Italeri 1:72 Soviet ZIS-3 Gun And Anti Tank Team

Pictures of the Soviet ZIS 3 antitank gun and crew from Italeri (#6097). It's a nice kit without flash and with only minimal mould lines.

The figures were painted in the usual Soviet scheme, the only additions of colors were GW Snakebite leather (#61-64) and Revell Aquacolor beige (#36314) for the winter hats, and Revell Aquacolor Dark Earth (#36182)  and GW Devlan Mud wash (#68-25) for the greatcoat. The gun was painted with Revell Aquacolor Seagreen (#) followed by a wash with GW Thraka Green (68-21), them I did a light drybrush with a light grey.

All figures and the ammo box are based on 1 cent coins.

The only negative point of this kit is that the barrel can't be moved up and down, becaus the ZIS 3 gun was not only used for fighting tanks, it was used as normal field artillery too.

Lots of informations and pictures about Soviet field artillery can be found in the Waffenarsenal journal about the Soviet field artillery (ISBN 3-7909-0540-2) that can be found for a low price at Amozon. 

And a view on the Italeri antitank team (#6131). All figures were painted my usual Soviet scheme, that can be found on this blog. Additional colors for hats and greatcoats can be found above.

The machine gunner got his cape painted in a snow camo style, I think that fits very good in a Winter setting. All these minis are based on 1 or 2 cent coins.

Great figures by Italeri, these figures mix very well with the Soviet Winter Soviets (#6069).

Orion 1:72 Anti Air Quad Maxim And DSHK

Here are some pictures of the new Soviet figure sets by Orion, "Soviet Quad Maxim AA MG and Crew" (#72037) and "Soviet DShK AA MG and Crew" (#72038).

First the Maxim Quad, it can be used well for early war scenarios, the figures wear their field hats and are armed with rifles, the equipment of them is mostly light.

All figures are out of the box, the only modification was to base the lieing rifleman, he got a new base and is now shooting straight. The figures are painted in my usual Soviet color style, the colors I used can be found in this post.

The gun itself was a tough build, I can't remember that I ever used more glue on a gun than on this, and my personal carpet monster got a new sacrifice, that's why the gunsight is missing.

The DshK kit is more a late war set, all figures wear helmets and the gunners are equipped with the PPSh machine gun which depicted in the later war.

These figures were painted in my Soviet scheme, too.

The machine gun was build without any problems.

One of these two kits had a lot of flash and mould lines, but I can't remember which of them, but it made no fun to build the quad Maxim.

Update:
Booth sets contain 3 identical sprues each with 5 different figures and one gun. Pictures of the unpainted sets and sprues can be found on Plastic Soldier Review.

Fleamarket Discoveries

I love fleamarkets, there can be found a lot of useful and useless stuff, that's the shit I need. Whenever I hear of a fleamarket in my town, I try to visit it. I always wanted to write about my fleamarket finds since I started this blog and now it is the time to do it, I will not include any prices for it, but when it was bought, be sure it was cheap.

We have a big monthly fleamarket in the local exhibition hall and I visit it everytime, I think the best time ist right when it starts (8a.m.), there are less visitors than later and the best things (lol) are still available. Sometimes I make a second visit just before it closes, I think than you can get the best prices, most sellers are happy for every piece that they will not have to carry back home.

Let's take a look, what I found today:

- Body Counts first debut album, I remember this record was the killer when it came out while I was a teenager.

- some comics, one anthology of the Freak Brothers and three issues of Judge Dredd (he is the law).

- 2 diecast cars and a diecast helicopter for a future project

and, last but not least, an old boardgame called Anno 4000, I don't know if I will ever find more players for this, but I couldn't resist when the seller told me the price.

I am happy with my new stuff, and on the way back I bought some fresh buns for breakfast. Can a day start better ?

Maybe the list will be updated, I will visit the market with a friend before it closes, I will see, how much I can drop the prices of some things that interested me.

28 mm Undead Army

 

At the moment I am concentrating on finishing my small Undead army. There is still a lot to finish but I hope that my mate Olli and I can start a first game this year.

We will play the Warhammer 5th edition or maybe the fourth edition, Olli has still his mid 90ies dwarf army and can play both editions with his army book. For the undead that I play I can have two different armies depending on which edition we play. 

But all of this a big work in progress, there are a lot of minis to paint, a lot of words have to be read und understood before.

Here are now the first elements of my undead. They will be a mix of Mantic figures and old GW minis, I like the old GW minis more then their actual style. 

The first picture shows, what I already finished, two regiments of skeleton warriors, bats and 2 heroes. The undead horse is a conversion of a claymore Saga horse and a skeleton horse.
Only the bases are unfinished.

UPDATE: Find better pictures of the Undead army here:

https://ww2modelzone.blogspot.de/2018/03/unboxing-undead.html
 

The next step is to finish my Mantic Zombies, I already glued them and painted their skin, but there is a lot of painting and detailing before they are finished.

I mixed the Zombie parts with the parts of the Mantic Gouls to get a wider variety of poses but my Zombies and Ghouls now look a little similar. I had to visit a supermarket and ask for some bottlecaps, I did not had enough.

UPADTE: Find better pictures of the Undead army here:

https://ww2modelzone.blogspot.de/2018/03/unboxing-undead.html

When I finished the Zombies I will paint my first wolfes, they are crude mutants made from Clyamore Saga wolfes, skeleton horses, metal wolf heads and milliput.

The last pictures will show my eternal enemy, all these dwarfs were painted arround 1995, at this time my mate Olli did not know washs and drybrushing, he will repaint some parts of them when he gets the time for it.

Hong Kong Airfix Afrikakorps Clones With Helmets

Today I received a figure lot from the bay and it included a great surprise. Among many other figures it contained about 100 of Hong Kong clone figures of the good old Airfix Afrikakorps set. But these check out the picture below.

The pictures shows on the upper row some figures from the Airfix Afrikakorps set, the lower figures are their clones. Both look equal except for their headgear. The detail of the clones is not too bad, the details could be better, but these are cheap toys, the scale is like their origin's, more 1:76 then 1:72.

I've never seen these (clone) versions of the Airfix AK before, even when I played as a kid with toy soldiers in this scale and I had hundreds of them including AK clones. But mine weared all fieldhats.

Update:
A reader left a comment, that these minis are copies from the old ESCI hardplastic set of the Africakorps, and it seems that he is right. Check out this link to Plastic Soldier Review.