Faces Of War (2)

More pictures made by my grandfather during the African campaign of the second world war. The pictures from the first post can be found in this post.

I already started another blog for this pictures, but at the moment it is still work in progress and nonpublic. You will get informed when it's done.

Dieses Werk ist lizenziert unter einer Creative Commons Namensnennung

 - Nicht kommerziell - Keine Bearbeitungen 4.0 International Lizenz. -

Great Find At Ebay

About 1 1/2 weeks I found this on the bay.
Hm, I think I've seen the sprue with the figures on the picture somewhere else before and after some search on the web, I decided that I must have that stuff.


Today it arrived. And what a surprise, I got the ESCI Wirbelwind manual that was not included in my Wirbelwind kit. The auction also included an old Fujimi BMW motorbike and some spare parts. Great, I like the old Fujime/Nitto kits, even if the are harder to get than the usual Revell/Italeri stuff.


But I did not bid only for the BMW. Maybe, if you watched the first picture, you already have seen what made this auction so interesting for me.

So here it is, I got my (first?) ESCI Nebelwerfer kit, hooray for that. Since I started with modelling I wanted to have one of these kits. And now I got it. For an unbeatable price, in my opinion. I don't think 5,55 (p&p included) was not too much for this stuff, or do you ?

By the way, I will re-structure some elements of this blog on the weekend, also the link list. So if you want your site or blog linked, please leave a comment or send me an email, the adress can be found below the links on the right side.

Even More 1:72 Soviet Tank Crews

The first figure on the first picture is from Orion, the rest of the figures is made by LW. After all these minis are painted, now it's time to continue to finish some other stuff that I already started with.

The third picture shows all tank crew figures in a group photo.

Even More 1:72 Soviet Tank Crews

I continued the painting of my Soviet tank crew figures. This weekend I painted some figures of the Russian manufacturer LW or maybe Evolution, I can't find the box right now, but the figures are the same in both sets. The used color are still the same that I use for my other Soviet figures, you can find the list of them here. One of the figures was slightly modified, the guy waving with the bottle got instead of that a new hand with a revolver.

By the way, Plastic Soldier Review has the first pictures of the new Soviet infantry figures from the Plastic Soldier company, you can find them here.

Pegasus/PST 1:72 Soviet ISU-152 With Crew

After two busy weeks I had some time to continue with my hobby. I finished these Soviet heavy self-propelled gun tank ISU-152. The numbers 61 and 62 are fastbuild models by Pegasus Hobbies, but they do not lack as many details as the fastbuild kits from HÄT/Armourfast. The tank with the 60 is a model kit made by East European producer PST, I did not use all parts for this kit to make all three tanks look equal.

The colors that I used for this tanks were Revell Aquacolor Sea green (#36148), mixed 2 parts color and one part alcohol via airbrush, after that I did a wash with Citadel Thraka Green wash (#68-21), then I drybrushed the tanks light with a bright grey color. I sealed them with Revell Aquacolor Clear matte paint (#36102).

The turret number decals were applied with the help of Agama Adhesol. They were included in the PST kit, the propaganda writings on the # 62 came from Peddinghaus Decals, the other decals came fron the spare box.



The track of the tanks were altered with some selfmixed mud, made of white glue, water, coffee and Busch Pine Forest ground cover (#H0 7259). This mix hides the not so detailed tracks very well.



I also managed to paint the Soviet tank crew figures by Orion that I showed in a previous post. Two of the figures were modified, the guy with the flowers got instead of flowers a piece of plastic, looks almost like a gun. The second modification was made on the strange runner. He got a new hand with a revolver from an old Airfix cowboy figure.

The colors I used for this figures were almost the same that I used for my Soviet infantry troops. All I have to do for these guys is to get them a better decorated base.

Update:
Instead of ISU 152 I called this tank ISU 155. I changed the numbers to delete this mistake.

