Sd.Kfz.250 - a little displacement activity.

 

Amongst the modelling projects that I half finished in 2025 was these two little half tracks. I knew I should really be cracking on with painting the final infantry companies for my German and British battalions but somehow painting almost a hundred infantry didn't seem as much fun as a couple of vehicles and having another go at airbrushing the colour modulation and green camouflage.

I had a pack of Plastic Soldier 15mm Sd.Kfz.250 'ALTE' in the stash that I'd purchased some time ago in a sale. A question that only occurred to me as I got them out was: had I bought the right version or should have I chosen the the 'NEU' version for Normandy? According to Wikipedia, production of the original version was stopped in October 1943. I have not found many contemporary photographs but both variants seem to have been present. My guess is that units that were in the West earlier, like 21st Panzer Division, would have likely had the old version whilst those where the personnel we moved from the Eastern Front and re-equipped would more likely have had the NEU version. In any case, I have aimed for a fairly generic look for my Germans so decided not to worry about it.

Apart from one Peter Pig seated infantryman, all the other figures are from the box though I did a leg swap on the figure with binoculars in the Sd.Kfz.250/10 command vehicle so he could be standing on the bench seat with one leg up on the seat back for balance. I tried to get a bit of variety with the stowage, adding some camouflage netting and canvas rolls from a Skytrex stowage pack. The transfers are from Skytrex and don't represent any particular unit.

Compared to my recent Sd.Kfz.10 models, I tried for a slightly lighter touch with the weathering which I think looks better.

Before making these models, I hadn't realised just how small the vehicles were - not much bigger than a Universal Carrier.

I'm not sure what to do with the other three models in the box. I'd intended to make a couple up as Sd.Kfz.250/9 with the 2cm auto-canon turret but the modelling of this isn't great - obviously casting the wire mesh turret top is a bit of a challenge in 15mm. I might use one to make an alternative battalion command base for when my Germans are representing an element of Panzer of SS division but first I really must get those last two infantry companies done!

Hedges

2025 was a funny year. For various reasons I didn't have much time for modelling and wargaming, and the projects I did undertake are only part complete. I did however have a couple of games of 'O' Group and that hi-lighted that I had nothing like enough normal (not bocage) hedges.

I've therefore spent a bit of time over Christmas and New Year making 18' of hedges, including half a dozen sections with a gate. As with my bocage hedges, I included a few sections with trees growing out of them.

For the sections without gates I prioritised speed of manufacture and used strips of horsehair glued to 20mm wide strips of the rubber backing of carpet tiles without any attempt to texture, paint or add static grass to the rubber strips. I made the strips with a variety of lengths: 4, 6 or 8 inches.

On John Boadle's recommendation I used UHU glue to attach the horsehair to the bases and 'trees' as this provides the required initial stickiness and won't go brittle. This whole batch has used almost two 60ml tubes of glue but I bought a pack of a dozen quite cheaply online so I won't be running out any time soon.

Once the glue was dry, I cut, tore and pulled the horsehair to the required shape, aiming for an irregular look with some looser pieces - sometime I overdid the pulling and had to re-glue it or add bits back on. I was aiming for a more irregular and slightly more open look than I'd got with the bocage sections.

Once I was satisfied with the general shape of the hedges, I sprayed the whole thing black with the cheapest black undercoat I could find then sprayed a grey highlight over this and/or dry brushed it with brown emulsion. I'm not really sure this makes much difference as once the foliage is attached the horsehair drops back into shadow and the colour isn't noticeable.

The trees are made using sections of heather collected on hill walks - you often come across areas with lots of it at the side of paths, roads or ditches after maintenance work. I tried to attach the horsehair to give an impression of foliage around branches growing out fairly horizontally from the main branches and trying to avoid making a horsehair lollipop. I cut some small squares of 3mm MDF, drilled holes in the middle and glued the base of the trees to these before attaching them to the hedge bases.

In the first batch of hedges, I included 4 straight bases with trees in them. Predictably they are very prone to toppling over so, for the second batch, I put the trees in T-section pieces so they will be more stable.

As with those I made for my bocage hedges, the gates are based on old photos showing an style with a high end on the hinge side and more vertical bars than is usual on UK farm gates. Because they are made from thin plastic and rather fragile I needed a more rigid base and used 3mm MDF. Obviously the gateway section at least would be visible so I textured and finished these with my usual basing style and materials. This meant I could't just spray the whole thing black so I cut, shaped and sprayed the horsehair separately then glued it on. This gave a problem with glossy bits of glue being visible but this generally disappears under the foliage and is matted down by the later stages.

