Warlord Games Bolt Action Panther Ausf A

I had a nice surprise turn up at the office some time ago in the form of a Warlord Games Bolt Action Panther Ausf A plastic tank kit courtesy of Wargames Illustrated. Of course the rest of my day was spent day dreaming about building the kit and nothing else.

This kit comes in an A4 size box. It’s produced in cooperation with Italeri. And that’s why you see the Italeri logo on the front and back of the box. I’m not familiar with their tank kits but I have built a number of their WW2 planes and modern jet  kits and they were really fun to build. So you can imagine my excitement building this Panther!

These are what you get inside the box.

An instruction sheet. Sweet and simple. 

A decal sheet.

And a bag containing two sets of sprues. The two sprues are light grey in colour with crisp mouldings and recessed panel lines. There are 25 parts in total on the two sprues. Some minor flashes but that’s normal and are not hard to remove. Overall the quality of the sprues is very good. 

Also in the box is the customary sheet promoting Warlord's other range.

The kit is in 1/56 scale. I might be wrong but I believe this is a special scale made specifically  for Bolt Action to be in scale with their 28mm size infantry figures. 

This kit was quite easy to build. Part fits were great. I was really impressed with the crisp details and overall look of the tank. You will have have a very nice looking Panther tank when completed.

One part which I was really pleased with was how they made the wheels into a single part. Moulding them together makes perfect sense as this tank will be moved around quite a lot on the gaming tables. As such durability is a super plus point. This kit will stand the rigours of fierce tabletops battles and I am really stoked to test it in my German list.

While taking pictures of the finished tank I somehow snapped the radio antenna supplied with the kit. It must have somehow got sucked into the twilight zone because I just couldn't find it even after turning my hobby room upside down twice and another time for good measure. So what you see in my pictures are not the antenna piece provided in the kit but a broom strand replacement.

I had a lot of fun building and painting this kit. It’s easy to build, fittings are very good and the details are excellent. I highly recommend it. Bolt Action players should all get one…two I mean. For their Armoured Fury tank war list :).

My thanks to Wargames Illustrated and Warlord Games for the review copy.

Dust Tactics Allied Walker Hotdog

Painted this as commission work for a friend in the UK.

The only change I made to the model was the napalm launcher weapon tip.

Gives the model a nice highlight I think. Overall a nice model to paint up.

Horton brings it home for the Wildhost :)

Please go to this link for the full e-magazine.
http://dust-devils.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/DustChroniclesV3I1Dec2013Web.pdf

Many thanks to the Dust Devils International for organizing this competition and selecting my plane as the winner.
Looking forward to getting the patch and wearing it proudly on my Legio club shirt :)

Super year end surprise present :)

Der Galland-Zirkus (Horton HO-347 Der Blitz)

With the discovery of VK in 1942, German scientists found that they were able to push the boundary of aviation technology beyond their wildest imagination. With knowledge and experiments learnt from the their first jet engined fighter-bomber, the Me-262, they were now developing VTOL(vertical take-off & landing) capabilities.

This led to the development of the Horton HO-347 Der Blitz. German famed fighter ace, General Adolf Galland was tasked with recruiting the best pilots and training them for this new aircraft. After months of training, the squadron was now ready to take to the air and defeat the enemies on all fronts.

I initially wanted to paint this aircraft because I was bored with my Skaven project (painting 70 clanrats will do that to you). But then the Dust Tactics & Warfare facebook group organized a painting contest. Their timing was perfect :)  http://www.worldofdust.net/tabid/89/g/posts/t/162/Painting-Contest.aspx

Insipration for this model was the Jagdverband 44 fighter unit led by General Adolf Galland. Nicknamed Der Galland-Zirkus (The Galland Circus), their paint scheme was very eye catching to say the least.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JV_44 
 The red and white striped bottom fuselage is definitely attractive. I reckon this was their way of saying "We're the best! Come get us!" The down side to this is it involved a LOT of masking. 4 colors were masked to be exact. I'll share WIP pictures in the next post.

I was also lucky enough to have bought a 1/72 kit of this squadron a long long time ago. Decals used were from this box set.

I'm very happy with how the model turned out. Now I'll do some weathering. But for the contest I decided to leave the plane clean.

 Also painted the pilot but nothing special.

Many many thanks to Carl Lum for taking all these beautiful pictures. You da man bro!!!

Here's hoping that this will plane will bring home the honors for the Wildhost. Thanks for visiting. All comments are very much appreciated :)
Final two pics showing before and after pics, as a comparison.

Dust Axis aircraft Der Blitz

Nothing stokes the painting fires more than a competition. Especially a friendly competition with just bragging rights as the main prize. And in this case, gives me a great excuse to rekindle my first joy of hobbying...building and painting model aircraft.

Dust+painting competition+aircraft = I'm definitely in!!!

For more information about this event please click on the link below. It's being run by Patrick and the guys of Dust Tactics and Warfare Group.
http://www.worldofdust.net/tabid/89/g/posts/t/162/Painting-Contest.aspx
https://www.facebook.com/groups/217969884881551/
http://www.dust-chronicles.com/
http://dust-devils.com/
All those who are interested in Dust Tactics and/or Warfare should join the fun :)

 This will be my entry for this competition, the Axis aircraft Der Blitz. Paint scheme will be revealed later, this is a competition after all :)

This is a really nice kit. It comes almost fully assembled. You just need to snap fit a few parts like weapon options and such. It's also painted in a dark grey primer textured paint so that's good.

The kit comes supplied with 3 variant cards and all 3 are impressive paint schemes but if I'm going to win this then it's got to be something extra special methinks.

Also I want the aircraft to be in full flight mode and think that the retractable rear skids doesn't look to aerodynamic fully extended.

 So some chop chop work was needed. Let's hope it looks nice when done.

Next order of business was to re-prime the model. The original dark grey is too dark for my liking and would make the final color scheme I have in mind darker. I used Vallejo grey primer for this.

I had to airbrush several layers on the top wing to get rid of the Luftwaffe cross.

Tune in next time for more progress.