Hired Swords Bases

As I work at finishing up the painting for my old-version Viktoria crew, I figured I'd show some progress I've been up to in regards to the new "Hired Swords" box. So far I've been assembling, basing, and debating converting.

I don't think I'll end up using the new crew as a Viktoria crew specifically, unless I need to travel with my force, because I don't especially like the new pair as Viktorias. They're not twin enough!

 In the meantime, here's the rest. Taelor is on a fairly standard paving stone looking base, but with a couple nice pavement cracks right where her hammer has come down. I like the look of the new Taelor much better. The pose is interesting, and the hairpiece as far as I am concerned needs to be inverted, but otherwise, her outfit makes more sense, the hammer looks more archaic rune-axe, and the mechanical arm looks more mechanical, and less like she just forgot to put on the rest of a suit of mail.

The Student of Conflict is incredibly similar to the previous version. I've modeled her on standard paving stones; I figure the Viktoria crew is mostly fighting around and in the cities and alleyways, and have tried to reflect this on their bases. I know some folks were having problem with the ponytails breaking, and I likewise had an issue, but nowhere near like the issue I had with Vik of Blood's arms...

The three Ronin likewise reflect the road-feel of the crew: One straddling a gutter of some kind, the other two on relatively standard stone bases. I know some folks have had issues with the look of the new ones, but I have a theory to explain it I'll go into when I get them all painted up.  The centre Ronin's base was the most complex of these to do. After putting down the putty flat, I used a length of plastic cylinder to press into the center, giving both the ditch, and a surrounding bump that helped define it. After that it was a simple matter of using a tool to etch lines, and I've just done basic stippling on the bottom. When they're painted I'll add some self-leveling gloss gel to make it look like a puddle.

Finally the Viktorias themselves. Viktoria of Ashes will have a lamp stand, and I will be hopefully doing a source-light paint scheme for her, and probably for Viktoria of Blood as well. Since I already have a playable pair of Viktorias, I'll go to town making these two look all diorama-cool. With that in mind I made the paving stones line up properly, and that's fairly close to final arrangement, again if I do a full diorama setup.

Viktoria of Ashes is even standing beside the curb with a drain! The light post has since been detailed more and actually looks like a Victorian style (Viktorian?) lamp post. It should be fun to paint them, but they're benched behind a few other things, so it'll take me a bit to get them done.

Panther Masterclass 4: Stowage and Detailing

For my final post in this series (the painting post won't be a masterclass; there are many fine blogs and forum posts regarding that) I tackle adding stowage and odd little elements of detail to the Panther. It would be highly unusual for a tank to not have stowage, and I'll go over each tank in my force, and comment on certain features that are unique.Almost all my bits of stowage are based off photographs, and I'll try to suggest how common each part would have been on tanks, based on either photographs or documents.

I wish I had a better excuse for the delay on this post, but it was a case of 'something always came up'... On to the models!

First something universal on my Panthers. Here you can see the all-weather plug for the MG slot, which was attached to a cord by the radioman's head, pulling which would open the MG mount and allow him to attach and then fire the MG. On all my tanks I attempted to make the modeling wire look like string in how it lay, and the plugs are somewhat the right size.

Similarly, all my tanks have tow hooks attached using the same modeling wire, carefully bent into hook shapes before being clipped and glued. While fiddly, the end result was well worth the time.

These next few photos would have been photomerged, if CS4 wasn't somehow worse than CS3 for attempting photomerges. My hope was to just have all the rear ends in one go so I could talk as I went down the line. Ah well. Here on the leftmost you can see unbogging logs strapped to the back, and a bucket attached to a rear tow-hook. Fun fact about tanks: I have yet to see a Panther that isn't a wreck without a bucket. Every tank had one in some form or other. The second tank over has a tow cable wrapped around the flame hood, which was made by bending the ends of a length of wire over on itself, then looping the entire thing.

Here you can see a second tank with unbogging timber, and an interesting element on the tank next to it; I have a photo of a (wrecked) tank with a ladder welded on over its exhaust! At first I wondered why the heck they'd want to have to climb over exhaust pipes to get on, until I figured it was probably to deter enemies climbing up during battle, and still let them get up and off when the tank itself wasn't running! Also, note the plethora of buckets along the back end. Since these photos the ladders got a coating of liquid greenstuff, partly to dull the edges of the wire, and partly because I was having some trouble getting the glue to fully adhere. Hopefully that'll work!

Now for the above shots. Here you can see two incredibly common elements of stowage: extra tracks on the sides of the turret, and the sides of the engine deck. This was because the crews believed they would help deflect shots or help with protection. It's up for debate whether it actually did help, but it was common. The other element that was incredibly common is what I call the mickey mouse ears, or awesome subwoofers; the extra wheels on the turret. These were part protection (again) and part 'somewhere to put them'.

