15mm 3D-Printed Greyhound M-8 Armored Cars

Last Thursday I realized that I needed an M8 Armored car for my American force in an 'O' Group game I was hosting the following night. On my lunch hour I started the 3D printer on these three. An hour at the painting table after work finished them up. Liquid at noon, table ready after dinner. Bob's your uncle!

Three 15mm figures to this year's totals.

 

15mm WWII American 57mm Anti-Tank Guns

Recently our club has become re-interested in 15mm due to the recent printing of the Blitzkrieg Commander 4. I had a significant collection from my Flames of War days, but a much smaller American force. I was able to pick up some needed units from Ebay. One glaring empty spot in my collection was American anti-tank guns. Ebay provided me no relief, so I ended up having to purchase this pack from battlefront miniatures and paint it up myself.

I haven't painted 15mm figures in a long time. Since then my eyes have become a lot older. I think I did an acceptable job on these, but I wouldn't say that I enjoyed painting them as much as I enjoy painting 28mm these days. Twelve 15mm to the painting totals for the year.

Blitzkrieg Commander - American Figures - Ebay Purchases and Re-basing

With my previous post showing the new German infantry in my collection, here are some Americans I also recently purchased from Ebay. This group required re-basing and also in some cases repair and re-painting.  Included are two 105mm artillery guns, two .50 cal heavy machine guns, a platoon of infantry with a commander and a command jeep. 

The /50 cal machine guns were based in the same brown gravel as some of the Germans from the previous post. The 'bushes' were just clumps of railroad ballast glued into strange clumps, painted black and dry brushed white. I GUESS they were supposed to be rock walls? I painted them dark green, then flocked them with blended turf. Now they look like proper foliage. The bases re-turfed with static grass.  After all this work I ended up having too many .50 cal guns so these were gifted to my friend Phil.

The 105mm artillery guns are both broken off the stands and the infantry was poorly painted. The guns were painted in a single color. I gave them a black wash and some highlighting. I gave the crews some touch ups, re-terrained the bases with static grass, tufts and foliage clumps and permanently attached the guns. I'm not sure that I 'needed' these, but the came with the rest of the figures, so I am happy to have them. 

The infantry and Jeep just needed to have their basses grassed and tufts added. The uniforms are a bit too vivid, but that's not something I'm willing to address. They're perfectly fine for my table!

These infantry I purchased in a separate lot and they're good to go out of the box. Included are infantry, command stands, bazooka stands and four .50 cal machine guns. The latter are why I gave the other two .50 cal MGs to my friend Phil.  This group contains a single 57mm anti-tank gun. I'd like to get another one or two to round out the force.

I'm also short on infantry compared to my Germans. I'll be keeping my eye out for a couple more platoons of GIs, or maybe even some airborne.

Also purchased with this group, four .30-cal machine gun teams, another command stand and another bazooka team.

Finally vehicles included with these 'lots' and one group of tank-destroyers purchased separately. I haven't touched these yet. They need some minor repairs and weathering, but are pretty close to tabletop ready. They include plenty of half tracks to mount up the infantry as armored infantry. That might also explain the copious amount of .50 caliber MGs. 

About the only thing that's missing here would be some sort of half-track anti-aircraft vehicle.

Return to 15mm WWII - Blitzkrieg Commander 4 - Ebay Purchases and Re-basing

Recently my friend John has got me interested in 15mm WWII by introducing me to Blitzkrieg Commander 4th edition by Pendraken Miniatures. In the past I've played a lot of Flames of War, but eventually got out of it as it was more played as a competitive rule set than for general multi-person historical battles. Having sold off a lot of my armies, I was in the position to have to get some late-war German Infantry to go with the late-war German tanks and Kradschutzen platoons that I still had.  

The group of infantry shown to the left I acquired on Ebay, and they match my existing collection's basing quite closely. I didn't think I needed to do anything to them to put them straight onto the table.

That solved my infantry problem, but I was still short support weapons, heavy machine guns (tripod mounted MG-34/42), mortars and especially some Pak-40 anti-tank guns. I picked up an additional three smaller auctions but those figures needed some re-basing to be used with the rest of my collection.

Here are the two Pak-40 anti-tank guns. The guns themselves were nicely painted, but the figures needed some touch-ups here and there. Also the basing was very crude. It was simply sand painted brown and dry-brushed. There were craters where there were empty holes in the pre-made bases. I filled the holes, and re-based with static grass, tufts and foliage clumps.

