From LeeH - Churchill MK VII (8 points)

As with my last entry, I wasn't planning on painting this model, indeed I didn't even realise I had it in my lead mountain! I'm running a demo game at a small local show this weekend using the What a Tanker rules and set in Normandy 1944. I already have everything I need but I couldn't pass up the opportunity to get a Churchill in the field.

The Churchill Mark VII was the final production model of the Churchill infantry tank and was substantially up-armoured, from a maximum armour thickness of 102 mm to 152mm. This meant the Churchill VII was one of the few Allied tanks that could go 'toe to toe' with the Tiger and have a reasonable chance of survival.

The MK VII  had an improved composite cast/welded turret which had an angled lip running around the bottom to reduce shot trap. The layout of the turret was improved for easier access and it was fitted with a raised Coppola to give the commander better vision during combat.

Many Churchill sevens became crocodile flamethrower tanks and some the basic gun versions were issued to normal infantry tank units as replacement vehicles, so they could be found almost anywhere, not just with Churchill equipped units. 

A single tank will earn me a modest 8 Points but I am now just a whisker away from my target..so I'd better crack on and get my Snowlords Challenge started!

MilesR - A very nice Churchill to rumble across the tabletop - nicely done.  I believe the vast majority of us has something in our respective leadpiles where the phrase "indeed I didn't even realise I had it it" would be appropriate.  Not me, of course, but the rest of you lot for sure.  That's my story and I'm sticking with it.

From AlexS: tanks (24 pts)

Hi everyone, my name is Alex and before the New Year I succumbed to the spirit of universal hysteria and bought myself several models of tanks. It turned out that I was not the only one in our community, my friend also bought models, and we found the rules, which were translated in Russian as “And my dad is a tanker”, although in the original they are called “What a tanker”. Today I ate last year's salads, and decided to paint several models, and the day after tomorrow we will play.

We decided to play the campaign in Africa, because we know almost nothing about it, and at the same time we will get the opportunity to read books and watch films on this topic. We are given the opportunity to find out who Rommel is, what do rats and Italians have to do with it. Wargame is a great opportunity to learn new things, isn't it?

I am not very happy with the result of painting - at first I made very bright and beautiful tanks, I drew markings with my hand, but then I decided to make them a little more realistic. And they turned out dirty. I am not very happy with the result, although on a good table they will look organic. Maybe I’ll make the next tanks more “cartoony” with bright colors. I’ll think, especially since not many tanks are needed for the game.

points:

3x15mm tanks = 24 pts

Hi Alex, these tanks look good to me, although a cartoon version of What a Tanker sounds interesting. Think Kelly's Heroes with shells filled with paint

The 'What a Tanker!' Prize

Hi All!

Curt here, reporting from the sunny south of France. 

Sorree, I didn't know you wanted that last pain au chocolat...

I reluctantly take a break from stuffing myself with pastries, drinking bad plonk and butchering the local dialect to dash off a post announcing the winner of the 'What a Tanker!' prize. 

Sid informed me that Lard HQ was seriously stymied in their attempts to narrow the field for their final selection, as there were so many excellent entries, but he cracked the whip and they managed to come to a consensus. Good man, Sidney!

First up, the list of Honourable Mentions:

Ken's A9 Cruiser Tanks in desert Caunter Scheme, North Africa

Tamsin's M3 Stuart in Australian service, Papau New Guinea

Jasper's camouflaged Puma in ambush pattern camouflage, France 1944

All beautifully executed entries, well done people!

The winner of the Too Fat Lardies 'What a Tanker!' prize goes to Nick's (MartinN) fabulous Panzerjaeger I (France, 1940). Stunning work Nick, well done!

Nick will receive a £25 gift certificate towards purchases of fabulous Lard Island products. Congratulations Nick!

Thanks again to Rich, Nick and Sidney for providing the prize. I know it helped generate a lot of armour over the three months of the Challenge. I hope we can do something similar for our next time out.

- Curt

From JasperO: Stop presses & send in the cavalry! (95 points)

In case you wondered, yes, I have actually done a 'stop the presses' once. It wasn't for WSS and it wasn't Guy's fault. That's a good thing, it's also expensive, annoying and really only done at a last resort. However, since today is the last day and my last submission consists of a reconnaissance vehicle and Americans, it seemed appropriate to make it all a very last-minute thing.

