Return of the big cats!

Last year I was desperately running out of time for painting and modelling. This meant that when our annual Grand tournament trip was fast aproaching, I had to settle for something I knew I could pull off in the timeframe I had.

So, much like 2013GT, 2014 was also all about the Jagdpanther. I wanted to make a winter-themed army in the spirit of early 1945 and the mindmap behind the project was to use the later war olivgrün base for my models and apply a whitewash using a very fast and easy airbrushing method I had previously invented by accident. I also wanted to fit as many ausf. G Jagdpanthers I could, so if last years 5 was not enough, this year I would roll with 8. Bäng bäng.

My list was made with the trained tank kampfgruppe from desperate measures. Unlike last year, I now had the option for a recce platoon – yay! This ment I just had to have a platoon of Luchs light tanks. I really like the look and feel of wirbelwinds so again I went with two of them too.

It just wouldnt feel right to go after things without atleast some infantry. I had recently bought some very nice upgrade kits for battlefronts kfz 251’s, so I put them to good use. You can find the tarpaulins and rahmenantenne from a company called heer46.

Painting infantry to high standards takes alot of time, so I kept my platoon small. I also used my ruined walls again, which I sculpted, molded and cast out of resin for my last years urban GT army. I tried to give the bases a bit more of a semi-rural feel by sculpting the ground to represent bare muddy roads. I also sculpted some floorboards so the platoon would look like if they were entering a ruined building.

So, there you have it. I leave you with a couple of shots of the whole kampfgruppe. All and all, it took me roughly 3 weeks from start to finish, but the majority of the painting was done in the last week, completed just a few hours before leaving to UK for the GT. Managed to nab the 3rd best painted again, which was nice. I hope you like what I did and maybe get some creative kick out of them – inspiring others is the main reason I post stuff online – as inspiration is what I look for online myself.

-Juha