75th Anniversary of Battle of Monte Cassino and Northern Italy (Army Build)

After painting a lot of infantry, time for a change of pace. My Fallschirmjager need some heavier stopping power so I’m looking to put together some Marder II. These should be a match for most Allied armour (except maybe the Churchill VII!)

As you can see from the pictures below, the models are resin and metal – not my favourite combination as I always seem to have problems getting the resin parts to stick properly with the metal parts. But, I tend to stick green stuff in between the two with superglue and push hard. The green stuff gets into the gaps and increases the surface area and seems to hold much better. It also helps fill in any visible gaps.

Having seen the abuse that John has received for not drilling out gun barrels, I’ve gone ahead and drilled mine out. One had a mini disaster and the muzzle break sheared off but we can just call this battle damage.

I primed using the Vallejo air brush primer and then gave everything a coat of Dunkelgelb. For cammo, I airbrush on lines of medium brown and then reflective green.

I’ve then painted the tools (flat earth for the wood, gunmetal for the metal) and there wasn’t much else to do for base colours. I always leave the tracks until after the next step.

I’ve just gone for some simple German crosses on the transfer front. I’ve applied using decal fix and then, once dry, applied a gloss varnish over the top to protect the decal but also to stop the edge of the decal being visible.

I’ve then given the whole model a brushed on coat of strong tone dip and left to dry.

I’ve also painted up the crew separately (and lost the photos). For these, I just went with Luftwaffe grey and barbarian flesh, then applied the dip. Left to dry and then a matt varnish.