Collins Does a German Winter Offensive

I *needed* to buy the new armies of germany book for v3… because you know, everything changed (and yet nothing changed) and also the soldier of fortune model was a Stalingrad themed one with General Paulus looking at the map going ‘so we are fooked here, here and here…’

This meant that it became reasonable to get to just above the £50 cut off for free postage. It’s at this point that the fallscrimjager mortar and the military policemen on motorbike and sidecar entered the chat.

Hang on a minute… they’re not wearing parachutists helmets!

nope, a dead simple headswap fixed that and i have a plan for the paintjob.

i’ll paint them in normal heer trousers and the chap with diamond pattern will get them painted a different colour from normal german grey in an attempt to make it look like he liberated them from someone who no longer needed them

Every year the Peeps at OTT go back through the golden button winning projects to review them against various criteria to provide them with brilliant money can’t buy prizes!

In 2024 this very project was awarded ‘Ancient Disciple’ in the end of year community awards!

Many thanks to the team for the accolades.

And here draws near the ending of this project! thanks for following along and please all express your thanks to the coding in the project system that misinterprets the metadata in the images and tries to correct the orientation but somehow always gets it wrong… sorry about that, pester OTT people about it. (fixed now thanks to buggeroff)

I’m properly happy with how this lot has turned out. It’s my first attempt at a winter army and it came out really well. I could have more wintering putting on the models themselves, you know how snow and frost sticks to everything, eg the coats, boots and helmets etc. but im not gonna do that, this is good enough!

All I have to do is see what changes BA 3.0 brings and decide whether 3 mortars is a good idea or not. either way, its good to go as a recce force and will also be able to be used for chain of command as infantry with lovely set dressing.

In an attempt to soothe the ruffled McCabe feathers im returning to this being an infantry force. To do that ive gone and ‘created’ (more designated really) a few models to be interesting vignettes for jump off points in chain of command or objectives in bolt action.

the majority of this is just warlord models on big bases, but the ammo boxes came from a mantic mystery terrain crate and the grey one is just loads of stuff from the warlord sprues I have left over put together in an aesthetically pleasing way.

After this, I expect this will be a completed force until I get my hands on the new BA rules and need to tweak it, eg, with more mortars or nebelwerfers by the million etc.

I took a little sabbatical so that I could complete my MSc research project. I found it a little difficult to complete a full time job doing the work of 2.5 people (the others left and I was ‘gifted’ their workload), carry out a dissertation and have fun. Given I’d spent many thousands on my degree I prioritised that one in my spare time. I have also now given back the other workload at work so my work life balance is better, except I’m now also a new dad again! so the sleep is evasive but the new baby is a cool dude.

Apparently whilst I was away there was a points change FAQ for BA and also a whole new version announced!! what a time to be alive.

As we all know Gerry is a massive fan of tanks in small scale platoon based action… well as such he is exceptionally happy that my German platoon is mounted in these half tracks and supported by a Panzer III.

This makes 5 half tracks with a capacity of 39 people, a scout car and one supporting Panzer.

Nice.

The project isn’t complete and is pulling in the awards already! happy days!

https://www.beastsofwar.com/featured/community-spotlight-myconnid-mysteries-godtear-warbands-ww2-winter-germans/

I came across this company at warfare reading in 2016/17 or something like that and didn’t have a need for their stuff at the time but bought them anyway (as is normal)

they have a website https://productsforwargamers.com/product/irregular-2p-round-tray-choose-size/ and this is the exact product you see above in the photos.

all I’ve done is add the ground cover material to them, didn’t bother priming them or anything (I may regret that)

I cracked and got the warlord metal winter squad. the other metals were a better price but I quite like the half grey half white look and some of these ones have smocks over the top of greatcoats and that is a cool (or cold) look.

Whilst I was at it I also got the winter panzer crew as I have the tank war book and there are rules for them in that. also they make a good looking objective crowd don’t they!

I ended up going heavier on the hairspray and on the white paint for this halftrack compared to the 222.

I’m not certain which I prefer, I like the muted tone of the white on the 222 but I went overboard on the chipping where as on this 25o I really didn’t like how when I tried to chip away it ended up taking much bigger chunks than I wanted to and left it folded up at the edge of the chipping mark.

the next time I’ll go lighter on the hairspray but also more of a finer misting of white paint on top of it too. I’ll hopefully end up with a happy medium.

I tried to get both the gunners shooting at the same target but it wasn’t to be, the angle just didn’t work out

I was gifted 3 of the 250 halftracks over Christmas, there are 3 kits in total with options to make 7 variants overall. pretty neat really.

anyway, I started making one and I’m really only planning to have them as 250/1 variants (or rather, bog standard machine guns) so that leaves me with quite a few spare bits, guns, bodies etc.

Queue head scratching and kit bashing.

it was this page that caught my eye… what is the frame under instruction ‘u’ for?

well I went off and googled a bit and found out that the cannon was a light antitank gun, well technically a heavy antitank rifle but often misidentified. It is called Panzerbüchse 41 and Panzerbüchse translates German -> English as Anti-Tank Rifle but due to the way the Allies viewed it, due to the gun carriage/sled and the shield, they often incorrectly called it a light antitank gun.

It works on the fascinating principle of squeeze-bore. that means that the loading end of the barrel is 28mm wide, but the muzzle break end of the barrel is only 20mm. why do that? well it means that the pressure inside the barrel increases all the way down the length which then means the bullety bit leaves the barrel at a significantly higher speed. that coupled with a super hard tungsten core leads to some very impressive momentum and penetration capability at short ranges but it does have negatives, namely it drops off rapidly over longer distances.

http://maximietteita.blogspot.com/2017/12/28-cm-spzb-41.html

here I found some interesting photos that explained what that frame was.

Now that we have that little nugget of info we can see whether the sPzB 41 (Panzerbüchse 41) has an entry in the rule book. obviously it does, and at only 60 points its dead cheap. Winner!

Now to break out the leftover sprues of winter infantry to get those all important kneeling bodies to help make the crew up with the arms from the 250/11 weapons kit.

As things didn’t line up well on the height of the arms and the height of the ‘weapon sled’ I had to improvise with cork matting and superglue to make a small makeshift dugout look.

The reason the wheels on the frame aren’t touching the floor (or at the lowest point) is because (I think) they are folding. folding down to move but when shooting can be folded up to allow the carriage/frame to take the weight and make be a bit more of a stable shooting platform.

Overall I’m quite happy with this little pleasant surprise. the only disappointing thing for me was that I wasn’t able to make it so the weapon could be mounted in the 250 and then dismounted onto the weapons sled. that would have been top banana but unfortunately I couldn’t work out how to make it happen due to the fragile nature of everything connecting together.