Some 1:72 Soviets (Work In Progress)

Beside I was a little ill last week, I think it was some kind of flue, I was very, very lazy. But here're some pictures of the progress I made on my Soviet forces. In one of my first posts in this blog I showed some pictures of the figures, but now they got the final matte varnish and are glued on their bases.

Heavy machine gun support, a DSchK 12,7mm machine gun. The figures are from Mars, the bases are pokerchips. I changed the positions of the gunners arm because it looked poor in its original pose. The structure of the base (and all other bases) is made from a mix of birdsand and pva (white) glue.
I have alternative hmg teams on the workbench, some Maxim guns from the ESCI/Italeri Soviet set.


Some antitank rifle teams. These figurese came from Mars, too. I took the barrel of the at gun from the Revell "Siberian Riflemen" antitank gunner, the handlebar is made of scratch plastic. The base is from some plastic card.


More figures from Mars, this time a 60mm mortar. The legs of the mortar were made of 0,5 mm steel wire. There is a small bag with mortar ammunation for every mortar which I can't find anymore. When they are found they will be added to the base, too.


Some mortars. The smaller mortars are of 80mm calibre, they come from the ESCI/Italeri Soviet Infantry kits. The two larger models are from the Airfix Soviet Infantry set, they shall be the heavy 120mm mortars. I added some static grass to their bases, I still have to do this on all other figures in this post.


Light machine gunners, the are from the ESCI/Italeri Soviet Infantry kit. Every rifle squad has a light machine gun for fire support.

The color that I used were:
Skin:
Citadel Bronzed Flesh, then Citadel Ogrin Flesh wash
Uniform:
Citadel Desert Yellow, then Citadel Devlan Mud wash
Helmet:
some Hobby Color green mixed with a little part of white
Equipment:
different brown tones of Citadel, Vallejo and Hobby color
Boots:
Citadel Chaos Black
Heavy weapons:
Tamiya XF 5 Flat Green
Other colors:
Citadel Burnished Gold, Citadel Blood Red, a selfmixed dark silver/steel tone, and some more colors I can't remember.

Now I'm almost finished, only 120 figures more to paint, and in the last days I had not much desire for painting figures.
And then there are some tanks, I think there are 6 T34/85, 4 JS-2 and some support vehicles waiting for glue, paint and decals. There is still a lotta work waiting for me.
But there are some old projects finished, tomorrow I will post some pics of my Pegasus German trucks and my scratchbuilt Bergepanzer III.

Del Prado 1:72 Leopard 2 A5 color comparison

In my last post I wrote that the green color used on the Del Prado Leopard is too bright. Today I made some photos of real Bundeswehr equipment to show that this is true.
On the left side of the picture you can see the model, on the right you can see a Bundeswehr transporter. You can see, the colors that Del Prado used are not authentic, they are way brighter than the colors that are used on the real model.

By the way I got today my first two books about the Eastern front of WW2 at the monthly fleamarket. They include a lot of pictures and some informations, I did not have the time to check the text, I just watched the pictures in it.

When I have read them I will write something about the books. I bought the following books today:Guido Knopp "Der verdammte Krieg / Das Unternehmen Barbarossa"
ISBN 3-570-01229-8 for 3,5 Euro and
Laurence Rees "Hitlers Krieg im Osten"
ISBN 3-453-17289-2 for 4,5 Euro

But now I have to recover my strengh, today I had a lot efford. Maybe I will post later in the evening something more, but at the moment I just want to get off my wet clothes, eat something and just chill out a little.

Offtopic:I found out where Lost & Found Records got the covers of some their bootlegs they released in the early ninties, check out the following picture comparing my "Siege" CD (I own this great CD for almost 20 years now) with a picture from the G.Knopp book.

Del Prado 1:72 Leopard 2 A5

Yesterday I saw a tv commerical for a new 1:72 tank collection by Del Prado. I said to myself, let me check this out. Today I got it from the supermarket, it costs 3,99 Euro.

At the first look it looked well, except for the tank in a clear try I got a little magazine with some little general informations about tanks and some informations about the Leopard 2. And a lot of advertising for this collection.

The tank in a clear case. In the back there is a picture of a Leopard 2, on the back of the picture are some informations about this tank like the size, the lenght, the motor and some other.

The tank guided by some modern German Infantry made by Revell.

A front view of the Leopard 2 A5. I have no idea on whose manufacturers model this tank is based but I am not interested in post ww2 tanks, that I will not do any search for this.

The lower parts of the tanks are mode of plastic, the tracks are made from rubber and the upper parts are made of die-cast metal with plastic parts for the details. The level of detail is not as good as promised in the advertising, but I did not expect more. The quality of a Dragon or Revell kit is much better. And if you know the "Easy Model" models, they are a lot better (they base on Trumpeter kits).

The paintjob on this model is fairly good, but I think the green is too bright. At a gas station near my home are always some Bundeswehr trucks standing, tomorrow I will do a picture of them just to compare the colors of the camo scheme.

The next three announced models are the Tiger, the Elephant (Sd.Kfz 184) and the Jagdtiger, these kits will cost the regular price of 11,99 Euro, if you subscribe you will pay "only" 10,99, and you will get some goodies like a display case and a Sd.Kfz 9 Famo with a Sd.Ah. 116 tank trailer. That's the only positive I found so far.

My personal opinion is:
For the low price, this model is OK. It might be great for wargamers but if you want a good model of a Leo 2, you should buy a model kit and build it for yourself. Maybe I will subscribe to get the Famo + trailer but then I will quit the subscription.
For all other people who want to subscribe, I do not want to use the term rip-off, that's why I quit writing this post.

1:72 Soviet Figure Conversions

Two weeks ago I asked my readers for some help and I am glad to say that I got it. The postman brought me today a letter full of the needed figures.

I have to send out a BIG CHEERS to Hugh from the UK who helped me out with some dimestore figures. Please take a look to his interesting blog about his toy figure collection.
I needed them to strenghen my soviet mortar groups which lacked of officers.


These figures were used to build a kneeling officer with binoculars:
- a cheap Airfix clone soldier with binoculars (upper body),
- the kneeling gunner from the Airfix WW2 Soviet set (lower body), and
- the stupid runner of the ESCI/Italeri WW2 Soviet set (gun and spare magazine).

Sorry about that but I think the ESCI figure is one of the most useless figures that I have, beside the dull ESCI German paratroopers set.

New figure front view

New figure rear view

There is still some flash on the figure but I think I will keep it because it is nearly invisible at this scale. Eventually I will add some more equipment to the figure, I have some sprues of Preiser's German equipment. I have to build 5 more of these figures, then I have all figures I need and I can start with painting at the weekend.
I hope I can animate a frient of mine to help me with painting, he told me that he thinks he can't paint figures in this scale, but I was thinking that too before I made my first tries.

Thank you Hugh, your were a great help for me :D .


Small update picture:

Faces Of War (1)

These pictures were made by my grandfather who was in the Afrikakorps during World War 2. I had never the chance to ask him about his experiences he made, he died when I was a kid. My mother found them in the back of a cabinet while she was cleaning up.

All these pictures are presented to the public for the first time. Please excuse the bad quality but I had to photograph them because my scanner is broken. When I get a new scanner I will scan them. I give my permission to use them on other homepages, for uncommercial purposes only. If you want to use them please send me a note, you can find my email adress on the right side of this page below the links.

Dieses Werk ist lizenziert unter einer Creative Commons Namensnennung

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