2nd AHPC VI submission: 15mm US Airborne force for Battlegroup and additional pics

Today my second entry for the 6th incarnation of the Analogie Hobbies Painting Challenge.

Finally the kitchen is completed (well, almost... you know how this works) and I'm back on the brushes. So this week sees me submitting a few American Airborne in winter clothing for use with the Battlegroup set of WW2 rules. I'm planing on using them for the Battle of the Bulge and maybe Hürtgen Forest using the lists from Operation Overlord. Iron Fist are to release a dedicated book (softcover) for Battle of the Bulge sometime soonish but as of now the lists will be taken from Overlord anyway.

The miniatures and tanks are all from Battlefront Miniatures. While some of them are nice or OK sculpts, only suffering from bad casting, others are absolutely awful. The six Sherman M4A4's are from the original 'Open Fire' starter set and some of the worst plastic tanks I had the displeasure to deal with to date. To make them look a little less like ugly toys I added some stowage from Battlefront. The platoon leaders got reinforced armour in form of sandbags to the sides. Unfortunately I didn't have any US markings in 15mm at home so only the mandatory stars (taken from 28mm decal sheets) were added.

First Platoon

Second Platoon

Here's some close ups of individual tanks:

They were painted using the US Armor Camouflage set from Ammo of MIG Jimenez. As I quite liked how they came out I decided to not whitewash them but in hindsight I should have done that little extra step. Originally the tracks were intended to look muddy but as so often with pigments the results were quite different from what I had intended. For some reason the pigments dried out whiteish and I had to go over them with several layers of brown wash. Thus ruining the wet/ muddy look completely.

The crew for the .50 cal AA HMG were probably the worst miniatures ever. Despite having a set of three and taking only the best figures, they were just rubbish. Almost no detail, lots of flash and badly cast. Especially for the price BF are asking for their offerings, it feels like robbery to get such bad castings.

Sniper

60mm light mortar

.30 cal medium machine gun

Bazooka

Overall I really enjoyed painting in a smaller scale than usual and am quite happy with how these came out. I still have to adapt my painting to 15mm but as I'm slowly running out of storage space, and really like how fast one can build a sizable force, I'll probably switch the most part of my painting to this scale.

BAR

Together with miniatures I painted earlier that gives me a well sized starting force of three not fully equipped platoons for Battlegroup. I still have/ want to bolster it out with some more stuff like trucks, halftracks, jeeps and scout vehicles. First though, I'll probably start on the Germans in order to get in a game some time soon.

Airborne Squad

To conclude this rather lengthy post a pic of one of two AT-guns and its support base, I painted up before the challenge:

I hope you enjoyed and thanks for stopping by.