Friday, January 20, 2017

3mm WWII Brits and Germans for Operation Jupiter

All,

The boy and I have been playing and having a great time with Operation Jupiter, specifically, Ben Lacy's amazing scenario book of the same name.  We've already played eight fights (one in 15mm, seven in 10mm), and were having a lot of fun.  But we're crunched for time due to all the other gaming we're doing (a great problem to have), and I like 3mm, so I picked some stuff up from Pico Armor (those guys are fantastic!) so we could play on a small board with very little set-up/cleanup time.  I ordered, had them in my hands two days later; then I cleaned them and put them on sticks, painted, based, and flocked, all in about 3 1/2 hours.  Here's a look at them.

The entire force, based on pennies, with British on the right and Germans on the left.  I used a dark green for the Brit vehicles and olive drab for the men, dunkelgelb for the German vehicles and gray for the men.  I don't ten to do camo on 3mm, I'm just not very good at it.  I've seen guys on the 'net that have done it very well, but I always end up screwing it up, so I stick with basic colors and throw a wash on them.  The Brits are up first.

Some tanks: four Sherman Vs and a Firefly (top center).

More tanks: four Churchills (yeah Shaun, I finally got some Churchills!).

Some tank destroyers: four Achilles (M-10 with 17-pounder).

The command stand (top left), and two anti-tank guns: 6-pdr at left, 17-pdr at right.

Transport: five Universal (AKA, "Bren") carriers.  Yeah, Bren carriers in 3mm; tiny, but immediately recognizable.

Infantry support: two two are 3" mortars, center is a Vickers MG, and the bottom two are PIATs (actually, bazookas, but close enough).

Infantry: Six rifle quads.

Now for ze Chermans.

Assault guns and anti-tank guns: at right are two Stug IIIs (top right you can see I was jacking around with a piece of flash and snapped the muzzle brake off the damn barrel).  Top left is a PaK-40 75mm ATG, bottom left is a PaK-43 88mm ATG.

Tanks: A single Panther.  Look at that sculpting, absolutely incredible!

Tanks: Three Panzer IVHs.

Tanks: the big boys, four Tigers (the one at top left is missing its muzzle brake, and I didn't do that one).

Transport: Three Sdkfz 251 halftracks.  They have troops in them, so the gray dots are little German helmets.

HQ and Support: at top is a Sdkfz 251/22, the anti-tank version with a long 75mm gun, while at bottom is the German command stand.

Infantry Support: top left is a Panzerschreck, MG-42 at right, and 80mm mortar at bottom left.

Infantry: four rifle squads.

That does it for now, but wanted to show off the stuff, which we plan on putting to use in the near future.  Hope you like them, and if you've got any questions, just let me know.

V/R,
Jack

7 comments:

  1. Hello Jack,

    The 3mm vehicles are very recognisable in the pictures (good job BTW). I have a hard enough time seeing 6mm at night, even with lighting so while I would like to get into 3mm, I do not think I will :-) 3mm will look really good on a 2'x2' table.

    I may have mentioned/highlighted/disparaged your Sherman substitution for Churchills last year, but I find for my 6mm early East Front games I am substituting vehicles all the time!

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    1. Hey buddy, thanks man. As long as I'm close enough (sitting down), I've got no problem seeing them. And 3mm is cheap and quick, no more need to proxy ;)

      I'll get back to Op Jupiter soon, almost done with the Philippines.

      V/R,
      Jack

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  2. Oh, and looking forward to seeing your Operation Jupiter games -when you can fit them in around all your other projects!

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  3. I'm always amazed by your speed...3 1/2 hours!

    Nice work Jack!

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    1. Thanks Jim, and it's not me, it's the minis! It's literally as simple as: clean'em up, glue them to pennies, glue the pennies to sticks, spray paint them, pick out a couple things, give them a wash, and flock them. It's really cheap and quick, so, for me, it really opens the world up to different side projects.

      V/R,
      Jack

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  4. Oooooh these are lovely. If I could still see to paint that scale, I'd be ordering some. Have you tried the irregular miniatures stuff too? ALthough it's 2mm, I think it would fit.

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    1. Duc,

      Thanks, and you don't really need to see for painting. See the comment above for the process, but there's not really much painting involved. I've got some 6mm from Irregular, but not the 2mm. I would, but there's just not a need: here in the States we have PicoArmor, and they've got everything you could ask for (WWI, WWII, Cold War, Ultramodern), and it's here in a couple days.

      V/R,
      Jack

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