After finishing a large project, such as painting a tournament army I often experience a painting hangover of sorts. After Flames of War Euro GT 2012 I put down the brush for four months. A few days after New Year 2013 I regained the spark for painting after my friend signed us up for a local tournament that was only a week away. The tournament was winter themed, so I decided to put together an army of old and not so well painted miniatures, repaint them in a winter camo and take them to the tournament. As I very much like the look of gritty and worn winter camo, it felt like the perfect way to get into painting again! Also, it’s nice to give a new life to old miniatures.

As there was a very limited timeframe to complete the project, I decided to keep my force small. With the Germans that means the Big Cats. I chose Korsun pocket era Kampfgruppe Bäke as the army list, as there are nice options for big kitties and decent support choices as well.

The army took four days to paint. The process was quite a bit faster, since the miniatures were all already built and painted. However,  most miniatures had various weathering products on them and that made repainting a bit tricky. All in all, it was a very fun little project and I’ll definately do something like this again in the future.

The Tigers are the heart and soul of this army! Such a beautiful tank!

Dr Bäke himself leads a contingent of Panthers from the turret of tank 424.

A small battery of two Wespes was also attached to the army. I really like the look of this little platoon!

The motorcycle reconnaisance units are great fun to build and paint. The large base offers nice opportunities to modeling and sculpting. They also perform very well on the battlefield.

All the whitewash was first airbrushed on. I began with light greys and then building up towards white. The paint can be left quite uneven, as the whitewash tends to run on the real vehicles, too. I made the runny effects with artist’s oils.

The snow is modeling snow from a company called Scale Supply.

Paint on!

 

-Anton von Wirtzenau