I wanted to make the foliage colours more varied than my bocage hedges so added a batch of cork granules in Leaf Green to those with Hookers Green and Chromium Green I had used previously. There is a natural variation from each colour, depending on how much paint gets on each cork granule and I also used mixes of the three colours on a single bush or tree. This is still far short of the almost infinite variation one sees in nature but it looks reasonable on the table with more variety than appears in the photos. I'm planning on making more trees and some river sections with trees and bush lined banks - for these I think I'll add some more colour variation.

To apply the foliage, I painted tacky glue over the surface of the horsehair. There is a balance between putting on enough to glue stick the granules but not so much that you just have a green shell of cork completely hiding the horsehair 'twigs' beneath. Once the glue was dry, I tried to shake off any loose granules. With using three colours I had to do some work to go back and fill in any excessive gaps and also to cut off or re-glue any stray fibres that stuck out noticeably but had somehow failed to pick up any leaves.

With only the tacky glue there is a constant stream of granules falling off. To counteract this, I first sprayed everything with a 2 parts water to 1 part Mod Podge matt medium as a cheaper alternative to 'Scenic Cement'. This has the beneficial effect of matting down any glossy areas of UHU. Initially this has a worryingly milky-white colour but dries to a clear matt finish. When that was completely dry I sprayed on lots of hair spray - the cheapest and firmest hold possible (again on John Boadle's recommendation), in this case Superdrug's own-brand 'Ultra Firm Hold Hair Spray' at £2.00 per can. I first masked off the gates and surrounding ground texture. The overall effect is pretty solid without too much visible build up though there is a slight sheen from the hairspray - I suppose the market for hair products with a dead flat matt finish is limited. This is only really noticeable on the tree trunks and branches, and some bits on the gates where my masking was inadequate so I gave these bits a quick mist over with matt varnish.

We've got another game scheduled for next week so we'll see whether this is enough hedging.

Sd.Kfz.10 tows for German Anti-tank Guns

Having bought the Plastic Soldier box of 15mm German Pak 40 with Raupenschlepper tractor, I belatedly discovered that the appealingly eccentric looking tracked tow vehicles were predominantly used on the Eastern Front. Although a few seem to have appeared in Normandy. I thought it would be better to have the more common Sd.Kfz.10 half tracks as my tow vehicles. 

At that time, the only option was from Skytrex so I bought two of these. The body, wheels and tracks are cast in one piece so there are inevitable compromises with undercuts. Perhaps the moulds are getting a bit tired because my copies suffered a bit from rough excess metal between the track wheels and some mismatch along the mould join. Overall though I think it gives a reasonable representation of the vehicle.

One of the issues with Wargames open-topped vehicles is whether to make them empty, with only the driver, fully-occupied or double up and do a set of both. Another option, where applicable, would be to have the canvas roof up but that seems odd in action and suggests the weather is one thing whilst everything else on the table suggests something else. 

For A/T tows, I tend to think they are mostly there as 'set-dressing' for deployed guns so empty or with just the driver is OK - maybe best with a driver so they don't look like ghost vehicles on the rare occasions they do need to move the guns. For variety, one of the drivers is from the kit, whilst the other is from Peter Pig. I also added a roll of canvas to one vehicle to break things up a bit - I wish now that I'd added more stowage and removed the moulded on roll of barbed wire from the back, having read that these were not fitted to later vehicles.

These are the first German vehicles I have painted using Mig Jimenez Ammo paint. I'm impressed so far - I like that they come ready-thinned to use with brush or airbrush and also that my local model shop in Coventry, The Paint Rack, stocks them. I'm also really impressed that common colours, like Dunkelgelb, come with a full range of colour-modulating shades, saving me the trouble of mixing up all the varieties and finding empty dropper bottles to store them in.

These are also the first models where I have tried to free-hand airbrush a soft-edged camouflage. Although I have a fine 0.2mm nozzle and needle on my airbrush, it all looks a bit fuzzy and oversized but the general effect is OK. I'm not sure whether the answer is more practice or to go for hard-edged masks in future.

A third first is that I applied some dust and mud effects to the lower parts of the model. Again I used Mig Jimenez Ammo, trying to follow the how-to guides from Heresy Brush. I don't think this is entirely successful. It is easy when camouflaging and weathering these small models to lose definition and make everything blend in too much. Again more practice is probably the answer but I might dial it back a bit in future.

German battalion HQ

 

For a variety of reasons, I've not managed to make much progress on my Wargames projects for some time. However, back on the horse now and here is the first thing to actually complete - an HQ base for my German infantry battalion in Normandy. 

This uses the field kitchen that I made last summer, along with some Peter Pig figures arranged around a table and Torn.Fu.d2 radio, both scratch-built.

I've always been impressed by the way some Wargames modellers try to tell a story through these vignette-type bases and have tried to do this a little of that with this base. I'm not sure whether the three officers are arguing over why their map has a river whilst the table they are fighting over clearly doesn't or the poor quality of their ersatz coffee but I'm certain the radio operator wishes they'd do it with their indoor voices so he could hear what the forward company commander is trying to say.

