Staff 600 point Project: Casey's SS

Command Sd Kfz 251/1 D

Casey’s Waffen-SS

Battlefront Staff 600 point Project...

Casey is our other Graphic designer, and has been chiefly responsible for packaging design and creation, though he has been taking on more bookwork recently. He is also one of our photographers, and does much of the photography work. Casey has stunned us all with how good his painting has got over the last year. He’s also coated in Teflon™

After spending so much time painting my Soviets, I decided that my next army would be a smaller force.

For the mid war period I was originally going to create a 2. SS-Panzerdivision ’Das Reich’ army armed with T-34 tanks, however that never happened as I got side-tracked doing more Soviets. When this opportunity came up I thought it would be a great time to give my Soviets some opposition and make a late-war SS army.

I based the army on SS-Panzergrenadier Regiment 4 ’Der Führer’. I chose them as I want to do a Gepanzerte Panzergrenadierkompanie and they had the only Armoured Panzergrenadier Battalion in ’Das Reich’.

To start with I had an armoured HQ and a full strength Panzergrenadier platoon. Supporting these are two StuGs from the SS-
Sturmgeschütz Abteilung 2, and two Armoured Cars.

Command SMG team
Command SMG team

The Armoured cars are not very historical for this force, but the models are too cool not to take, and with only 70 points left there is not much else that I can take.

600 point force

Panzergrenadier HQ (45 points)
add half-tracks 15 points

Armoured Panzergrenadier Platoon
with 3 squads (275 points)
upgrade Panzerknacker (5 points)

Armoured Car Patrol
Sd kfz 223 with a Sd kfz 222 (70 points)

Assault Gun Platoon
with 2 Stug IV (190 points)

Total 600 points

After completing this 600 point portion of my army I’ll round out the StuGs to a full platoon of 5 (taken as a Panzer Platoon), adding a platoon of Panzer IV and Panther tanks, as well as getting some 2cm or 3.7cm AA and some artillery, either Wespes or Hummels. For the 1000 point army I’ve had to add another Panzergrenadier Platoon to keep the list legal, though I’m keeping it under-strength at the moment so I can afford support for the army. 

Command Sd Kfz 251/10 D with 3.7cm PaK36 gun
Casey's 600 point force
Company HQ I’ve gone about this army a little bit differently than I normally do. When I started this army I talked to our painter, Jeremy, who kindly offered to show me how to use his airbrush for my camouflage. Since I’m going to be airbrushing my camo on I wanted to get all the vehicles up to the same stage so I could airbrush them all at the same time. What I have done at the moment is get all the panelling painted Dunkelgelb, ready for the camo.
 Begining the painting
For those interested, I used a 50:50 mix of Panther Yellow (FWP365) and Sicily Yellow (FWP362) as the base colour of the tank (see Jeremy’s Dunkelgelb article ) and painted all of the panels in this, including all the recesses.
Begining the painting
Begining the painting

I then went over the recesses with a watered down mix of black paint and brown ink, before carefully going over the panels with my Panther Yellow/Sicily Yellow (FWP362) mix leaving the recesses. I then added a little Dry Dust (FWP364) into the mix and drybrushed that over the top.

Than all I had to do wass paint the camo and give the vehicle a little bit of weathering.  

Begining the painting
Stage 2 required me to bring my army into work and have our resident painter Jeremy introduce me to the delights of using an airbrush, since I really do not like painting camo by hand. For those of you who have never used an airbrush before I reccomend experimenting with it. It takes a bit of practice to get it right, but the results are worth it (I was just lucky that Jeremy had some spare tiger turrets painted up for me to experiment on). I chose to do the camo on the half-tracks and StuGs in fairly common broad stripes as I didn’t want to do a complex camo scheme. Even though I’m not sure how historically accurate it is, I also chose to camo the Armoured Cars. I kept the camo to a minimum though.
Halftracks with comouflage
Halftracks with comouflage
Halftracks with comouflage
Sd Kfz 251/1 D

After painting the camo on I did a very soft drybrushed all of the vehicles with a mix of Sicily Yellow, Panther Yellow and Dry Dust, to represent the camo paint wearing away on the corners of the vehicle and to make the entire vehicle look a little dusty.

With the panel work pretty much complete I started working on the smaller stuff like painting the stowage and guns on the half-tracks and the wheels and tracks on the StuGs. Starting with the StuGs I added weathering to the vehicles, painting Panzer Grey onto worn areas then highlighting with a mix of German Grey and Dark Gunmetal. 

I also experimented with a new way of doing tank tracks. After giving the road wheels a basecoat I made a mixed of rapid-fill and Battlefield Brown (FWP324) (the colour that I’m going to use for my infantry bases). 

I used a number 2 brush and applied the mud to the tracks. I made the mixture quite thick to simulate the tank going through a lot of mud. After applying this to the tracks I then brushed the mixture onto the underside of the tank. Once I’ve applied this to all the vehicles I go back and highlight them. 

Once I finished my 600 points I started to expand my army. Since I need lots of SS for an upcoming photoshoot I’ve managed to be very productive in the last couple of weeks. I added a pair of 88s and four PaK40 guns, as well as another platoon of Panzergrenadiers.

Panzerknacker SMG team
MG team MG team
MG team MG team
MG team MG team
Casey's 8.8cm FlaK36 gun
Casey's 7.5cm PaK40 guns
I have done things a little differently from usual for my 88’s. I’ve modeled both 88’s with 11 crew (using a mix of 88 and PaK43 crew figures) on two large artillery bases each, to more closely represent the size of the crews that the guns had.
Casey's 8.8cm FlaK36 gun
Casey's 7.5cm PaK40 gun I also wanted to give the guns more of a front line feel, so I got some of the late war Panzergrenadier models in a firing pose and put them at the front of the base behind the embankments as if they are conducting defensive fire. 
Most of the gun crews have been given head swaps so that they have camo covers on their helmets to give them a more unified look.

The Pak40’s have received the same treatment using a mix of midwar and latewar anti-tank gun crews with headswaps.
MG team
1500 point ‘Das Reich’ Gepanzerte Panzergrenadierkompanie

HQ ~ 45 points
add half-tracks ~ 30 points
1 upgrade Panzerknacker ~ 5 points
upgrade Panzerfaust ~ 10 points

Combat Platoons

Panzergrenadier platoon 1
full strength ~ 275 points
Upgrade to Panzerknacker 5 points

Panzergrenadier platoon
full strength ~ 275 points
Upgrade to Panzerknacker 5 points

Weapons Platoons

Armoured Heavy Platoon
with 1 Machine-gun platoon ~ 120 points

Armoured Light Infantry Gun Platoon
2 gun sections ~ 85 points
add half-tracks ~ 30 points

Light Anti-tank Gun platoon
3x 7.5cm PaK40 guns ~ 170 points
add half-tracks ~ 30 points

Support Platoons

Assault Gun Platoon
2 StuG III G Assault Guns ~ 190 points

Heavy Anti-aircraft Platoon
2x 8.8cm FlaK36 ~ 205 points
upgrade to ROF 3 ~ 20 points

Total ~ 1500 points

Casey's 1000 point force
StuG III G
SS-Panzergrenadiers
7.5cm PaK40 gun