Refocusing on Germans.

With the table cleared and the Russians packed away for a while now I have decided to focus next upon finishing my German Platoon with the intention of adding Hanomag half tracks for each squad and padding out the infantry. I'm painting another 10 man squad, these are sold as SS, but like others I'm not keen on playing with SS troops so they become a squad of well armed Panzer Grenadiers. These are metal figures, perfect match for the plastics and represent a 10 man late war squad made up as below;

1 NCO with SMG
1 MG 42 plus loader
2 assault rifles
1 soldier with SMG (?)
4 riflemen, 2 of whom have a panzerfaust over the shoulder.

A good mix of equipment.

I'll be going with just 4 squads although I will have options as to what to take, for example once finished I'll be able to select from 5 PG squads, a Hitler Youth squad and a Volksturm squad, depending on the location. The Hanomag kits are easy to put together, and I now have five of them as I found a seller on eBay with lots of them at a good price of £12.50 per kit. One will tow the anti tank gun too.

I laid out all of my Germans in order to be able to get an overview of where I'm at. I'm pleased with progress so far and I hope one day to throw everything on the table in a game of Tank War against my US force. For the time being I'm going to fight smaller 500 point solo actions as the last game was a bit slow going.

Progress. The two unmade kits are another Hanomag half track and the Puma that I intend to use as the command vehicle.

This is why this kit has sat on the shelf for three months! So many small parts.

Col. Von Strohm leads the way!

4 metal Hitler Youth figures, anti tank weapons.These will be expanded from the 'Last Levy' box set.

The new road sections, so far!

The fourth grenadier squad underway.

'Patton' awaits his paint job.

The German force ( reinforced platoon?) awaiting 4th squad.

On the US front I intend to bring all four squads up to full strength (12 men), and finish off the last couple of transport trucks for them. I also now have a half track kit to build  that will tow the US anti tank gun.

Terrain news.
A slight cock up resulted in a delay to most of my new road system arriving, but all sorted with the friendly help of the terrain maker Andy and it should be here early next week. The bits that did arrive a week ago I'm really pleased with. It's a solid and well made product and you can get a glimpse of a few sections below. I'll use this for my town based layout and keep the other more rural road sections for the more rural set up. River sections also due Tuesday. I seem to have had a long wait for both my road and river sections but I'm confident that it's well worth the wait.

German Tank War force.