'O' Group has a concept of HQ orders that can be saved to improve your chance of gaining the initiative at the start of the next turn or spent as additional actions within the current turn. This requires the use of a die on or beside each side's battalion HQ to keep track of them. I don't really like having a rather artificial looking square die holder on bases, and didn't include one for the British, but I must admit to having sometimes forgotten that it was a special die, picked it up and rolled it then not being 100% sure how many HQ orders I had in hand! 

After some thought, I've made a couple of extra die-holder bases that I will* magnetically attach to my HQ bases. It looks a bit awkward and I'm not 100% convinced but I'll give this a try. 

* When I can remember where I've put some offcuts of steel paper to create the link - the underneath of the bases are already magnetised.

4 KSLI Carrier Platoon Part 2

Of course I also needed a dismounted version of the carrier platoon. In 'O' Group this is represented as three infantry sections, the same as a normal rifle platoon (but with a firepower bonus in some circumstances) and an attached PIAT section as well as the usual platoon A/T capability.

I wanted to show a clear visual difference between this and the platoons in the rifle companies. I normally avoid using kneeling and prone figures - there just seems to be something odd about having a unit advancing across the table with figures that are lying down. There is no great logic to this since it also means that when the same unit is seeking cover or pinned down, they are all walking upright but it did mean I had a number of such figures spare so I used these plus a pack of kneeling bren gun sections.

The design of the prone figures and choices on the mould split gave them very poorly defined faces and large areas of excess metal. In the case of the 2" mortar armed figures, the face was little more than a flat blob with almost no undercut from the helmet edge and the PIAT operator wasn't much better. I was very reluctant to use these at all and then wondered about trying to do some sort of head swap so they would have some facial features but thought that would be difficult. In the end I decided to try them as they were and suggest facial features just with paint. Whilst not perfect, actually on the bases and from the viewing angles possible in a game - ie. from above - they look acceptable. 

Prompted by a conversation with John Boadle, of the Hand Built History blog, about basing for Northern Europe whilst I was admiring the bases on his latest Franco-Prussian War figures, I decided I wanted to have less of the bare ground visible and use a greater variety of tufts. This would also make it easier to place some tufts to make the 'faceless men' less obvious. 

Having been unable to find anything suitable in local model shops, I ordered some Gamers Grass tufts online from The Model Workshop. The flower tufts are rather big for 15mm so I cut them down and used them rather sparingly - less is definitely more in this case! I'm not 100% happy with the 'tufts with leaves - the leaves look very big and are only really present on the top of the tufts rather than giving the all-round small bush effect I was hoping for but they do add variety. 

German Field Kitchen in 15mm for HQ Base

From looking at Second World War German forces as depicted in Wargames one would think that they were mostly superbly equipped elite troops. Far more SS Panzer troops than Ostbattalions, more Hanomags than horses. I suppose it is a general trend that Wargamers tend to choose better troops but that seems to go much further with Second World War Germans. Of course in reality most infantry fighting on the German side was, at best, average and relied on horse transport right up to then end.

Whilst my British forces depict specific units of 11 Armoured Division, with named individuals for the Infantry commanders, I always intended my Germans were to be anonymous and general purpose to represent the variety of opposition that 4 KSLI encountered. 

My British HQ base has a Jeep and a camp stove but what to provide for the Germans? A Kubelwagen, let alone a half track, suggests one end of the scale whilst a horse places it at the other. John Boadle suggested a Citroen Traction Avant but the only one I could find in 15mm or 1/100 is a rather crude representation from Peter Pig that would be great to add some interest to a barn or garage but doesn't quite cut it for an HQ base. 

John's other suggestion was the iconic Field Kitchen, 'Die Gulaschkanone'. Again depicting that in model form is a challenge. QRF actually make a 15mm model of the complete kitchen set up, with both wagons, horses and cooks but I wasn't happy with the level of detail and sharpness of the model and didn't think the figures would blend in with those I have from Peter Pig. Scratch building was the only other option but I needed some dimensions and that proved difficult. There is a book which appears to have detailed plans or I could have bought a copy of the Tamiya 1/35 kit and down-scaled from that but those seemed rather expensive and wasteful options for a novelty feature on a command stand. Finally I struck lucky and found a photo of the parts for a 1/35 scale resin model with a ruler for scale so my model dimensions are based on that. 

Although small and fiddly, making the model was quite straightforward. It is basically a cuboid of laminated plastic sheet, 10 x 13.5 x 4.6 mm with things stuck on it. Most parts are simple rectangles so it is just a case of cutting them neatly and getting the sides square, vertical and burr-free. This takes practice but I've had plenty of that scratch building parts for 1/1250 scale waterline ship models. To help with this, I used a simple MDF jig, that I'd originally made for those ship models. It allows me to hold small parts at a fairly accurate 90° or 45° angle whilst sanding them with fine sandpaper fixed to the side of a wooden block. 

