Back to 1944 Again

So last time we looked at the British armour that we've been working on. Today it's the turn of the Panzers.

I've had an old Airfix Tiger kit sat in the gaming shed for pushing on 30 years. I'd lost the tracks years ago but Airfix sent me out a new set so I could complete the kit. and now I've managed to finish building it.

Finally completed after 30yrs of ownership, the tracks aren't quite right as an 11yr old me didn't do a great job of sticking the wheels on straight!

The kit has some faults with parts missing and it's not the most detailed but again the nostalgia kicked in with this and I'm pretty happy with the result so far. I've still got to add decals and I might look at scratch building some of the missing parts such as track guards and exhaust covers but it's fine for gaming with in its current condition.

To support the Tiger I also finished off my other Panzer IV. Again this is an old Airfix kit, at least as old as the Tiger and it was partly built I've just finished it and painted it up.

Here we have both completed Panzer IV's

I love this kit, I don't know why it's no better or worse than any other Airfix kit I've made but it has to be one of my all time favourites. It's probably linked to it being one of my favourite WW2 tanks but also it was one of the first I ever built back in the late 80's. The detail is good and the tanks just look great it's pretty easy to assemble and wouldn't take much work to make it into a fantastic model. As a wargaming piece it's top notch and I don't think I'd ever consider buying a different Panzer IV.

I've also been working on some Panzer Grenadiers to support these panzers and a few of sdkfz's of various types to transport the grenadiers. I was given the Revell version of the old Matchbox Panzer II and I'm looking forward to building that and comparing it to the one I built in the 80's.

Back from the Ashes! and back to 1944

Well it's been quite a while since my last post on here. Life has once again gotten in the way of hobbying  and I haven't achieved an awful lot. What I have managed to achieve is mostly based around my WW2 1/72 scale projects for our Airfix battles wargame.

I've been working on my Wehrmacht armour and my eldest has been working on his British armoured units. First up is a Cromwell from Armour Fast,

The Armourfast Cromwell is on the left with our existing Airfix Cromwell on the right. Obviously there is a difference in scale as the Airfix Cromwell is 1/76 whereas Armourfast is 1/72.

It's not easy to see from these pictures but the Airfix Cromwell has much better detail than the Armourfast one. Considering the Airfix kit is getting on a bit my 8yr old managed to assemble and paint it with no problems.

We still have to paint on unit markings for the Armourfast Cromwell and these will be similar to the Airfix Decals. 

 The Armourfast tanks was very quick and easy to assemble and from a wargaming point of view it's got enough detail to satisfy the kids. Personally I prefer the Airfix kit as the detail is far higher and I really like the 1/76 scale I just think it looks better than 1/72 (probably because that's closer in scale to the model railway we're building in the attic.)

Next up was an Armourfast Sherman Firefly,

We painted the Sherman on the sprueas its easier to get to all of the parts. As you can see there are only a handful of parts to each tank on the Armourfast sprue.

A few minutes later and the Sherman is built, Not the best picture but it's a pretty basic tank. Again like the Cromwell above there's enough detail on here but nothing fantastic.

Next on the list for the British is an Arifix Sherman and it'll be interesting to see how the older 1/76 kit fares compared to this much newer 1/72. It's only fair to point out that you get two tanks in each Armourfast box compared to one in the Airfix boxes but the Airfix models are far more detailed and come with decals. The kids don't seem to mind which ones we use but I get a lot of nostalgia out of the Airfix kits I just wish I could find some of the old Matchbox 1/76 Sdkfz kits!