28mm Mantic Games Undead Balefire Catapult

A closer look at the Mantic Undead Balefire catapult. Some weeks ago my Undead warhost from the British manufacturer Mantic Games arrived. It contains 52 figures (not 50 as it is written on the box). I did not want to make a review on this because you can find enough reviews arround the web. As you can read in the reviews for this figures, they are nicely sculpted and you can get them for a good price in comparison with other 28mm fantary figures.

Here is a quickview on the catapult that can be found in this set:

Front side

Back side

Some detail shots

The catapult looks good. But there is no instruction sheet included (find it at Mantic here). It has a crew of two skeletons, the crew sprue offers the loader as simple two part figure. The commander can be build in different variations, if Mantic had included one more part of legs this weapon could have a crew of the skeletons.

Seems like this is a great kit. When it is build in the future, before that there a lot of stuff that I have to finish, you will find some pictures of this im my blog.

Here is a comparison of different figures. The Mantic minis would fit well to the Lord of the Rings tabletop game but compared but the Games Workshop skeleton warriors are bigger then the Mantic skellies. But I think the will still fit in any Warhammer session.

Finally some words on their bases. The have the standard size od 20 x 20 millimeters. In contrast to the bases of Games Workshop the do not have beveled sides and have a hole on one side which fits the bases of their figures.
You can find all of this undead stuff from your modelstore, if not you can order them directly in the Mantic onlineshop, soon there will be more undead minis of them.

Find pictures of painted undead catapults here.

Orion 1:72 Soviet Tank Crew 1943 - 1945

A closer look at the "Soviet tankmen and crew 1943 - 1945" by the Ukrainian manufacturer Orion. They are the newest addition to my growing collection. I read some time ago that they would appear on the market in the near future and now they are availabe.

I think they are a must-have for me (arrgh, more Soviets to paint), and when I found them at the bay on Monday I bought a set of them.

Today the set arrived, therefore let's take a closer look at them:

The box contains three sprues with total 39 figures in 13 different poses. There is almost no flash on the figures and no moulding lines except for on the bases. Three of the minis have no base attached.

The sculpting is very good and the theme is great, before these came out the only other Soviet tank crew figures that were available, were the LW/Evolution set (PSR review) and the Soviet Tank Crew figures of Preiser (On the way review).

There are two poses in this set that I do not like so much, it are the running mini in the first row (the man in the middle), he does not look natural. Second is the third figure in the second row. Why does he hold his gun to the side like a gangsterrapper?

All of the figures wear the standard tank crew helmet and most of them wear overalls, only three of them wear trousers and jackets. As you see on the picture above I splitted these figures into three different groups:

Maintenance poses:
A guy in running pose (could be combat,too), man with a big crowbar, a man running with a canister, and a guy with a wrench.

Combat poses:
A binocularist, a kneeling fig that fires his pistol, another kneeling fig with pistol, two crew men armed with PPsH, and a crewman with a pistol.

Parade/victory poses:
A fig leaning against something, a fig in parade pose for the tank hatch, and a mini that is waving a bunch of flowers.

The last picture shows some of the Orion figs compared with the tank crew minis by LW/Evolution. The LW figures are nice but in an ugly color, that you hardly see the details. For a closer look on the detail of the LW minis, check out the PSR link in the text above, they got their minis in black plastic where you can see some more.

Orion did a fine job with these set. There are only a few Soviet tank crew figure sets on the marketThese minis are a welcome addition to our hobby. They will look great when they get painted. But even the LW minis will look good when they get a good paintjob. But not in the next weeks, it's summer and I don't paint anything because in my hobbyroom it is alltime almost 30 degrees (Celsius).
However I have still a lot of fresh stuff lie arround that I will do some more small reviews for you. A little lookout for the next post, I will write some lines about the new 28mm figures of British manufacture Mantic.

Update:
I messed this up while reformatting, sorry to say, but I can not find the pictures from this post. This are the best pictures I have, but you can visit Plastic Soldier review to get a close look at the minis.