Getting ready to be a "Lardie Tanker"

In frenzied preparation for The TooFatLardies "What A Tanker" rules I have been assembling the 15mm tanks I had bought for no apparent purpose and left them in the loft. Hence I find myself making a PSC "Fury" (see below):

A PSC Panther Ausf G (see below, I am setting myself up for a late war clash [Note: The message on the tray is a note to my daughter who likes to 'play' with my paints ... or rather ruin them .. to please "stop"]):

The formations of three are forming up (see below):

The disparity between these medium tanks is 'stark' (see below, the Panther is a Fast Heavy IMHO, also see more of my "stop playing with my paints message" - it seems to have worked! I also gave her a set of my old paints as she actually is very arty):

Good luck Yanks this one looks a hard job (see below):

Nine tanks thrown together, yes the Matilda II's are not interested in playing with those Panthers (see below):

The kits are fast, neat and nice to make and I am just wondering why I didn't get into 15mm before and persisted with the 20mm obsession of mine! Let's not go there, I am just collecting everything now ;)

Someone just "had" a real, live Panther Tank in their basement are you serious?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-news-from-elsewhere-33381772

Germany: WW2 Panther tank seized from pensioner's cellar

By News from Elsewhere......as found by BBC Monitoring

• 3 July 2015

Image copyrightEPA

Image captionSlow progress: It took hours for the army to remove the tank from the basement

Police in northern Germany have seized a World War Two tank which was being kept in a pensioner's cellar.

The Panther tank was removed from the 78-year-old's house in the town of Heikendorf, along with a variety of other military equipment, including a torpedo and an anti-aircraft gun, Der Tagesspiegel website reports. It wasn't an easy job to get it all out - the army had to be called in with modern-day tanks to haul the Panther from its cellar. It took about 20 soldiers almost nine hours to extract the tank - which was without its tracks - and push it onto a low-loader, the report says. As the surreal scene unfolded, local residents gathered at the end of the driveway to watch.

Prosecutors in the nearby city of Kiel are investigating whether the man's military collection violates Germany's War Weapons Control Act. But his lawyer says the weapons are no longer functional, therefore shouldn't be restricted.

Local prosecutors were tipped off about the cellar's contents by colleagues in Berlin, who searched the home for stolen Nazi art earlier this year.

It seems the tank's presence wasn't much of a secret locally. Several German media reports mention that residents had seen the man driving it around town about 30 years ago. "He was chugging around in it during the snow catastrophe in 1978,"Mayor Alexander Orth was quoted as saying. But he later added: "I took this to be the eccentricity of an old man, but it looks like there's more to it than that."

Image copyrightEPA

Image captionThe man had also been keeping an anti-aircraft gun in his basement

Big Cat Pair - Panthers in "Ambush Style"

These go back a while, lurking in a 'loft box', in an almost but not quite finished state. I am sure these were ESCI originals, for I was intent on grabbing a third when Italeri briefly re-released them, but "missed" my window of opportunity. Meanwhile what I had got painted in my classic Tamiya paints based "three-tone camo", but as per the cool 'box art' the next step is to polka-dot it "ambush style" (see below):

The general camouflage scheme maybe too broad a swathe, I must have had a bigger brush in those days compared to now, as seen in the more recent Mk IVs but I still like it (see below):

The panzer commander figure is still one of the coolest IMHO and comes from an old ESCI Panzer III.

Painting Tray Update: More Panzer I Work

The bare plastic Panzer I Ausf B gets a Tamiya XF-63 German Panzer Grey base-coat and those wacky SCW "Breda armed" Pz I's Ausf A get a dark green base-coat (see below):

A closer look at those Spanish Civil War Nationalist tanks. Painted in Tamiya XF-61 Dark Green and highlighted with adding increasing amounts of Games Workshop Sunburst Yellow (see below):

"Early war" meets "later war". The Panzer I Ausf B next to a quick build HaT ArmourFast Pz Mk V Panther, with teh strange SCW tanks lurking in the background (see below):

The ArmourFast tank was a surprisingly nice straightforward build quite large (definitely 1/72 rather than 1/76) and dwarfs its predecessors. The Renaissance seems to be put firmly on hold for the moment.