My plan this Challenge was to get a good start on an American platoon for Chain of Command, with enough figures to make either a standard infantry platoon, or armored infantry. In total, that'd be somewhere north of 60 figures so I failed there... But I'm pretty happy with this start and I've got a lot of figures already on the way. Both the new Warlord Americans and the Empress figures are among the most enjoyable figures I've painted. Sure, the Warlord figures are a bit more chunky than the more realistically proportioned Hicks sculpts of the Empress miniatures, but on the 'empty battlefield' of World War 2, that'll be just fine. Besides, I need a pile of riflemen and the Empress figures do not come in enough variants to have no repeats (something I prefer in WW2 platoons). 15 Figures including one Bazooka team should give me 75 points.

My first (of what, three posts, embarrassing...) entry was for the Recce theme, so I thought I'd sound it out with one as well. This is the Warlord resin Puma. I prefer plastic vehicles now, but I had this model laying around, and it seems a Puma is a must in any army (also, I do like the 234 series). I'm not settled on the 'basing of vehicles' debate, but since resin vehicles with glued-on metal wheels are weak, I figured I'd better put it on a base as well. So that should give me another 20 points and though I didn't make my overall goal, I just might have done better than previous years. Racing ahead here! (also, cue the mockery from Angus and Mark on the WSS Podcast next week, which I may take with grace...)

TamsinP:

I wouldn't worry about not reaching your target Jasper - we all appreciate how busy things must be for you looking after all those magazines and a certain editor.

You've certainly made a solid start to your US platoon with these figures - they look great.

As for the Puma, well, who doesn't like cats that look so spiffing.

That's 95 points, which puts you 10 points ahead of Guy (but still liable to gentle mockery from Mark and Angus on the podcast).

From AlexK: Better late than never!!! (232 points)

Well this hasn't gone as expected, my plans of hours painting and being productive have some what gone wrong. This is the part where I list my reasons for leaving everything up to the last minute,

 1. A car crash and several weeks of trawling around used car lots looking for a replacement of a car I didn't want to replace

2. Work, work and more work, which was somewhat hampered by point 1

3. Having a mother who remembered the point at which I said I'd build a new boiler cupboard for her when she had her boiler replaced......I mean, who has ever said anything like that and then had someone hold you to it!?

Anyway, enough of excuses, time to grow a spine and show what I've accomplished for challenge IX. My main focus was meant to be my British Napoleonic regiments and the majority of my spare time was spent working on these.

These 36 chaps represent the 1st Royal Scots, they are 28mm Perry's plastics and are finished with GMB flags. As always the Perry's plastics are a joy to paint, lovely looking figures and 40 figures for £20 I 'think they can be beat. I'm 70% of the way through a box of Victrix Highlanders, but there is no way they'll make the cut off, which is my biggest disappointment for this years comp. I think they gain me 180 points for the comp and my side duel "Keep your powder dry"

Next we have a 28mm Sherman Firefly from the Die Waffenkammer range by JTFM enterprise. This has been in my possession far too long collecting dust. The #WhataTanker challenge seemed a perfect excuse to finish it up and add to my British Chain of Command force. That is 20 points for the comp and my #WhataTanker entry.

A command stand of 15mm vikings from Essex miniatures makes up the next entry. These will be used for games of Dux Bellorum and are the final piece to my sea raiders war band. I kept the painting simple and I've used the red and white shield design across all the vikings for a bit of coherency. the stand has 2 mounted and 7 foot figures for 24 points.

Finally I've managed to do a paint test tank for a forth coming project based around the Arab-Israeli war. The kit is a 15mm JSIII from Zvesda and will represent the Egyptian forces involved. I think that's another 8 points and gives me 232 points for this entry. I may sneak another small entry in tomorrow, fingers crossed!

I've run this lovely variety entry through the scoring spreadsheet and it hits 230- I think you've miscounted your 15s. But, due to the overall loveliness I have awarded 2 bonus points, so no hard feelings.

Your Napoleonics are great, and it is a shame we won't see the Highlanders. You've clearly mastered armour in two scales!

Most importantly, we want to see pictures of Ma K's new boiler cupboard!

Barks

From MartinN: Panzerjäger I (35 points)

I'm once again back with more Panzergrau in tow, today in the form of the puny Panzerjäger I by Warlord Games. What struck me as rather odd with this vehicle was the lack of any crew besides the moulded in driver. Thus I had to press gang some Perry Miniatures from their DAK range. They're maybe a little scantily dressed for service in France, but they were the only figures I could find out there which seemed to fit.

The Panzerjäger I was the first German built tank destroyer. It was built by marrying the chassis of the obsolete Panzer I with the Czech made Skoda 4,7cm PaK. A gun shield made from 14,5mm tempered steel. The first batch of 132 vehicles was built by Alkett, recognizable by the five sided gun shield. The rest of the 202 in total built vehicles were assembled by a sub-contractor Klöckner-Humboldt-Deutz. This final batch has a seven sided gun shield.

