Warlord and Artizan 28mm Models for Bolt Action in Progress

Well there are always more models to build and paint! We are like everyone and have several additional projects all going at the same time. For our early war Polish Army we have the wz.29 Ursus heavy armored car from Warlord Games!

Designed in 1929, the Samochd Pancerny wzr 29, was more commonly known as Ursus. It was based on the chassis of a 2-ton truck, mounted a 37mm anti-tank gun and multiple machine guns. Although adequately armored for the inter-war period, the Ursus fared poorly when facing more modern opposition in 1939.

Another Bolt Action project is our US Army in Greatcoats for winter campaigns. You can see an earlier post HERE. These are recently primed reinforcements to bolster the Battle of  the Bulge.

Add a light howitzer, this one from Artizan Designs, and these boys will be ready for the onslaught.

This bazooka team was painted to add firepower. Remember to keep the get away jeep close by.

And of course you can always use an extra squad of British Infantry.

Have a Great Battle!
The Old Crow

4Ground Ruined House Model for World at War!!

OK, let's have a look at another wonderful 4Ground model kit, the Ruined House. There are several ruins and damaged house options to choose from, this one is 28S-WAW-108, Ruined House 01! Here you can see what it looks like when completed with the 4ground Pegasus bridge in the background. The British Commandos are launching their attack!

Like most of the foreground smaller kits, it comes in a ziplock bag with everything you need.

Inside you will find a detailed instruction sheets, and 6 tile boards with all the pieces needed.

During the assembly process we use the clothespins to hold the walls together as they are drying. All of the larger kits come with several clothes pins and large rubber bands to wrap around the bases

The interior walls just like the exterior are printed on the outsides and sandwiched together. Here we have them clamped and a rubber band to pull the pieces together while drying

Once the walls are set in place you can start adding the bricks along the top, once again they are two pieces sandwiched front and back

You can see all the bricks added to the tops of the walls.

Now we'll look at the details like the front door and window. The windowsill is already in place here.

As the building is ruined we decided to do the same with the doors and windows here's the pieces that we wound up with, as you can see we made a cut along the door and then snapped all the pieces off to use for debris.

And there you have it one ruined house ready for action.

4ground also provides you with extra brick bits and a few broken boards. We broke off pieces from the leftover sprues, anything that was thin enough to look like boards.

The rear view.

And here we have the Americans moving through the finished 4Ground Ruined House ready to Ambush any German armor that might come up the street.

These really are great kits and if you haven't tried building one yet, we recommend you do it soon!

Have A Great Battle!
The Old Crow

WW2 D-Day Reenactment at Conneaut Ohio!

The largest  D-Day (1944) living history reenactment in the country takes place in Conneaut Ohio. Featuring over 1,500 reenactors from across the US and Canada perform a living tribute to the veterans of WWII through dress, mock battles, and living history displays. We had the opportunity to be there this year!

There were many demonstrations over the weekend and the mock battles were superb, especially the beach landing!

Encampments for Allied and Axis forces were filled with relics the reenactors brought to display.

And loved showing how these weapons were used in the day.

You could meet the real men and women that lived through those times too. Last year the Conneaut D-Day hosted over 150 WWII veterans.

Reenacting the capture of the bridge at La Fiére, the Americans gained control of the key crossing of the Merderet River.

Here German light armor advances on the bridge.

And is incapacitated as it nears.

After the battle, a column of German soldiers head back to camp.

There were several "Big Guns" including the feared German 88

and several armored vehicles including a Panzer III, Stug (seen here), M4 and an M4A1.

Also three variants of the M5 Stuart.

Georgie's Gal, a B-25 Mitchell, twin-engined medium bomber manufactured by North American Aviation took part this year. It made several passes over the beach on bombing runs. 

The B-25 was used by many Allied air forces, in every theater of World War II, although the majority of B-25s in American service were used in the Pacific. The B-25 was named in honor of General Billy Mitchell, a pioneer of U.S. military aviation.

The Polish contingent brought an artillery piece..

jeep to deploy it...

and a nice sampling of arms.

The US camp held many jeeps, trucks, motorcycles and this M3 Half-track.

There were a couple more participating in the actual landing. One hauling a howitzer.

The German encampment contained its share of armored cars,

transport vehicles of every size...

and many motocycles.

Watch the D-Day Cooneaut site for next years event!!

You can see additional images from this year on Cleveland.com 

Have A Great Battle!!

The Old Crow

Wasteland Terrain & Russian T34/85 Medium Tanks from Warlord Games

Lately we completed a new batch of custom Wasteland Terrain and worked with David Dinsmore to begin production on some Warlord Games armor. All of these are now listed on Ebay for any who are interested. Look for Battleground-Hobbies on Ebay.

Each Terrain piece has a hard base made of MDF board and the top is carved polystyrene insulation board. We showed how these are built on a previous blog post.

Now about the T-34 series, with its sloping armor that changed the principles of tank design during the war. The sloping, angular layout of the T-34 increased the effective armor thickness, and also saw a larger proportion of shells deflected away than penetrated its armor.

The introduction of the T-34 into action saw German tank design follow suit with similarly angled armor on the likes of the Panther and King Tiger. As German tank design came to the fore, the Soviet war machine once again raised the bar with the T-34/85.

The T-34/85, the very symbol of Soviet military strength in the Second World War, had a new turret to house the more powerful 85mm ZiS gun. A supremely rugged and reliable tank, the T-34/85 had excellent off-road capability, especially in the marshland or snow of the Eastern Front, and was easy for the crew to operate and maintain.

The T-34/85's great strength lay in its adaptation of the T-34/76 tank design which preceded it. This ensured a far smoother and faster production line than would have been the case with a completely new design.

Another major advantage was the sheer number of tanks the Soviet tank factories could produce - by the summer of 1944 the Soviet war machine could produce more T-34/85s in a month than the Germans had Panther tanks in the whole of the Eastern Front!

With over 21,000 of the 57,000 T-34s built during WWII being T-34/85s, the Russian credo was clearly one of quantity over quality, although it was an unwise Panzer commander who discounted the ability of the T-34/85.

Now that our history lesson is over, you can see the job David did in painting these Russian Tanks! Here is another he completed, a US Sherman, also ready for sale.

We'll have a batch of German Armor very soon. Panther IVs, Stugs and a Hetzer are all on the way. If you have a request for a specific piece of armor you'd like painted, please let us know!

Have A Great Battle,
The Old Crow