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Last year for the Early War FOW tournament at Adepticon, I ran French Fusillier-Voltigeurs and happily won Best Painted Allied Army. This year I thought I'd join the dark side and run an Axis army. Since I love the Blitzkrieg book so much, I chose to assemble a Mittlere Panzerkompanie - Medium Panzer Company - based (rather loosely) on Guderian's 2.Panzerdivision. I keeping with the 2.PZ theme, I also decided to add some Mid-War elements for play using the Eastern Front book Mittlere lists.

To start out, I bought the massive and rare 8.8cm Flak18(Sfl), AKA the "BunkerFlak". This is an excellent model from Battlefront but there are a few problems that had to be fixed. First, the armored cab needed to be extended on the right-hand side of the fighting compartment and a flip-up weapon mount added.



I also got rid of the poorly cast rivets on the armored grill, added latches to the headlamp covers, added more struts to the rear ammo crate rack, as well as a license plate on the rear-left fender. I also correctly extended the Flak gun shield downwards with plasticard, and replaced the poorly cast shell hopper and recoil springs.



Below, are the Command PzIV D, as well as 2 PzIV Ds from the Mittlere Platoon, made by Zvezda. They are nice enough models, however they lacked some major details. Using plasticard, I had to add the driver's armored shutters, the gunner's armored visor, headlamps, the glacis plate tow-hooks; as well as replacing the hull machine-gun. To the Command PzIV, I added a whip antenna.



Ah, here's my favorite - this is a PzII by Zvezda, modified to the Ausf. B "Beobachtungsturm". This was, as far as I can tell, a very rare command PzII with an observation cupola mounted on top of the turret. I cut away the turret hatch and formed the cupola from plasticard, as well as adding armored vision slits to the cupola and over the driver's position and an antenna rack on the left fender. A whip antenna made from guitar wire completes the vehicle's hardware.





Last for today but not least is another Zvezda model; this one a wholesale conversion. I needed to make an Opel Radio Truck from the normal Blitz model. This required removing the flatbed and building the radio cabin out of plasticard. I cut several holes for windows, added the roof, and then attached all the little gribblies to the exterior. The radio mast is made from copper tubing and 20g copper wire. I also added a stowage rack over the cab and headlamp covers.



For more pics and info, see my blog below:
http://empireofghosts.blogspot.com/2012/01/mit-den-panzern-in-ost-und-west-wip.html

Very nice work ancient, love the bunker flak. I'm really impressed that you add extra detailing on the Panzers. The Command Panzer II and the Radio truck, are superb.
Time I built a decent EW army.

Very impressive.

Continuing on with my Mittlere Panzer Co. build, I have the final 2 tank platoons to show off. First is the Panzer III Platoon equipped with the Panzer III Ausf. G from PSC. I've already reviewed this kit and it was pretty nice, though fiddly. It really didn't require much embellishment except for some sandbag protection made from Green Stuff and some plasticard racks to hold the spare track sections to the hull.



Lastly, is an Assault Tank platoon made from the odd StuiG33b, basically this was a large 15cm SiG infantry support gun mounted on the Panzer III chassis and heavily armored. Even though they saw the majority of their action well to the south in Stalingrad, I couldn't resist these odd fusions of a Panzer tank and a StuG assault gun.

I received these models secondhand and they required about 5 days in Simple Green to remove 3 layers of paint and primer! After that, I had to make two commander's hatches from plasticard to replace missing metal hatches. I then added plasticard tubing for the hull MG, spare tracks and roadwheels from the PSC Panzer III sprues, a spare commander figure for the Command StuiG, some sandbags made out of Green Stuff, and finally whip antennas from guitar wire.



Well, my main company models are primed and ready for paint. All that's left is the 15mm AiM Stuka model for air support and the 2 Objectives....

Never seen those StuiG33b before. Still they look pretty amazing, once again your ability at small scale is nothing short of astounding.

It's buckle-down time for Adepticon here at the Empire. I was finally able to get in one full weekend day to get most everything basecoated with the airbrush, finish my General Guderian objective, and start work on my Armaments in Miniature Stuka air support option. I don't care what anyone tells you - finding time to paint while watching an infant is HARD.

All the based minis get a drybrush of dirt and mud. My "Husslin' Heinz" objective is in the foreground center - this is General Guderian in his command Sd.Kfz 251. The "G" emblem on the trucks' fenders were applied to all vehicles and tanks in Panzergruppe Guderian.



Most of the vehicles and tanks received a solid coat of Panzer Grey with a little Regal Blue added for shading. Most of the tanks have the two-tone camo scheme prevalent in pre-1940 Panzer Divisions - 75% Panzer Grey, 25% soft-edged Dark Brown. The StuiG MW camo scheme of a base of Panzer Grey with bands of soft-edged Tan did not turn out, mostly because my compressor is too powerful to provide pressure under 20psi - necessary for convincing soft-edged banded camo at 15mm. Oh well...

The nice part of FOW version 3 is the abandonment of the 3-model plane flight for a single model. This allows players to field in-scale aircraft, rather than the undersize 1/144 scale, and to focus on a single model. With this done, I finally broke down and bought the excellent Armaments in Miniature Stuka R-2 (review coming soon-ish).

I built mine in the long-range version (note the underwing fuel tanks) and it's pretty much stock except for the gunner's MG and the cockpit aerial. I drilled a hole in the lower fuselage with my dremel to except a GW flying base. The color scheme is almost completely fictional - as I forgot to do the second grey tone to the upper fuselage before removing the masking tape - and the call sign is also fictional.

I think this will make a nice support option for all my German forces, as well as the Finns.

Well, I've not had much energy to do much lately, as I'm just getting over a nasty case of strep. However, I was able to finish the majority of painting and decaling for my Mittlere Panzer Co. At this point, the only thing left is weathering.....so close! More pics at my blog:
http://empireofghosts.blogspot.com/2012/04/mit-den-panzern-in-ost-und-west-wip-4.html





"Helga" & "Frieda"

Dam you.... I really want to start an early war fallishcmjager army now lol.