Only a hand full of Panzerjäger I and their crews were ready for combat in time for the invasion of France, but as soon as new units were ready they were sent to the front. With its 4,7cm gun and an effective range of about 500 metres against 50mm thick armour it was an important asset for the German army for countering heavier vehicles like the Char B1bis.

The drivers helmet can just be seen between the two other crew members.

 Apart from France the tank destroyer saw service in North Africa and the Russian front. In both theatres its drawbacks, namely a relatively high superstructure and poor visibility, soon became obvious. By 1942 most Panzerjäger 1 were lost. Tanks-Encoclypedia states that some Panzerjäger I saw service at Omaha Beach in 1944 as part of "Schnelle Abteilung 30" but the picture shown clearly is from 1940 as indicated by the berets which fell out of favour in 1941. Furthermore all the pictorial evidence I was able to find shows 4,7cm PaK(t) auf Panzerkampfwagen 35R(f) ohne Turm. So, while I might be wrong here as I'm definitely no expert on Normandy, I'm inclined to believe it was the latter vehicle the Americans had to face at Omaha.

The commander figure originally comes from the 5cm PaK 38 kit and was a perfect fit once the base was cut off. I got the PaK as a gift from our very own DaveD, which sat idly in the drawer till now. The loader is from their Marder II crew and only needed a little trimming of the 7,5cm shell to make him look the part.

The kit went together rather smoothly but has some serious casting issues with soft or missing details due to a worn out mould. Painting the crew was no fun either as they were of the usual abysmal casting quality which I came to expect from Perry metal miniatures. It's a real shame the twins seem unwilling to sort out the issues with their caster as they offer some wonderful miniatures and poses hard to find with other manufacturers. As it stands I'll stick with other ranges mainly and Perry as a kind of last resort.

I'll claim no points for the driver as virtually all that is visible of him is the back of his helmet, but a 28mm tank and two crew figures should give me another 30 points.

__________________________________________________________________

And yet another spectacular entry from MartinN! More pesky German invaders.

I firmly agree on the Perry metal figures. Beautiful sculpts, but a right royal pain to clean up. I'm not sure which is worse, really, filing off mold lines and flash, or cleaning up poor fits and sprue damage on plastics.

But it's absolutely worth it. And I'm not sure tankers would really want to wear much more than they had to, even in May. Between the armor and the engine, those things have to be bloody sweltering inside. The weathering is superb. So much so, I'm throwing in another five points. It's a worthy entry to the What a Tanker! duel.

35 points incoming!

HerrRobert

[Thursday] From BenitoM: I'm Back! One more entry before bowing out 45 points

After a full one-month hiatus out of the Challenge due to a combination of work load and different family obligations, I finally made an extra effort last weekend to get at least one more entry in the competition before the 21^st March deadline.

Not a great output in quantity but I hope you’ll appreciate the love I put in painting these two contributions. First some additional Austrian Napoleonic grenadiers which together with those presented last month represent 2/3 of the unit.

The models are a mix of 28mm Victrix and Perry, both bodies and heads. 

And this is a view of how the unit is progressing with the command stands painted before.

The second model is another support option for my main project this year, the British Airborne platoon for Chain of Command: a Sherman Firefly, another very popular and fine product of British ingenuity and a fierce opponent to the usual array of German kittens that many players display on a gaming table.

The model is a beautiful Rubicon plastic kit, not too difficult neither to assemble (although note that the same box offers up to five tank variants, so you should take some care of the pieces you use … and glue!) nor to paint.

I’m quite happy with the amount of stowage used (not too much, not too few) as well as the work made with the airbrush and the weathering pigments. The model belongs to the 11^th Armoured Division and display the markings of the A squadron (red triangle) in the Senior tank regiment (number 51 in red square).

This model is also my second entry for the What A Tanker competition, together with the Cromwell shown in January. 

I think this entry is worth 42 points: 20 points for the Grenadiers, 20 for the tank and 2 for the commander model. Honestly, I see unlikely that I’ll reach my objective (750 points) for this year but I have scored much better than in any previous edition of the Challenge… and above all I had a hell of a good time painting and enjoying the rest of the participants masterworks.   

Looking forward to next week, I´d like to focus my attention and painting effort on the Curtgeld, for which I had an idea that hopefully should be able to unveil in a week from now.

Gorgeous Grenadiers! Lovely work on your white clad Austrians(one of the highlights of the last challenge for me) The Firefly is terrifically finished, your WW2 project has been consistantly superb. 20 points for the Grenadiers,20 for the tank and 5 points for commander and all the excellent stowage!

All the best Iain