Point 213 Progress - Germans Complete

Well,

This weekend saw the last models I will be contributing to the Point213 game completed, Two Tiger I's.

Two Big Cats

Once again, these are Warlord models and went together pretty fast. Once assembled I primed both models flat black. Once that dried, I then applied Vallego Middlestone by sort of wet drybrushing onto the models. Once the first coat was dried, I applied a second coat of Middlestone to the models.

Wet drybrush of Middlestone applied.

Once that was dry. I started on the tracks and other details like the tools on the deck and such. This went pretty quickly since the Tigers don't have too many detail to pick out. Interestingly I bought the Rubicon German Stowage and was going to apply some of these to the Tigers, but as I looked at pictures, I could really not find too many that had extra stowage on them, especially the ones in Normandy. I chatted about this with Drunkensamurai, and he has a great Tiger book and it seems that only Tigers on the Eastern front had pictures with extra stowage. The Germans seemed pretty fanatical about keeping the Tigers in clean good shape and seemed to have been supplied via other means rather than the crew having to haul it around with them. So long story short, no extra stowage was modeled for these two.

Camo Applied, do you see me?

After the tracks and details were painted, I applied the camo to the tanks using Vallejo German Cam Brown and German Reflective Green. I actually struggled with which camo scheme to apply to these kitties, but in the end with a rather simple design. Once I was satisfied with the camo pattern, I then used Army Painter Strong Tone all over the models and let them sit to dry. Once that had completely dried, I then applied decals to the vehicles using the smaller numbers in the Rubicon decal sheet instead of the larger ones that Warlord supplied. I choose to use Tank Numbers 234, which Herbert Steif commanded and tank number 221 which was George Hantsch commanded. Both of these tanks were at the real Point 213 Battle and were part of Michael Wittmans platoon.

Herbert Steif Tiger
 

George Hantsch Tiger

Once the decals set, I then applied a dry brush of Americana Mississippi Mud color to the whole model, this gives the tanks a light layer of dust and just the right amount of weathering. Once again Tigers were kept pretty clean and I can't stand when modelers go crazy with the weathering effects. If you talk to most tankers (current and past) they kept heir tanks in pretty good condition since it is/was their home away from home. So just a simple weathering effect looks better than going nuts.

And there you have it, two more tanks completed for the Point 213 game. So since I completed these, on Sunday I went down to Drunkensamurai's place and we started working on the 48 linear feet of bocage that will be needed for this game. We are doing the Bocage in 6" sections (once a tank successfully crosses bocage you remove a section per the BA rules) and were using pink insulation foam for the base of the bocage.

Here is about 40 of the sections of Bocage!

 We cut the bases out and beveled them, then cut various heights of pink foam and glued them to the bases. Once that set we went back and filled any gaps and cut the foam into more random shapes. Drunken will be adding some of the section we cut off glued to various sides to give them a more robust, plump look to them. Once that is done, we will be painting them dark brown and applying Woodland Scenics coarse ground foam and applying a ton of glue to harden them up.

So stay tuned friends, the Battle for Point 213 game progress' forward...

TK

Point 213 Progress - British Complete

Well,

On New Years day I completed painting on my British Troop for the Point 213 game in March or April of this year. These are all Warlord models and were pretty easy to assemble, I found that I enjoyed putting these together as compared to building Tamyia 1/48th scale models.

Painting for these was also pretty quick as well. In fact I used the same Testors dark green paint can that I used on my Tamyia models ten years ago, no issues. Then I did a Army Painter Strong Tone wash on the whole model followed by a Americana Honey Brown wash. Decals were from Warlord and went on after the Strong Tone wash and before the Honey Brown wash.

First up, the Firefly:

Warlord Firefly

Next is the Cromwell Command tank:

Warlord Cromwell

Here are all the Cromwell's together:

Warlord Cromwell's

Followed by a group shot of the entire British Troop:

All Warlord Kits

Also on New Years Eve, during the day, DrunkenSamurai and I got in another test game of the Point 213 game. This time I would play the British while he took command of the Germans.

Point 213 Battle test game two.

As you can see from the above picture, the British will be deployed along the road with a random number of pinned down markers. This is to represent the British stopping on the hill to have a conference to find out where are these Germans they have been looking for. This test game went very differently then the last one, mostly due to the fact that I knew what I had to do as the British player and the fact that most of the tanks only had one or two pin markers on them. Needless to say, I will not say what I did to win as the players will need to figure this out for themselves.

Next up will be two of the Tigers I am painting for this game, DrunkenSamurai has the other two. Also we need to get started on the Bocage for the game, since the table will need lots of it, at least 48 linear feet of it to be exact. Here are all the bases that we will be using.

Bocage bases

And hopefully this is what they will look like:

Mikes Bocage sections

These were done by my friend Mike over at Da Greenskins Blog, he built these for our local shop. I may be working on these this weekend, we shall see. So lots going on here so stay tuned.

TK