This 37mm Anti-Aircraft gun was based in just sand, but in an emplacement. The sand looked appropriate in the dugout, but I added bushes and static grass to the outside.

Here are the tripod-mounted MG-34/42 stands. A couple of these were missing the actual weapon, it having previously broken off. I replaced them from my spared box and repainted. The figures also needed some touch-ups. The bases had the same dark brown sand basing. Re-based with static grass, foliage clumps and grass tufts as well. The front three stands look like they may have originally been painted by the GAJO miniatures service.

Mortars. Although these all look like 81mm mortar models, the two different figure manufacturers make the rear two stands tubes look a lot smaller. I could possibly use this to call the front stands 100mm mortars I guess. Similarly to the MGs the front three stands look like they might be GAJO-painted minis. Same re-basing was required here. 

The rest of these figures are of my existing collection of vehicles and dismounted crews for the motorcycle and kubelwagon teams. Many of these have been featured earlier on this blog.

 

Shameless Plug - Ebay Listings

I've listed some of my painted 15mm Flames of War painted units, and a complete Australian desert army for sale on Ebay.

You can see the auctions here: https://www.ebay.com/sch/pease1/m.html?item=324127791558&rt=nc&_trksid=p2047675.l2562

Thanks for looking!

Australian Bofors AA Battery

This is a two-gun Bofors AA battery I purchased from a private seller on Ebay about a month ago. With my pending surgery I've become quite behind posting purchases lately. During my recovery I plan to make up for lost time and clear the backlog. Expect to see a post a day for a week or more as I catch up. There will be plenty for EVERYONE this upcoming week: 15mm, 28mm, Napoleonic, AWI, Ancients, Pirates and WWII.  Mostly purchased items but towards the end I hope to have a few of my own painted units posted.

This is an Australian AA battery, but will also serve dual purpose as part of my desert rats force when needed. The only complaint is I have to do some touch up on the gun barrels where they got bent in shipping and the paint chipped off. Other than that they're marvelously painted and match my basing quite closely. I did add some Silfor grass clumps to better match my units, but besides that they're as I received them.

600 Point FOW Tourney at Adler Hobby

Saturday I played in a small 600-point early war Flames of War tournament that is part of the New England regional FOW qualifier series. The series has many New England stores hosting a day of gaming at their store. Saturday was Adler Hobby's turn. I'm not much of a competitive gamer, but I thought I'd show up to support the store and the series. I played 600 points worth of my Australian kangaroo tanks. Not much of a 'tournament' list, but it's what I had available. There were four of us playing, myself and 3 visitors from other areas. My first opponent was Phil (shown above) playing Italian armor. Phil's nine M13/40 tanks made short work of my three M13/40 tanks and 5 M11/39 tanks and 3 Bren carriers.  Phil was the eventual tournament winner.

My second opponent was Mike playing French armor comprised of three Somua S-35 tanks and four Hotchkiss H-39 long gun tanks. The Soumua were nigh-impossible for my tanks to kill but I did manage to kill one and one Hotchkiss, but other than that Mike made easy work of my lighter tanks. It didn't help that by turn three nine of my 11 combat vehicles were bogged down. Yes I rolled 9 of 11 bog rolls of a '1' by turn 3. Phil was gracious about my bad luck and was the eventual winner of the sportsman award, which he deserved for listening to my complaints about bad dice for a whole game without showing any visible sign of irritation. I'm sure I wasn't very pleasant to be around although I did try to put on my best manners during the bad dice run.

My last game was against Temis (sorry for clipping your face in the photo!). Temis played British infantry with two platoons of 2 pounder AT guns, a platoon of A11 Matilda infantry tanks and a platoon of infantry. Since nothing I had could even scratch the paint on a Matilda I attempted to kill everything else in Temis' list. I managed to destroy the infantry platoon and one platoon of AT guns, but my assault on the final platoon of AT guns went horribly wrong with one of my final 2 tanks bogging to basically end the game with a loss.

All three visitors for the tournament were great guys to game with. They all had a MUCH firmer grasp on the rules than I did and were helpful and understanding in bringing me up to speed on when I didn't know the rules well enough. I would like to thank all of them for their great sportsmanship. I went 0-3 for the day, which is about what I expected from my 'fun to play' kangaroo tank list. Mostly I think I'm more suited to casual fun games than tournament games. I'm not sure I'll ever be the 'qualify for the nationals' type of guy.

