Pz IV Platoon - Plastic Soldier Company - WW2V15002

Hello everyone

Just thought I would start writing the next project post even though I haven't made alot of progress yet. You might have seen my Panther post and this will be another review of a Plastic Soldier Company kit, the Pz Iv.

 The Box

In the box you will find a single sheet of instructions and 5 sprues which contain one tank each. Just like the panther kit the details and mold is pretty awesome on this one aswell. The only real downside of this kit is, that the tanks can't be made to have zimmerit, unless of course you have the nerve and skill to try your hand without yourself (which I don't :-p) so if you want zimmerit you would probably be better of with the official Battlefront Pz IV.

Assembly

I wanted to make my platoon into the H variant of the Pz IV, because I just always liked the look of that tank with the side skirts and everything, and sadly I haven't been able to find one in 1/72 ( I do have one in 1/35 scale and an Ausf. J, which I haven't done yet) other than the Revell kit which I just don't want to spend money on after having build some of their other kits.

The kit goes together nicely and everything just fits perfectly and you can probably make a tank in about 10 minutes time, which is quite nice.

I use a small drill to hollow out the muzzle but in the pictures I haven't done that yet as you might notice. I just feel this little thing add a lot to the overall look of the finished tank.

Painting

Just like my Panthers I will basicly be trying to paint these just like the guy does here. So far all I've done is assemble all five tanks and prepare them for priming and further painting.

I started out by priming everything white using a Primer spray I had laying around. Afterwards I painted everything Dark Yellow using Tamiya XF-60. I decided to go with a green only camouflage pattern, which proved to be quite difficult to paint with my cheap airbrush (should really buy a good one soon...) but in the end I think I managed to achieve an acceptable result.

Then I proceeded to apply a gloss coat of varnish.

After the varnish had dried properly I applied all the decals I had chosen for my tanks and then gave them a second coat of varnish.

Painting the tracks gun metal and the wheels black almost made me want to start cutting myself...but I persevered and after a lot of small breaks I finally finished with that.

Next up I washed everything using a enamel wash for Dark Yellow vehicles by AK Interactive, I would have used some thinned down oil paint, but I need abit more practice getting it thinned properly, it always end up drying really ugly for me :/ ah well practice makes perfect.

Because the wash needed some time to dry I went to bed at this point.

After a good 8 hours sleep I had some breakfast and afterwards I started the drybrushing phase of my build. I used Abteilung 502 Luftwaffe Yellow and Snow White (but you could easily use any yellow and white oil paint for this, or a buff acrylic color or something) with these I mixed a sort of sandy light yellow color and fairly carefully drybrushed it on the raised areas of the tank. 

Then using a large flat brush I went over everything trying to give the light edges a softer look.

So for the paint chips I used Tamiya Black and Flat Earth mixed about 50/50, then I took my chipping brush (Like this) and attacked the tanks. I feel I might have overdone it a tad this time around, but it was quite difficult on the turrets because of the shields taking alot of space.

Then I made a pin wash quickly going over some of the more prominent details and making some rust/dirt streaks, mostly on the Schürzen. I decided not to make any mud one these, so I sprayed some dirt on the lower parts of Schürzen using a dark brown color heavily thinned down. While I was at it I sprayed some black on the muzzlebrakes of the guns so they look like they've been used. 

Using a soft pencil I went over the track edges to make them pop abit more.

Here's a few pictures of the current state, tomorrow I will hopefully be able to finish them.

Because the chipping went a bit overboard I quickly went over the vehicles with the same color I had drybrushed them with earlier just to brighten them up slighty.

Last part of the painting process was going over all the tools and other bits that wasn't going to stay camouflaged. You might argue that they probably would have been painted on the real tanks, but since this is for a board game and the scale is quite tiny, I feel it just help the overall tank stand out more, instead of just being a yellow/green blob.

After the commanders had been painted and glued to the tanks everything recieved a matt varnish to seal everything in and give it a nice flat look.

Here's some pictures of the finished tanks, hope you like them.

Next up I will be finishing my Live Resin figure and then we'll see what I'll be painting next :-)

That's it for now!



Chris

Panther Platoon - Plastic Soldier Company - WW2V15012

Greetings!


One of my friends recently pressured me into making a Flames of War army and as people who have visited this blog before might have noticed, I quite like the Panzer of the german forces, so the choice of my army was very easy.

I have been aware of Flames of War for some time, but since I didn't know anyone who played it, I never bought any vehicles or figures to try it out. Because of this I had no idea of the sheer number of companies which provide exellent miniatures for the game, as I'm mostly used to looking towards a single company (Games Workshop) for all my wargaming needs. All the choices was a welcome breath of fresh air.

Because I'm currently on a limited budget the Battlefront miniatures seemed abit out of reach at the moment. While browsing Ebay in a hope for a great deal, I noticed a company called "Plastic Soldier Company" which provided sets of 4-5 tanks (Platoon) for about 15£, while the Battlefront platoons are about 30-40£, by first glance this seemed to good to be true, but after having searching the interwebs for reviews of their products I was sold.

Currently I have 5 Panthers, 4 Tigers, 5 Stug III and 5 Pz IV from PSC, and they are all amazing sets with beautiful mold details, basicly like Dragons 1/72 sets, just in 1/100, which almost seems impossible but they pulled it off nicely.

Painting & Assembling

I didn't really take to many pictures during the assembly and painting process of this set. Since this is the first 1/100 kit I have ever tried my hands with, I decided to just paint and not really think of the blog article. A while ago i stumbled upon this "article" which has been a huge help for me painting these, and actually tried to use some of the same techniques while I was painting my 1/35 Panther .

Basicly I tried to follow his painting guide and I think it turned out pretty good, still room for improvements ofc.! especially the weathering and chipping parts, which is not something I've done alot of and especially on this scale.

As mentioned this set was a pleasure to assemble and everything is just crisply molded and fitted perfectly.

I went with a simple 3 tone camouflage and while airbrushing these I realized I probably should invent in a good airbrush soon, as mine are quite cheap and in this scale you can really feel that.

I tried to use oil washes and drybrushing and still a long way away from perfecting mixing oil washes, but practise makes perfect!


Platoon Finished! 

Size comparison

Since I now have panther in size 1/35, 1/72 and 1/100 I thought it would be fun to take some comparison photos so people get an idea of how small these actually are.

and a few bonus shots.

Conclusion

Overall I think these turned out quite well, still room for improvements on my part, but the kit was simply amazing and I can highly recommend this kit to anyone who want to build themselves a fairly cheap FoW army.





Chris