The Road To Panzerschreck (2016) The Marines Hit Early War

Originally this article was posted on the Flames Of War website back in 2016...

Next month is the annual Studio trip to Panzerschreck with the team jumping in a van and having an epic road trip / lads weekend away. This year I was planning on having a relaxed weekend and heading down to play some Team Yankee games with Evan. Thanks to a last-minute change of plans for Phil (James’ partner in crime for the event) I found myself subbed in to join up with James’ British Armoured Regiment.

No doubt you are all aware of the famous battle somewhere in North Africa where a small Marine Expeditionary Force briefly found themselves siding with a Vickers Mk IV light tank company…

Originally I was in two minds about what to take as I have a French Early War army that I really enjoy playing and need an excuse to finish painting up some Lorraine 38L Carriers. At the same time I have been plugging away with a US Marine Amphibian tank company for Gung-Ho and I saw this as an opportunity to push the army back to the front of the painting queue. After a couple of minutes thought the Marines (easily) found themselves promoted as it is hard to not go with something shiny and new, even if I do have to do a lot more painting to get it ready. Working out an army list that looked achievable on the painting front and fun to play I settled on: 

The core of the force is obviously the LVTs with 10 of them crawling across the table, hopefully shooting up everything in front of them. This should pair nicely with James’ Light Mk IV tanks which will be light enough to respond to any threats as well as threatening enemy objectives. If I am being honest the AA and Rockets are really there to get me to four platoons, but it will also give us some decent AA coverage (as James’ also has some Bofors guns) and rockets capable of thinning out the enemy ranks of infantry.

After the experiment with the dark sand (in the previous article) I decided to go back to pain grey vehicles and to make them look a little more interesting I decided to put beach markings on the sides of the hull (the two red vertical stripes you can see in the photos). These were to help the LVTs stick together and get to the correct landing zone – in this case Red Beach 2 during the Battle of Saipan. The theory being that you just followed the vehicles with the same markings as you. 

Next I chose to go to town on the decals and whilst I was inspired by historical markings here I chose to go a bit overboard to help them pop on the battlefield. I chose tank numbers from a spare NVA T-55 decal sheet I had, as well as US stars, serial numbers and names from the US Late War Decal Sheet (US941) I think these really help to make the models look interesting on the table.

As you can see from the pictures below I still have a way to go to finish the army up but with a couple of weeks to go I think I am in good shape.  

The HQ Platoon
I've only painted the 75mm turrets for my HQ, but I plan to paint up the 37mm ones later to make sure I can swap these around easily.  

LVT(A)4 (75mm) Platoon
Other than a targeted wash, these just need their crew painted and machine-guns highlighted.

 

Above: Most of the army are still waiting for a shading pin wash, so they are currently shiny with gloss varnish. I've used the number '13' 75mm tank to test the oil wash, and I'm happy with the finished result.

LVT(A)1 (37mm) Platoon
These are currently missing the machine-gun turrets, which will make them look a little more dynamic thanks to the crew sitting inside operating them.

Below: To do the red markings on the side of the hulls I made a mask using some low-tack hobby masking tape, then carefully attached it to a model, airbrushed the red and carefully removed it again. Rinse and repeat 32 times as I decided to do the markings on all my LVTs and not just the ones for Panzerschreck to keep everything consistent.

Hopefully this gives you some inspiration for painting your own LVTs.

Building a Marine Amphibian Tank Company

I’ve made no secret of my excitement about the Marine Amphibian Tank Company. And with Andrew making so much progress on his Ka-Mi tanks I thought I’d better get my act together and push ahead with my painting.

Luckily the LVTs are a breeze to assemble. With the hull and tracks being one piece, you are just gluing together the turrets and adding the optional hull machine-gun. A fairly relaxed afternoon saw them all assembled and undercoated.

The next problem was choosing what paint scheme I preferred. There are plenty of options and in the coming weeks I’ll have a short article talking about the most common options to choose from but in the end it came down to a grey or grey/sand scheme (like the Studio models) or a green/brown/sand scheme. The three colour scheme was just too similar to European paint schemes and nothing says the Pacific to me like tanks base coloured in grey!

