For years now I had wanted to build a Jagdpanzer IV. Its low silhouette, almost "predatorial" in nature, exerts a strange fascination on yours truly. Perhaps I need to see someone about that, I don't know. Anyway that ' s besides the point....
Having acquired the Tamiya offering ( a decent kit, probably not as good as its Dragon or else counterpart), it was time to think of a small diorama. Lacking any originality, I set my mind on a winter scene ( I still have to see a Jagdpanzer IV in a summer setting...) and naturally ended up picking THE winter setting: The battle of the Bulge... Yeaaaaah, another Ardennes diorama you'll say... And you would be right to say so.
Ok Ardennes it was then. Ok, I 'll need some troopers to go with it... Mmmh let's see,,, JagdpanzerIV, Ardennes, what about some Waffen SS troopers? Sure. Let's buy some Alpine figures, 4 sets of them. And while I'm at it, let's also buy the Miniart "Battle of the bulge" set.
Oh but wait, I m gonna need another vehicle to balance the scene... Ardennes, ss troopers,.... A SCHWIMMWAGEN of course... Let's also buy some photo-etch... here... and some crew from Mantis Miniatures... (I'll just eat a little less this month)
Now wait, I need to carefully research those cammo patterns... Let's buy a book... "Camouflage uniforms of the Waffen SS" by Beaver and Borsarello (Food is so overrated)
Mmmh I'm running low on paint and I cannot find the proper colours in my 100+ Vallejo collection... Oh Scale 75 makes dedicated ss cammo paint sets? 2 of them? Ok I'll take both then (I think I might still have some tuna cans in the basement)
My Scale 75 has arrived! Yeeeah! Let's try them... Mmmh they sure neeed a LOT of shaking... Can't do that by hand, I'll strain my wrist... Let's buy an electronic paint shaker! (At this point I'll starve to death, who cares?)
Ok, these Scale 75 are really rubbish for basecoating (they re wonderful for layering though). Let's see if I have better luck with their flesh paint set.... There goes another 20 bucks
This Panzer would look great in a "disc-cammo" scheme... Special masks by Uschi van der Rosten you say? Ok let's do it
Finally I'll need some building in the background... I could build it myself... or just go for a Miniart "Ardennes Building" (I was putting on weight anyway)
Needless to say, I also bought some Archer transfers (that I barely used, perhaps 2 or 3 collar patches and the eagles on the tankers' caps. By the way, I discovered that applying these transfers to a piece of black electrical tape first, then carefully trimming around the transfer and applying to your figure greatly helps to make them pop out. Otherwise you can't see much)
There are 2 things I learned from this build:
1) Scale 75 are wonderful paints for layering and blending. Not at all for basecoating, although the flesh set fares a bit better in that department
2) If you want to keep your sanity, don't ever attempt building a Miniart house. Unless you a) make extensive use of sheet styrene to reinforce gluing points or b) you rebuild the walls with your material of choice ("extruded polystyrene" (?) in my case)
Here are a few pics.
The house rebuilt in foam (This was the first version, I ruined it by using a solvent based paint to prime it and had to rebuild it...)
An initial layout of the diorama
Another layout
And still another, which was the one I kept in the end (it wouldn t make much sense that a full platoon would guard 3 prisoners...)
I didn t take many in-progress pics unfortunately
And the final result
Happy Modelling!
Treflon
