Mark Robins recently worked on a small Nachtjager (German Night Hunters) Gruppe for us but he didn’t just stop at that:

Mark: I’m currently building a 1944 SS Division based around the 12th SS during the battles for Carentan, a key crossroads town  in 1944, where they were tasked alongside Fallschirmjäger units to defend against the airborne invasion (check out the Band of Brothers episode 3).

I decided to paint the base colour Cork Brown for the camo gear then added the stippling of German Cam Bright Green, German Cam Med Brown and German Cam Extra Dark Green. The Cork looked a little bright to start off with but when the models were painted with Army Painter Strong Tone and then sprayed with Anti-shine varnish the colours all key’d together. The camo now looked spot on to me, it’s also not until you apply the strong tone that you realise how well sculpted the figures are, the folds in the uniform and especially the facial features really lend themselves to this technique.

I’d shown Warlords RichC my first units and he quickly piled a load of bits on me to paint for the Web team, at which point I came across the SS cavalry. I’d not even thought of having a unit of these within my army but one look sold me on them. They’re beautifully detailed and will be excellent for fast placement on the battlefield, the pack even give the dismounted men as well!

There is a nice touch of two separate helmets that you can either place on the ammo carriers head or leave off and hang it off his gear, I chose the latter as the model’s head has been sculpted so well I wanted to leave the hair and face showing. The horses show a nice walking animation and look good walking in a line down a battlefields road.  These could be equally well at home on the Russian Eastern front.

So I now had a core to work from the army was just somehow growing day by day… by adding my anti-tank and mortar support I now had quite an effective force to take on the American Airborne, my son at this point pipes up and says he’s doing Russians!

Well, if that’s the case and he’s going to show up with the effective and numerous T-34 I thought, better get myself some armour. What can be better than a nice Kampfgruppe of a PzIV as my commander and 3 Panthers! That’ll teach him!

Now of course my force has a nice core, add in some regular Grenadiers to hold those objectives my SS troops have cleared, and a smattering of vehicles gets me mobile (you have to love the old Kubelwagon – just sounds great) no halftracks, yet, good old trucks will do and are a bit more authentic as equipment shortages occur etc.

There you have it, so far… now an 88mm, more cavalry, maybe a King Tiger or Elephant???

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