Using my airbrush, I started by painting a light coat of grey over the whole model. This was to lay down a base colour for me to start highlighting up. I then applied a little more paint in certain areas such as the middle of large panels, the top surfaces, and anywhere else that I wanted a slightly lighter colour. Working over a black undercoat, I was able to use the grey as its own highlight by slightly varying the density of the paint coverage.

I decided that the grey alone was a little boring, so I thought I would try adding the common sand-coloured camouflage pattern to give the models a little more impact on the table. I also thought that the extra colour would mean that I did not have to do as much work to make the grey look good. So the next step was to cover the model in blu-tac.

In my paint collection at home, I didn’t have the Colours Of War Dry Dust or Crusader Sand that Aaron used when painting the studio models. So I improvised by grabbing a dark sand colour that I already had and sprayed it on. The blu-tac worked as planned, leaving me with nice hard edges between the grey and sand but I was not particularly happy with the colour as the studio models just looked better.

Looking at the images now as I write the article I find myself in two minds:

• I quite like the plain grey, and it is a valid historical paint scheme, so I could just stick with that approach (saving me some painting time!);
• Or I could “borrow” the studio paints for an evening and go with the grey/sand scheme.

I think will mull this over a little more and in the next few days make a final decision – the more I think about it, the longer it will take to finish them and get an army on the table. 

 

So what’s the plan for 2016?

This year is already looking exceptionally busy on all fronts (whether it is home, work, or hobby/gaming) and whilst I should set realistic expectations of what I want to achieve, it is far more fun to dream of doing more.

Team Yankee
Let’s be honest I am pretty excited about Team Yankee and all that it entails. My copy of Team Yankee (along with a host of other great “Cold War Gone Hot” books) were read over and over again way back when and the chance to return to some modern gaming using our figures is too appealing to pass on.

Americans: I’ve been chipping away at my US force for a while now and making slow progress. They are largely assembled and some parts are painted. I think I just need a burst over the course of a weekend to really push them along. Of course it wouldn’t hurt if this year’s FlamesCon had a TY event as part of it!

Soviets: On the list somewhere – who doesn’t want to paint up 6 Hinds and then terrorise their opponents. I’ve managed to hold off since I haven’t finished my US force and because I haven’t really worked out a hook for the force yet. It will come though.

Germans and British: I’m in… end of story! I have a plan for the British but still need to work out something for the Germans.

Other nations: I spent a little time over the Christmas break assembling some more of the Syrians and I figured that I could proxy their T-55s for Soviet T-72s until I work out a list that appeals.

Terrain
I’m pretty happy with how the first couple of test Tablescape pieces have started and whilst there is still plenty to do to finish them I’m going to push ahead and get the rest of the pieces airbrushed up to the point where I can start putting oil washes on them – primarily so that I can mix up a couple of batches of different oil washes and not run out half way through and need to remix.

The new Team Yankee terrain also has me pretty excited and I am planning on doing a short article for the website on enhancing the Petrol station with a couple of easy steps; painting the pumps white and roofline in yellow with a red band, putting some product posters up etc, and maybe making a base that it can go on alongside the road.

Trollbloods
Yeah, you know the drill…. Maybe I will, maybe I won’t, but let’s see if I can get my first 50 points finished this year…

US Marines
With the Pacific book Gung Ho due our shortly I am definitely planning on building a Amphibious Tank Company with the intent of taking the basic building blocks of it (i.e. the first 1000 points) to Panzerschreck later this year.

Sounds like a full year’s work, anything else?
Probably… who knows what will strike my fancy part way through the year and completely distract me? I’m still keen to paint up my Armada fighter squadrons and there will be a plastic Berserker kit for Warmachine that would go nicely with Karchev. Not to forget the thing, with the thing… (and so it begins!). 

What about Tanks!
Too early to say much about this one, but it is coming soon, it’s cool, and along with the rest of the team here I helped to design it. Definitely going to be painting a few Pershings just for this project!