Biermeyer's 3. SS-Panzer Platoon - Opinions

Hello everyone

I just wanted to see if I could get some opinions for one of my next projects. Last year I painted my Fritz Biermeyer character, and I was pretty satisfied with the result.

However I've had the rest of his platoon laying around for ages now and thought it was about time I started painting them. But recently I feel like I've improved on my techniques and I would personally like a uniform looking platoon of 5 tanks of the same quality painting, rather than 4 nice ones and one decent looking (compared to the rest).

But at the same time I would require quite a lot of extra work :-p

So I wanted to get some opinions here. So should I just use him as is and paint the rest, or should I strip him of paint and do all 5 tanks to the same standard?

Would really like some input, so feel free to comment below.

Here's a few more shots of my older Pz IV (colors are a bit off tho)

Hope you will help me out here.


Chris

Flames of War - My finished forces so far

'Allo 'Allo

So since I just finished my Tiger platoon I thought it was time for an few shots of my finished FoW forces so far. I still have quite a lot of models left to paint...

• 5 Stug III
• 4 PzIV
• 3 AA Vehicles
• 1 Plane
• 1 Command Tiger
• Rest of my infantry....

As you might notice I haven't really done a lot of infantry yet... and the reason is that it just isn't as fun to paint infantry in this scale :-p but finished my current infantry platoon is my next project I think.

The sad thing is that I will probably never ever be able to actually field all these vehicles in a game at the same time :-p

Hope you like it :)

Happy B-Day to me!

Hello everyone

I recently had my birthday and as everyone knows the best presents are always the ones you give yourself :-D so beside ordering some new paint, I also bought myself some fancy new units as you can see above.


Well that's it really, just wanted to share. I'm still working on my halftracks and infantry, but haven't been able to work really work on them this week, but hopefully I will be able to get them done soon, so stay tuned.


Chris

Fritz Biermeyer - Battlefront - GE889

A Panzer commander from the 3. SS Panzerdivision

Greetings!

So while I been painting my panzer grenadiers I have also begun work on another kit I've recently recieved. This time it's a special character from the 3. SS Panzer Division, Sturmbannführer Fritz Biermeyer.

As I've only been painting tanks and figures from Plastic Soldier Company so far, I was quite looking forward for my first real look of the Battlefront set, and I must say its very beautifully sculpted considering the scale. This tank comes with zimmerit which is very nice if you, like me, don't have the nerve to try doing it yourself in this scale, so thats a huge plus in my book. I'll still maintain that if you want some very cheap nicely detailed tanks you should probably just buy some kits from PSC to get your army going, but like the infantry I'm currently painting these sets can easily be used together as the scale is pretty much identical, the Battlefront vehicle might be slightly higher, but I doubt you'll notice once the battle begins :-D

As you can see I haven't done a lot yet, but I've only been painting this while waiting for paint to dry on my infantry :-p


Update 26.03.2013

After I fnished my first batch of infantry, I decided to get a bit of work done on Biermeyer. I still need to get near my airbrush to finish him completely, but painting wise he is basicly done.

 And here's some with turrent and hull put together :-)

Here's the schürzen which I still need to paint a few things on with my airbrush, and then the entire vehicle needs a coat of varnish.

Finished! 28.03.2013

Let's just let the pictures do the talking.

I think I managed to get quite a nice result with this model and its simply been a pleasure to build and paint. Compared to my PSC Pz IV I can only say that both kits have their own  pros/cons, but I wouldn't hesitate to mix and match my army with vehicles/figures from both companies.

Next vehicles up for painting is some halftracks for my infantry platoon, so stay tuned for that!

Now back to the infantry! :-D

Chris

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