When working with such small components it is vital to keep a clean and well-ordered working area if you hope to achieve accurate, clean and sharp details. Not to mention to minimise the risk of losing small pieces on the floor.

Alternatively, let a large ginger cat take up residence whilst you are making a cup of tea, then spend ages looking for lost pieces that have been relocated and re-make those that are irredeemably lost.

The 4 round components for the cover on the main cooking vessel were quite a challenge as they needed to be specific diameters of quite thin plastic. The solution I came to was to cut a rough, slightly oversize circle and superglue it to the head of a round nail. I then held the nail in an electric drill and gently pressed a sanding stick against it whilst it rotated. Every so often, I'd stop and check the diameter with a vernier. It took a bit of trial and error to get the technique but I soon got the hang of it and I was able to do the dome of the top piece and rounding off of 2 of the lower sections by the same method.

I cheated with the wheels and just used some of approximately the right size - I think they were originally from a 17th C artillery limber by Museum Miniatures. They just needed a bit of filling and filing to clean up some dry parts of the casting qnd make them narrower.

 

I did most of the painting by airbrush, starting with Vallejo Brown-Violet then Middlestone with a highlight of Middlestone and White. After that I did a top highlight of Middlestone with more white by brush and painted the wheel rims. 

After varnishing with Mig satin varnish, I applied a filter of Mig Tan for 3 Tone Camo (AMIG-1510) then a pin wash of Mig Brown Wash for German Dark Yellow (A.MIG-1000).

Completed model sitting on a one Pound coin.

Decals for 11th Armoured Division - 15mm

In the course of making my 4 KSLI Carrier Platoon vehicles, I had to order some more decals and ended up ordering from both Plastic Soldier Co. and Skytrex so I thought I'd use this as an opportunity to do a mini-review and comparison. Battlefront Miniatures also make decals for 11th Armoured Div. but, as far as I can see, these are only available bundled with their own models so not a general-purpose solution and I have no experience of them.

Soon after I started with 15mm Second World War models, Skytex launched their 'Command Decision' range of vehicles with complimentary transfers. The latter were of a type that were placed direct on the model and dampened on the reverse to release them. Later they released some more conventional waterslide decals. I ordered some of these and have been using them ever since.

Second World War British vehicle markings is a complex area. Given that I just wanted to give a reasonably plausible appearance to Wargames pieces, I've not made a great study of it, referring to online sources and 'D-Day to Berlin' by Terence Wise. 

Skytrex offer individual sheets for different divisional emblems, arms of service signs, allied stars and the squadron symbols for armoured units, giving the great advantage of flexibility. The detail and print resolution is good and I've had no problems with adhesion or getting them to conform to the model surface, albeit I have always used Microset and Microsol to help with these.

Plastic Soldier, by contrast, offer a pack containing "4 sheets with divisional insignia, arm of service markings, bridge signs and tactical markings.  Enough decals for at least 50 vehicles". 50 seems a bit optimistic to me - for a start there are 77 divisional symbols and with two per vehicle... 

Again the print quality was very good. A few significant differences to Skytrex were apparent. 

• The divisional signs are somewhat larger and, I think, oversize, to the extent that they are larger than the mudguards on their Universal Carriers.
• The arm of service markers don't include the infantry brigade - green background with a white 60, 61, 62, 63 or the engineers.
• The armoured squadron markings  are somewhat smaller than Skytrex - I don't know if one is correct or they just varied in real life.
• Obviously with smaller multi-purpose sheets there are fewer duplicates. For example there are only enough armoured squadron symbols for 5 vehicles from the same squadron and 10 from the same regiment - if you are playing a set of rules at a higher formation level with just a few vehicles per sub-unit that is great but would be a problem as you get closer to 1:1 representations.
• The set includes bridge classification signs - Skytrex don't offer these and, as far as I can see, nobody else does separately to buying a pack of vehicles. They aren't easy to paint freehand with acceptable results so this is a big plus. Unfortunately the weight options don't include all the necessary options, for example: 5 for Lloyd Carriers. Again there are quite small numbers - only enough for five Shermans and M10s, for example.

This last image shows the size difference between Skytex and PSC squadron markings. It also shows Skytrex's Allied Stars - something missing from the PSC pack.

It is disappointing that there are no vehicle numbers or names available at this scale from either source. 

I think there are plusses and minuses for both suppliers and, to depict all vehicle markings you would need to use both makes and/or do some hand painting. 

One last point: Skytrex currently charge £5 to ship decals so make sure you work out all the different sheets you might need and order them in one go - and don't do as I did and keep thinking of additional ones!