Also of note is the last element of my vent project that wasn't finished in time for the last shot; the slat covers on the right hand vents. It took some doing to make this work, as you can see on this one I have the wrong number and width of the pieces.

This was a 'fun' mod to make. At some point the crews were officially allowed to, and started to make anti-aircraft covers for the tanks' vents. These were again fashioned out of pieces of schurtzen, and on the rear deck were meant to help stop lower-calibre bullets, and shrapnel, from entering the engine through the relatively unprotected rear vents. At the same time, they often added a similar spaced armour piece to the top of the turret, making sure to leave a hole around the anti-infantry projector slot, and turret hooks.

Rather than cut incredibly thin pieces of brass to bend into shape, I just took my widest plasticard (1mm or so) and beveled its edges so that when glued in place, it would look to be only as thin as the upper edge, sloping away underneath. The rearmost vent covers are stacked two tall because of their shape.

Here is my 'company cook' tank! He has a pair of cooking pots (one frying pan, one deeper pot) as well as a non-specific burlap sack filled with who knows what kinds of goodies. There's a tarp covering the bag, as well as an oil drum, a pair of jerry cans, and one of my cast extra roadwheels. (The tarp was necessary to cover a massive air bubble in the wheel!) While I've not necessarily seen pots and pans on the sides of turrets, I wanted to add something characterful, and I sadly have a very limited number of german helmeted heads!

One of my platoon commanders sports a piece of stowage I knew I had to add when I saw it in a photograph; There is an image of a Panther tank with a wash basin attached to the turret! How could I not include such a hilariously random bit of kit?

One of my other platoon commanders here with duffel, spare wheels, and a jerry can beside the rear turret hatch. Also with this panther are the rear-deck extra stowage bins. I have seen only one or two photos with these on the vehicle, in part because they were crew-crafted bins made from pieces of schurtzen or other scrap metal. As with the anti-aircraft plates, anything I've only seen rarely, I added just once to the company. Enough to try it, not enough to seem historically inaccurate.

My CO, and hopefully my tank ace, has quite a few bits of fun stowage. First he has a helmet on the back of the turret, so he can replace his fine officer's cap in a hairy situation. You'll also notice none of my Panthers have the AA MG, in part because Flames of War doesn't have it, and in part because it's historically a rare element. Despite that, he is equipped with a personal-use MG34 which I am claiming he has held on to in case he needs to defend his tank, or exit it under dodgy situations. It was common for crews bailing from their tanks to remove the in-tank MG34s to help ensure they got back to their muster points!

More fun stowage on this one is a box containing extra tank shells (over-bright in the shot, alas, but painted it'll be more distinctive) and another relatively rare field-modification of moving the barrel cleaning rod tube to the back deck. The last fun element of borrowed/pilfered stowage: A German Panzerschreck! I had to replace the empty space of the cleaning rod somehow, and had a bunch of these left over from my Kfz. 251s.

Here's the modified back end of the early-G with metal armour plates. Also visible are buckets, tarps, bread bags, a canteen, and a spare wheel. I tried to vary up where and how the wheels were applied so they weren't always ears/stereos, since it was often just one wheel on the tank.

This tank was modified the other way, with the lower, lateral-mounted jack, and two jerry cans in its place. At first it may seem like I missed removing the mould line on the jerry can, but considering the way it was fabricated, this is how I can best represent the curious manufacturing folds.

 Finally, this tank displays another of the ammo stowage bins, and is a good example of what the slide-covers on the right side vents ought to look like. All of mine are open, as I must assume they would have been for battle, and here you can see the proper five slats, offset slightly.

Well, that's the Panther series done, until I get around to finishing my night-vision 2iC to replace the special-character Panther I'm currently using. (I think it's Barkmann?)

I did get a chance to use the crazy heat and humidity we've been having here to bury myself in the basement airbrushing, so the Panthers have since been airbrushed! One platoon is painted with the red oxide colour as base, and the other platoon with the three-colour brown/green/dunkelgelb. At the moment, I don't think I'm quite pleased with the green in some of them (being frustratingly translucent, it came off too dark on the red, unsurprisingly) and the brown misbehaved a bit out of the brush, so I'll be touching them up. Rest assured though, there'll be another post up sooner than this one, as I have another project that just finished the conversion and is happily moving on to painting!

Panther Masterclass Part 3: Filling the Vents

Okay, slight delay on stowage for two reasons. First, I am still adding some, and second I realized I had yet to do this post.