Late War WWII League @ Adler Hobby (1)

Today was the second Saturday session of the late war FOW WWII league at Adler Hobby. I wasn't able to attend the first session due to being out of town. We had a great showing with 9 players playing in two Total War games. Having extra German players I offered to become a turn coat and command an American reconnaissance company lent to me by Gordon. My partner was Scot pushing American infantry. Both of the American forces had two Artillery assets giving us TONS of template fire throughout the game.

The German players had a company of Panther tanks, a company of Panzer IV tanks with AA and engineer support and a core company of three King Tiger tanks. The latter was of great concern to us and garnered most of the attention from our artillery for the majority of the game. Eventually one King Tiger was taken out by artillery, and another was eliminated by some M10 tank hunters with a lucky flank shot. The Panzer IV tanks had good success obliterating both of my recon platoons of M8 armored cars and jeeps, but a reinforcing platoon of three Shermans stabilized the right flank. On the left the Panthers and dug-in American infantry fought to a standstill and in the middle the remaining King Tiger command tank and the Panzer IV CO held the center and repulsed an American assault attempting to re-capture the center objective.

As the game concluded (bottom photos in this section) the Americans eeked out a narrow one point victory, but for all intents and purposes this was a dead-heat draw in my mind. Well played by both sides and good fun to play. It was great to see such a packed table of great models.

On the other table was a fight of American Shermans and British Cromwells facing off against a pair of German Tiger companies. This was a back and forth game with the Germans finally winning a victory, but with many wrecked Tiger tanks littering the right side of their table.

Motorcycle Recon Dismounts

These are two platoons of dismounted motorcycle scouts for my Aufklärungs platoon and my Panzer Scout platoon. The photos in this top section are for the larger Aufklärungs platoon. In addition to being a decent reconnaissance asset for an armor force, the Aufklärungs platoon when dismounted can dig in and provide infantry support to protect an objective or block a choke point in the battlefield. With seven (7) stands in the full platoon it has decent, although not superior staying power. Being completely MG armed even the small-ish platoon can hold its own against enemy infantry assaults.
 

The smaller panzer scout platoon is much more brittle than the larger Aufklärungs platoon, but it can also prove quite valuable when backed up with armor assets such as a platoon of Wirbelwind AA tanks. Together the stands of these two platoons can be combined to form a larger Grenadier platoon. I've refrained from using any tell-tail markings on the figures to allow this use as well. You never know when having a good old infantry unit might be a preferable choice over the motorcycles.

Late War Training Mission

Not quite like the Denzel Washington movie "Training Day", Gordon and I got together yesterday to each try out our late war German forces. Since this was Germany vs. Germany, Flames of War calls it a 'training mission'. I had my Panzerkompanie that I've been working on and Gordon had an Panzerspähkompanie reconnaissance company with swarms and swarms of half tracks and armored cars. As the battle began I smirked at the puny thin-skinned armored cars from the perch high above them in my Panther tanks....

With no fear, Gordon gave my tanks the 'bum rush' and was on me like ugly on an ape right off the bat. I thought, sure I'll just start popping open these tin cans with my 'real' tanks. Then one of his Pumas blew up the first panther. Houston, we have a problem! Gordon contested his objective in my deployment area on Turn two and I was 'feeding in' PANTHERS to keep him from winning the game. Holy crapola Batman. This armored car company he had was serious business.


Over the next 7 or 8 turns we slugged it out with successive incoming waves and constant pressure coming from Gordon's swarm. Gordon was clawing at my soft underbelly and punching me right in the nose at the same time. Eventually he destroyed my entire platoon of Panthers and my rocket launcher battery had 3 of 4 vehicles bailed out. My tiny motorcycle recon unit, sent their cycles to the rear and dug into fox holes immediately and even then were suppressed most of the game. At one point Gordon's Hummel artillery knocked out a second Panther and the remaining one headed for home....the coward. That left me rushing my Wirbelwinds forward to contest the objective to keep from losing the game.

In the end I was just barely able to scrape out a narrow victory thanks to being able to rush Gordon's right flank after catching his 88 battery limbered up. All things considered it was a very close and exciting game. The armored cars gave me more trouble than I expected and almost more than I could handle.