Soviet T-34 Tanks

Hello All

I have to tell you all I have caught a bug, after I enjoyed painting and playing with the Early War Soviet army I did for Warfare I wanted more! So the next logical step was to buy 21 T-34's!

These are from Plastic Soldier Company as I wanted the twin turrets (annoyingly the day I started painting them the Battlefront ones we're announced!), bar the Battalion command tank which is the classic use of Kommissar Dedov.

Review: Plastic Soldier Company Churchills

Hello All, Adam here,

It’s been ages it feels since I did a proper review of a product, but with plastic Churchills I thought now was a good time.

So where to start, well firstly the box is what I've come to expect from PSC artwork on the front and a simple painting scheme on the back, it’s to the point and easy.

Plastic Soldier Company M5 Stuart.

Hello All

A month or so ago I picked up a box of the new Plastic Soldier Company Stuarts for my up and coming 7th Armoured Company.

My first impressions of the boxset is that the PSC has learnt a lot of lessons from the older kits, the tracks, running gears and sides are one piece! I can't tell you how much aggro the T-34 tracks caused me until I finally worked out the trick to them.

Review - Plastic Soldier Company - War Sprays

Hi all,

thought that I'd do a quick review of Plastic soldier companies (PSC) new War Spray.

Like a lot of people I loved battlefronts sprays and was burning through their Dunkelgelb, until it ran out...

Then lo and behold PSC release some which seem to be the colours we need! Now they were made by army painter as well, so I had high hopes that they would basically be the same colour and I would have all my tanks fitting in.

PSC's T-70 Painting Guide

Winner Dave's journey in painting Plastics Soldier Company's T-70...like this

Hello All

After doing my review of the PSC T-70, I thought I'd do a step by step guide of my 10 day journey on how I painted them. 

Plastic Soldier Company T-70 Review

Hello

Winner Dave here, with my latest toy...

As mentioned in my previous post "One Broke Gamer", I bought some plastic soldier company T-70s with the proceeds of some eBay sales.

I'm doing a mixed Tankovy Company list from Eastern Front put together by Ben.

A tale of one broke gamer...

Hey guys, winner Dave here.

One of my new years resolutions was to do a tank company and you may remember Ben doing a poll about which mid war army he should collect next.

Well, I was pleased when the result was Finnish infantry as that meant I could make the Russian tank list for myself.

Also, if you follow our blog regularly you'll know Ben and Adam are currently engaged in a tale of two winter gamers.  I would have loved to be included in this project, but unfortunately my pocket money just doesn't stretch that far.

Hence, my own little parody...

I stopped being interested in 40k, when finecast came out, quite frankly I think it sucks and is quite expensive, plus our interest in all things flames of war took off.  However I have a few odds and ends knocking around and thought it was time I put them to good use.  Also I kinda miss painting the larger scale brightly colour models that are 40k.

Here's what I did...

I painted one of these...

The Fighting Irish - Shermans

Hello All

I have had a busy weekend painting and have finished off the Shermans for my Irish Guards I previewed in my last post. I have had the models for a fair few months and bar a Typhoon they were the last models I needed to paint for my Irish Guards army.

Sorry if the pictures are great I had a few problems with my camera set up tonight...

I was trying to do this army to be a accurate as possible (thanks to the FOW article on the Irish Guards this was quite easy). As a whole this wasn't hard to do, that was until I did the Squadron makings on the side of the tanks. From what I have read the Guards had the middle blacked out but the only decals I could find had clear centres. So not wanting to fail at the first hurdle I decided to paint the area behind were the decal was to be applied. This worked quite well and I only had to touch up a couple of the black areas. I then decided to double the pain and add a really small number decal over the top of the squadron decal. But I think the end result was worth it.

A quick word on the decals, they are all from Dom's Decals. He has a great range of WW2 unit marking and you get lots for your money. The only problem with them (and it's not really a problem) is that all the decals come as one big decal so you need to cut them quite close to reduce silvering.

The army as a whole. In the end I don't think the individual Shermans are the best models I have every painted but I think the army as a whole looks good.

I have just a few last touches to put onto my Cromwells as I hope to have them up in a few days, so keep an eye out for them.

As always thanks for looking Ben.

Late War Hungarians - Part 10 Panthers

Hi All

So this month I start my idea of monthly hobby plans to help keep me focused, great idea I thought! Anyway tonight was my first night were I had a chance to paint (I have been building a lot of stuff this month, but very little time to paint), so what do I paint from my list you ask? My Irish Guards Shermans... no. My Ker and King buildings... no. Must have been the DIY terrain then... no. No I ignored the list and went back to my Hungarian Panthers, best laid plans and that.

I will say there was some logic to painting up the Panthers, was trying a new black lining technique I sort had worked out from talking to Steve from WWPD and from looking at his painted up models. I still think my painting style to based on painting 28mm models and so is taking too long for little reward (the effort vs reward scale as I like to call it). I was sure I could paint the models much fast without a big drop off is quality. So I had a mess around and here are the results

I'm happy with how they have turned out, and very impressed with how fast I painted them, bar airbrushing then I painted all 3 in around 3 hours, which I would like to think is fast in almost any ones books.