One major difference between the Battlefront Panthers and the PSC Panthers as far as detail is the mesh grille on the engine vents. While I think the PSC ones would be beneficial for wrecks, and allow greater modification, the fact of the matter is that a running Panther would have had a mesh layer on top of any of its vents. Most egregious in this regard is the crew heater modification, which is hollow in the PSC model, lacking any of its critical internal geometry.

To rectify this, I set about making my own grille covers. At this size, any actual mesh weave wouldn't have been fine enough to fill it, so I decided to use greenstuff, and a stamp.

You will need, essentially, three different types of stamp. For the boxed one, I cut plasticard. For the round ones, I discovered to my glee that one section of an Ork Bomma gun was good for both diameter of vents!

To actually make them, I first dragged them along one of my files not across the teeth but along them, to groove the surface. This was deepened and lined with a craft knife in a proper cross formation, so I could get an appropriate mesh look.

Whenever I use greenstuff I tend to work from the 'safest' to 'least safe' part of the model, as far as later damaging the work I've done while it's still malleable. In this case, the crew heater gets a ball of putty that mostly fills, and is a bit higher than the space it needs to go in.

Lining up the grid to be parallel to the tank, I push it in just until the greenstuff starts to extrude. Careful to keep the punch a bit wet so the greenstuff doesn't stick to it.

Next, while the round tool is still at hand, I did the other circular vent. In this case, I used a sculpting tool to lay on as thin an amount of greenstuff as would fill the space. I nudged it into all the cracks and flattened it as much as possible.

To ensure the smoothness and shape, I lick my finger and rub the top. After this, the process is much the same as with the first.

Likewise, the square vents are managed with the tool first.

Flatten this section with the tool, squaring it off. At this stage I try to remove any excess that doesn't fit the rectangle.

This one is an easier one to line up, and I press firmly, rocking back and forth, to ensure a good grid shape manifests.

After all four vents are applied (or in this case, two for the sake of images) I use a craft knife to cut the edges away while it's still wet. For both the round vent and the box ones, cut off anything that would overlap into the joins.

To easier save the putty, while removing it I keep a small ball in my hand which I can use to pull it off the blade, keeping the blade clean for future cuts.

And here's one I prepared earlier! This was one of the first I tried it on: my company commander. You can see that the ridges pick up enough that with painting they should be distinctive.

Similarly, you can see that I have done a similar stamping with the flame hoods on the exhausts. Luckily, I had plastic rod of an appropriate diameter, which I grooved like the vents, and then drilled a small hole in for the nub.

Next time, I promise, stowage. I am adding a ladder or two, and will shortly be using liquid greenstuff to make sure it doesn't fall apart!

Panther Masterclass Part 2: Modeling the Early-G Variant from PSC

Today, in part 2 of 4 (or 5?) of my series on getting the most from the PSC Panther box, I show you how to make an early-variant Panther G from the box, which shows only the default-D, default-A, and late-G versions.

Primarily, my information comes from Germany's Panther Tank: The Quest for Combat Supremacy by Thomas L. Jentz. This book is incredibly detailed, and I highly recommend you attempt to get your hands on it if you're a Panther tank fan. It details all the steps that led up to the Panther's creation, as well as all the important points in variants, official modifications made during the run of the Panther, and after-production field modifications the crew made. In most cases, these are backed up by photographs of Panthers, and where these are unavailable, sketches are provided.

First and foremost, we must talk about what the initial fundamental changes to the Panther justified the modification from "A" to "G".

The A modifications were primarily the additional exhausts on the rear, because of an issue with engine cooling, and the commander's cupola, which now featured a fancy 8-view telescope system, and a hatch that, rather than on hinges, popped up and slid around.

The Panther G, internally, saw some crucial redesigns to the engine layout and cooling, removing the need for three 'exhaust' vents on the left side. Along the same time, the back deck engine cover was redesigned, and the driver and radioman's hatches were redesigned to not be on an angle. This then, gives us an "early G" with what look like the same exhaust pipes as the D, and a modified upper deck.

The famous chin mantlet, defining characteristic of the Panther G, was only introduced about halfway through its run (in Sept 44) and even then wasn't a universal adaptation. Similarly, the other distinctive feature, (Flammvernichter Exhaust Mufflers) were introduced in October of 44.

Another important change, and the first thing I modified on mine, was that the binocular vision slits for the gunner on the D were replaced with a singular view port. Since the chin mantlet wasn't introduced by this point, I used the D and A mantlet, and just eliminated the second view scope using liquid greenstuff.

 I put on more than might have been needed, so that when it dried (and inevitably shrunk) I could just scrape off the excess with a craft knife.

