1:72 die cast armour arrivals Stug III

Stug III auf G drivers side.

Commanders side

View from the rear showing the deliberately bent shield on the top mounted MG.  The painters have also missed the rack of spare tracks at the rear between engine deck and fighting compartment.

Rear view showing the crooked spare road wheel and the unit insignia which looks a bit like an elongated x on a shield.

Games Workshops store finder doesn't get updated?

Its frustrating when you try to offer a service and expect some help from a reasonably well run company which you are buying increasing amounts of product from and they just cant seem to get it right. The Games Workshop Oz store finder doesn't show the two stores in Warrnambool, Victoria, Australia. Only the one which has been stocking less and less as the store that isn't listed goes nuts with their product. AAAAGH! Jeez guys give me the access and i'll fix it myself.

Renedra Barrels

Released under Renedra's Generics label, I picked these up from Warlord Games with a few other bits that arrived today. There are five wooden barrels and five casks on two sprues in a chocolate brown plastic (grey is available) in this retail packet. Each barrel has two halves and goes together smoothly although the two rings around the center of the cask don't quite line up.

The smaller casks which are 1 cm in diameter just before putting them together.

The smaller of the two is a gunpowder keg sort of size while the larger is more of a small wine size. Both have squarish sides rather than the very bowed wine barrel sides.  These are great little scenery enhancers both for fantasy and historicals and a pile might even be useful as an objective. Perfect for all the pirate games that people seem to be playing .

Halo Reach Actionclix figures

B1 received the latest release Actionclix that he's been sweating on. The figures are the Spartan Noble Six team  from the Microsoft Halo Reach game. I only really looked at them very briefly as they are over scale for 28mm sci fi and pretty soft in the detail department. One thing i did notice was that the sniper rifle on the figure in the blister was truncated while the picture showed a much longer version. B1 was trying to get the game to work but couldn't work out why the clix weren't making sense. Then he realised the clix insert had been put into the wrong figures at the factory. Doh! 5 minutes later he was in business.

The Real Thing - 80 Pounder Gun emplacement

I thought this might be interesting for those late 19th century wargamers. These guns were put into Warrnambool,  Port Fairy and Portland in 1889 to defend against a possible Russian invasion. The Portland gun and emplacement were restored in 1984 and give a good idea of what an emplacement of the day would look like.

From the rear

The site would have dominated the bay below it although modern day industry seems to have gotten in the way.

Door to the left of the gun.

Date stamp on the gun.

The magazine and lamp passage doors to the right of the gun.

B1 and B2 man the gun.

The Real Thing - Grant Tank in Australia

M3A3?5? Grant tank on the side of the road at the entrance to the now defunct Melbourne Tank Museum on the outskirts of Melbourne, Victoria.

 

Side doors indicate an early model as it was deleted as a weak point in later tanks. The 75mm barrel seems way too long but may be the M3 75mm gun as indicated on page 21 of the surviving Grant tanks PDF.

 

Two tone Australian camouflage.

Hull front

 

 The Museum closed in 2005/6 and the two Grants in the collection were sold to a private collector which means I took these photos a long time ago.

The Australian War Memorial states Australia received 754 of these from the United States during 1942 and according to the research done by Paul D. Handel on Anzac Steel they served until 1955 in some reserve units. Because they were part of British/ Commonwealth orders they were fitted with the lower height British spec. turret.

I've spoken to an older local here in Warrnambool who can remember the local Army reserve unit (CMF?) having at least one which they used to drive from the old barracks which was at the site of the current South West TAFE campus up onto the sand dunes to fire at the reef out to sea on the weekends.

Pegasus German Army Infantry 1939 Review

Pegasus Set 7499 straight from the box

I've been aware of these for a long time but haven't ever seen them in the flesh until I managed to get some into my local FLGS. Images of these are really hard to find as well at least partly because of the woeful Pegasus site. Plastic Soldier Review has come through again with their review and photographs of the assembled figures which is here.

42 figures in 20 multi part poses depicting early war German soldiers.

MG34 on the left and the German anti tank rifle on the right which probably represents PzB 39 due to the cartridge cases mounted to the rear on either side of the breech.

Crawling figure, probably the worst figure in the set which says something of the quality of design.

The design of the set is brilliant with quite a few kneeling / crouching poses. All weapons have slings attached which is difficult to achieve for one figure let alone a whole set. The only figure i thought was a bit wrong was the crawling figure above whose helmet sits up high on his head. I'll trim the second ones head down so it goes a bit lower. 

• not enough bases, which is part of the design but just plain odd
• hardish plastic which seems to be taking normal plastic glue well
• as always the MP40 is over represented but there are some nice poses here
• only 1 wounded figure and no officers or mortars which has allowed more variants of the basic troops
• these figures are very similar size wise to the Prieser 1/72 figures to the point where I have used an arm from the Preiser set 72501 to modify one of the Pegasus figures
• rifle grenade and ATR are included

All in all a great set from Pegasus who also have a set of German paratroops and French WWII figures which seem to be stalled in development.