The models are the Plastic Soldier Company Panthers I reviewed back in March (yes it did take me that long to get round to painting them!).

From my understanding a research the big Hungarian symbol on the side isn't historically accurate, but I saw Chris over on Wargamer on Tour but the markings on his Panthers and I thought it added a lot to the overall look of the model.

Next up for my Hungarians is 2 Nimrods and some 149mm Howitzers (which are very rude for the points!).

This last picture shows the difference between the new scheme and the old one.... I personally think the Panther looks alot better than the Tiger. I think I'll have to redo bits of the Tigers to get them to fit in better.

 Thanks for reading and until next time

Ben

The Fighting Irish - Shermans WIP

Hello All

An update on my Plastic Soldier Company Shermans. I have finished Painting the tanks (bar the 4 I'm still waiting on from my Local Stockiest), I now just have to get hold of some Battlefront British Crew and paint them up.

Note- I'm not 100% happy with the way the pictures come out, they make the models look alot more "green" than they really are. I'll try and either get some better ones done up over the next few days or try to do better when I have finished the crew.



The to HQ Shermans



The First Combat Platoon

The Second Combat Platoon

 I had a few unexpected challenges with the Shermans. The main one was the small problem that the company marking decals I bought were the wrong ones! (a little looking around and I failed to find any that were "right"). The company symbols of the guard regiments were coloured in black, so I ended up painting behind the decals and the tried to line up the decals so they had the middle coloured in black.

I was also happy how the weathering turned out. It adds alot to the model without over powering it.

A close up of the decals after the black as added

Next up is some Universal Carriers

Thanks for looking, I hope to have another update soon!

Ben

Review - Plastic Soldier Company Sherman M4A4/Firefly

Hello All

I finally got a couple of boxes of the new Sherman/Firefly sets from Plastic Soldier Company. I have been waiting a while for my local gaming shop to get in the 3 sets I ordered from them, so as I'm in a rush to get the army started I ordered 2 extra set directly from PSC and they turned up two days later.

This is the third set of PSC models I have bought and the second I have reviewed (see my Panther review here). so by now I sort of know what I'm getting and this set doesn't disappoint. You have 2 options from the box, a normal Sherman and a Firefly, the core model is the same, only the top half of the hull and the turret are different. The detail is really nice and crisp as are all of the PSC kits.

Again the instructions are not that clear in places, I had a little trouble with the turret. As with the Panther a dry run did help me work it out but only after a few tries. I do think this problem could be solved by adding numbers to the sprue and instructions as a lot of other companies do.

Another small down side was I had hoped like the T-34 you would be able to make 2 turrets out of each sprue so I could have some of the Fireflies as Sherman's for none Market Garden Sherman companies. But they use the small bottom and hatches so this was no possible.

Another problem was the .50 cal, the gun is very thin and all 5 from my first set broke when I tried to get them take them off the sprue. I tried a few different methods but nothing worked, so I'm not going to use them as if they break that easily when they come off the sprue then I would imagine they will break in game.

On the up side the Sherman's tracks are a big improvement on the T-34 tracks in regards to ease of building them.

I don't have any Battlefront Sherman's but here's a few pictures of built PSC Sherman's and one comparing them with a PSC Panther.

So overall this is a great kit but a few small problems stop it from being as great a kit as the Panther.

8/10

Now to get them all built so I can start playing with my Irish Guards!

Thanks for reading Ben

Review - Plastic Soldier Company Panthers

Hello All

I picked up a box of the new PSC Panthers from Triple Helix on Friday for my Hungarians. I did not intend to buy them but when I saw how big the box was and the price I could hardly say no! So I'm now planning a Panther company based on Evrin Tarczay's Tank company that fought on the Romanian border form September 1944 (see grey Wolf for more details).



But anyway onto the Review, as I have already said the box is really big and that's a result of the sprues being really big. This is the second PSC box I have bought (I got a box of T34's for an old Finnish Army) and I must say the Panthers of a much higher quaintly.

The set comes with the options for the Panther Ausf D, A or G, to this end you have 2 different upper hulls, 2 different turret fronts and quite a few other smaller options to make a difference for make to make.

The biggest improvement for me over the T34's is the additions to the tracks. On the T34's it was hard to get the tracks to stay in place or the right place in fact. On the Panthers they have added a few teeth to help keep the tracks on the wheels, trust me when I say this has made a big difference.

Some people on the Internet have said that they found the instructions hard to follow, I will say that they are not the clearest to follow, but with a quick dry run I had no trouble at all with the models.

The PSC Panther holds up very well next to the Battlefront panther. While I would not have the 2 different models in the same platoon, I don't think they'll stand out to much if they were in the same company once painted.

The one think I don't like with the PSC tank sets is that they only come with one crew man. This is fine if you are only having a platoon in your army but if you are building a tank company it will look at bit odd. Fortunately the Battlefront crew fit in with only the smallest amount of extra work.

All in all this is a great set, for only £16.16 (well that's what I spent) you get 5 highly detailed tanks that I think even the most die hard anti plastic wargamers would struggle to criticise. If you haven't bought any PSC models yet I highly recommend you give them a go.

Overall 9/10.