All,
Greetings, hope all is well! You've by now seen a bunch of Germans out of me, so what's a few more between friends? ;) Here are my Afrika Korps troops from Warlord, plastic multi-pose infantry with metal crew-served weapons teams; I have a number of vehicles as well, which you'll see in a separate post. These figures are really great, easy to put together, great detail, good proportions, plenty of options, just really cool figures, but... some of you shall no doubt soon be muttering "what the hell was Jack thinking?" under your breath. I've grown to love them, but the color scheme is sure to throw some of you. What happened is I did up my British 8th Army troops, very simple khaki colored force. Then I did my Italians for North Africa, very simple khaki colored force. When I got to the Germans all I could think was, "it would be really easy to do these guys up as a very simple khaki colored force," but I wanted them to stand out, so I started experimenting with different Contrast colors and finally settled on a light green. As I understand it, the Afrika Korps uniforms actually were a green color (or varying shades of green, depending on time/location of manufacture, much like their Field Gray), which often quickly faded to varying khaki, brown, or olive colors. My guys are definitely bright, brighter than I imagine most of you would accept on your table, but for my part I don't even notice it once they're on the table.
The whole mess: six leader types, nine with MP-40s, twenty six riflemen, seven MG-34s, two anti-tank rifles, two 50mm mortars, one PaK-36 37mm ATG, one MG-34 on tripod, and one 80mm mortar team.
The leader types; the Warlord set comes with quite a few sun helmets. I only used one, for the guy at far left, who for me is a senior NCO of some sort (Sergeant Major, company First Sergeant, etc...). The rest of the guys will be in regular soft caps or steel helmets, minus a few officers in barracks covers (the top three guys).
A couple officer types, with your first glimpse of the paint schemed.
Reverse.
The senior NCO, in sun helmet, and another officer, with MP-40.
A couple spotters/forward observer types.
Couple dudes chucking grenades.
The riflemen.
A few guys reloading.
One of my favorite poses, dudes double-timing forward with rifle slung and grenade in their hand.
Couple more riflemen charging ahead. Very good poses in this set.
Some guys double-timing up with ammo for the machine guns.
Good looking couple of off-hand poses. This whole set really takes me back to the Airfix Afrika Korps troops that I spent so much time with as a youngster.
Classic German toy soldier grenade pose.
More off-hand shooting poses, slightly different than previously see (have to look at the legs).
More guys humping ammo. Love the guy on the left with the cigarette in his mouth, grenade in his belt.
Couple guys hunched down.
Couple one-offs, moving and sighting in, the other getting ready to fire a signal shot? ;)
The machine guns, with a couple prone A-gunners thrown in.
Five prone MG-34 gunners, Airfix style!
A closeup, even has the leg cocked.
Not a pose that I'm happy with, looks pretty stupid really, but's it's all my fault. The problem is, the MG-34s only come as arms molded to the weapon for firing in the prone, but I'm often skirmish gaming, so I need a pose where the gun is being moved, not just being fired, so, you get this rather clumsy looking pose...
Again.
The anti-tank rifles and 50mm mortars.
Closeup of the ATRs. Pretty happy with the pose, stole the sandbags from the 8th Army box.
And the 50mm mortars.
The (non-organic) crew serves.
37mm anti-tank gun.
Reverse.
And just for reference, one of the Afrika Korps soldiers on my desert mat. Not so bright, just a greenish tinge to differentiate from the British khaki.
Well, I hope you like them, and if you're looking for some 28mm Afrika Korps troops, I can't recommend these guys highly enough, really fun set to build and easy to paint up.
V/R,
Jack
Very nice figures and the colour is fine. The issue tropical uniforms are a mid green and look very dark in photos, but they fade and a lot of soldiers wore Italian or captured British shirts and trousers anyway. I do mine in a wild mix of shades of green and khaki.
ReplyDeleteI appreciate it, Martin. Yeah, I’m generally a fan of having Germans in all sorts of mis-matched uniforms (just wait until you see tonight’s post), but I just had so many to do that it was far easier to keep them uniform in color.
DeleteAnd as you mentioned about Italian and British clothing, the sculptors didn’t show any of that, they kept them perfectly uniform (not even rolled sleeves), so it also lent to my decision to just go with one color.
V/R,
Jack