The next change, of course, was modifying the rear-hull to take the D-style mufflers. Unfortunately, the hull shape between the D and G Panthers changed enough that you can't just swap in one for the other. On mine, I used the G rear hull, but then delicately cut the bracing piece of plastic between the two exhausts, cleaning it so the two would mesh properly:

As you can see, at the same time for this panther I've cut off the jack from the back end. The G did generally store its jack between the two exhausts, but I have photos of at least one with the jack mounted on the engine access port, and two jerry cans slotted in to that place, which I had to recreate on one of the ten:

With the bracing arm removed, luckily, the two pieces mesh together cleanly and smoothly, requiring nothing more than a bit of superlgue:

After this, it was glued to the hull, and the rest of the assembly is pretty straightforward "G" assembly, as listed on their instructions, until I had applied the zimmerit.

Before the Flammvernichter were applied, the exhausts were given extra armour plating, to stop a random shot from penetrating into the engine compartment. At the point of connection of the exhausts, this took the form of the armour plates you see already on the vehicle. For the latter part of welded-on armour plates, I used some leftover pieces of photo-etched brass framing. (Throw nothing away, folks: You never know when you might need it!)

I cut two sections that looked to be long and wide enough, and bent to curve them before gluing them in place. On this one, you can see the modified jack and fuel cans I mentioned.

Finally, here's a shot of another Panther G early with the exhaust covers, but in this case with the jack in its as-issued position.

if one doesn't have access to photo-etched metal, I'd recommend either durable paper (more than printer paper, less than a birthday card) or even two layers of tinfoil bent over themselves. Another advantage of tinfoil is that it could be bent and mangled to look like the flimsy metal of the exhaust covers has been dinged and damaged by use, as it often was.

Next time I will cover stowage, and true rivet-counter details, though I am still adding stowage. As a teaser element next time, remember that every tank I've ever seen a good detailed picture of, had a bucket...

Panther Masterclass Part 1: Zimmerit

Having done basic assembly, its time to discuss the single sticking point for many folks regarding the Panther box from PSC, namely the lack of zimmerit. I made a platoon of early-model Gs, (which I'll detail in Part II) and wanted to properly add their zimmerit paste. Thanks go to my fiancee for taking pictures, since trying to do this alone would be either hectic or nightmarish.

First of course, we gather the materials. Here I have my early-model G, with the liquid greenstuff. I find this product not so good at gap filling (which is what they sell it for) but great for adding texture, or making rivets.

First using an older, starting-to-fray detail brush, I dab it on. Dabbing rather than painting gives a nice thick volume, and starts to texture the surface. I highly recommend you do this in small sections, because you want to ensure the greenstuff is wet when you do the next stage, and it's also good to ensure you let it dry before moving to another panel, to avoid thumbprint zimmerit!

Next I take the sharp end of a hobby knife, and start 'drawing' the lines from zimmerit. For the Panther, these will most likely be lines about half a millimeter or so, and I tend to do vertical first.

Next the horizontal lines, as you can see above, give a nice effect. Sometimes you may have to draw the blade along a line two or three times, and I often wipe the blade off on my fingers, to keep it clean. (You'll see my fingers getting green spots as I go on.)

While the turret side is drying, I move to the hull. Be careful to go around the tools, though the nature of liquid greenstuff is such that it's not terrible if you do end up getting a bit on it. Like the turret side, I dab this on an entire side before moving to the next stage.

Next, the hull is lined. If the greenstuff starts to go dry (as you can see above) you can switch to the back, thicker side of the craft knife, which will make wider gaps.

Here you can see an entire side of the tank pretty much 'done'.

Another important part is the turret front. There's lots of angles and subtly different parts on this.
First, be very careful not to accidentally fill in the gunner's sight or the MG slot when applying the greenstuff.

Similarly, make certain to get the turret front behind the mantlet, as well as the side, before anything dries.

For the most part, the mantlet zimmerit is the same as the rest of the tank, except two key places: The mantlet side is lined radially, and the gun barrel's slot is also lined, along the length of the barrel. these were done very thinly, and so again I use the sharp side of the blade, even if it's dried.

The rear of the hull is the last difficult part to do. Here you have one advantage, in that the back of a Panther was almost guaranteed to be caked in mud, so you can really go to town texturing it.

once the greenstuff is applied, again I line it, with the stowage bins getting just the thin vertical lines we saw before on the gun mantlet.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how a PSC Panther earns its zimmerit! I will have completed pics of the zimmerit next time when I discuss specifics of modeling the early Panther G, as well as making realistic G vents, and then tackling stowage! Best of luck with your own attempts.