is extremely unlikely that there would be internal space in a T-34/85 turret in which to accommodate such a large gun."

What ever the truth, It is very pretty, and in game terms would look good as a command tank in Bolt Action's Tank War supplement. To this end, when Warlord had their sale, I decided to buy a few bits!

The standard T-34/85 plastic kit (a thing of beauty!) comes with most of the parts needed including the hull, fuel tanks, storage box, turret and cupola seen on the T-34-88. The main changes will be the gun and the bustle. The gun had two main options; the Tiger 1 8.8cm (as in the story) or the smaller but similar looking PzIV gun from the PzIV H.

The Tiger I gun is larger (of course) and has three thicknesses, the Pz IV H gun has a similar muzzle break, but less of a step down.

The ammo box on the back of the turret of the T-34-88 is very similar to the Pz IV H turret box. HOWEVER, the other reason for buying the Pz IV is to force my good buddy Handro to make the PzV/IV aka Rammpanzer (hull of a panther with turret from a Pz IV). The ammo box is pretty vital for that plan!

The box on the T-34-88 could be made from scratch, and so I will try this before destroying Handro's Pz IV dreams!

I'll hopefully get this done this week and get some pictures up soon!

Der H

Soviet 203mm B-4 Howitzer

A conversation sprung up on Facebook's Bolt Action page (Seen here) about the Soviet 203mm B-4 Howitzer. This is a heavy (HEAVY) artillery piece mentioned in the Armies of the Soviet Union book from Warlord Games (The description can be seen in this post).

Specifications

Weight

Combat: 17,700 kg
Travel: 19,000 kg

Crew: 15

 Shell: Separate loading charge and projectile

HE: 100 kg (220 lbs)

Caliber: 203 mm (8 in)

RoF: 1 round/min

Muzzle Velocity: 607 m/s

Maximum firing range: 18 km (11 mi)

The conversation started with "Does anyone know of or can recommend a good quality one made in 28mm for BA?". Thankfully the internet responded!!

The main kits found are available here:

BeardyWargaming

Heer 46

Special Artizan Service Miniatures

There is also a video on YouTube reviewing the kit...

Gasoline

I had previously bought from Heer46 - It is a very nice beasty, which to date has seen glue, Halfords grey and a nice Soviet green!

There is then the issue of rules/viability in game. Several comments on Facebook related to this artillery piece went as follows:

"Pretty much only an objective, yes?"

"It's a corps level artillery piece. It has no place in a platoon level game."

I can certainly see their point of view - It is a big scary piece of kit, and one that certainly wouldn't be common place in a field in the Eastern front...but then I saw this gif...

I believe this to be from Berlin and it shows this artillery piece being used as direct fire in urban situations to deal with larger emplacements or dug in troops. For my own part, I have the two breech-loading mortars which also fit this category, but in larger games, or games in which my Soviets are dug in/defending such a piece of artillery I think it is fair game....

....now if onyl I could find a suitable artillery tractor in 28mm....

...any way...I now leave you with some pictures of this gorgeous B-4 Howitzer in action. Check back soon for progress (hopefully!)

Der H

Warlord Summer Sale - AKA SHAME

Welp, we have crashed and burned haven't we!

Warlord Games went and had a summer sale...and we took the bait and bought stuff. My earlier purchases can be seen here whilst Brother Handro's purchases can be seen here.

My order came in two parts - the first was the Soviet heavy infantry, the Soviet T-34/ZP and the Pz IV Ausf. F/G/H. The second contained the more modest portion of the order - a squad of Soviet Terror troops, a Pz IV-X turret and two blisters of the US army winter MMG teams (prone).

There are several projects planned here - the MMGs to go with my US Winter Airborne, the Soviet Terror Squad and Heavy infantry to go with my BA Soviets, and the T-34/ZP to have as both a T-34/ZP and a T-34-88 from Wargaming's World of Tanks. (Der H: "Handro! make the Kraft Panther!!).

The Pz IV is, in part, for that project! The bustle and the barrel are all I need - you can keep the rest Handro! (Handro; Score! *YOINK*)

Keep your eyes peeled for more posts over the next few days!

Der H

Though for the day: "In an hour of Darkness a blind man is the best guide. In an age of Insanity look to the madman to show the way."

Bolt Action - AKA More Shame!

I saw that Warlord Games were having a sale last week. I messaged Der H to inform him; he'd already placed an order...now mine's arrived! *CLANG*

Once more the bell of shame tolls..what you're looking at in this shonky pic is a plastic Hellcat, Panther Ausf. A and Tiger I E along with pretty much the entire metal range of winter Germans, plus the second edition Armies of Germany book, which I'd put off buying and which pleasingly comes with it's own unique winter German figure.

A Panther hull, yesterday.

I've done naught but bend the front mudguards as yet...

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Worryingly (for Der H!) I in fact have 3 Panthers on the production line (Der H: "Kraft Panther!"). I'm also hoping to pick up Warlord's new Opel Blitz/Maultier to compare it with Rubicon Models' offering. Watch this space!

The Hellcat was just because it's an awesome looking piece of machinery, and a nice kit. Might lead to an American Armoured platoon though... 

And with the advent of new Tank War bundles, expect to see a build up of armour on the blog! (Der H: "weren't you obsessed with Tau last week?")

Handro.

Thought for the day; 'Ask not for whom the shame bell tolls; it tolls for thee'.