Gifts for Greg

 A year or two ago I built some models for Greg for his birthday. Wanting to add a little variety to his ever-growing Late War Army for Flames of War, I went ahead with a few Self-Propelled (SP) Guns. To start, I went with the bigger, more powerful Hummel

I dug up a few pictures online of Hummels in North Western Europe for ideas on how to paint them up and went with that. They are quite a nice model to handle due to their weight, being metal and resin - which is an absolute pain in the arse to put together - they feel very nice to hold.

Quite easy to paint up, although I went a little heavy on the application - something I learned from and applied differently using another technique on later models. I went for detail with these models. They belong to a Motorised Artillery unit, so they have Red Epaulettes to denote this. Interestingly, and I didn't know this until coming across a video randomly online about it one day, the Red/White sticks on the back - which were a bit fiddly to paint up - are measuring sticks for the Artillerymen. They are used for height and deviation when ranging in on a location.

Here's a nifty little action shot for the folks back home, courtesy of Die Deutsche Wochenschau!

For the second lot of models, I went with a vehicle that technically wasn't a fighting vehicle. Rather, it was used to transport weapons, such as the Panzerschreck, so Troops wouldn't have to lug them around everywhere. They were captured British transport vehicles that were repurposed into the German Army.

Once again, I had applied the patterns a little too heavily, but the wash brought them down a touch. They were built using spare German crew and some old Bren Carrier models from Battlefront. The pipe looking things on top are meant to be a Panzerschreck - as I didn't have any, so they are represented by cut up skewer sticks. Finally, I used a piece of 17 pounder barrel and the tip of a machine gun. These are spare rockets, just for detail.

Technically they are not a legal unit in our Flames of War game, but I thought up some house-rules for them and designed a unit card for them, so Greg could run them in a force just for a bit of fun. 

Here's a pic of both the Hummels and Brens together.

Finally, I put together another type of Mobile Artillery unit. This time it was the smaller, and probably more widely used Wespe. It's essentially the same as the Hummel, however, I had applied the paint a little differently. Instead of applying directly, I used a drybrushing - dabbing technique. I think it came out much nicer, and the wash and highlights really bring it all together.

Again, going for some sort of authenticity, I added coloured Epaulettes, however, the numbers added with the Decals don't denote any particular unit. Rather, they are numbered just for ease of identifying the model in game.