Chris Joins The Afrika Korps

Chris

Chris Joins The Afrika Korps?
Part 1 - Pondering An Army
I've been lucky enough over the past decade (actually 9 years but close enough) working in the Studio to have seen a lot of amazing armies either at Tournaments, in our Painting Forum, or built and painted by my co-workers around the globe.

Thinking about these armies there are two that I've wanted but were reluctant to build, a German Afrika Korps Panzer Company, and a massive horde of Soviet infantry.

Find Part 2 of Chris' article here...

The former was because I've never thought my painting style lends itself to a nice DAK army and the latter was because I paint so rarely these days that I would 'never' finish it. Even though I wasn't likely to actually build and paint the army I still noodled up a bunch of armies with the release of each of the North Africa books over the years, thinking the whole time about how I could cunningly build an army that crossed over Early and Mid War with a minimum of extra painting. The launch of V4 and Afrika Korps convinced me to dust off my trusty FileMaster box filled with the blisters that I had bought over the years that had never been opened and see what lurked inside...

Inside I found a really good base for an army, so during the launch weekend in between working on the website with James and Charlie I managed to build a pretty good portion of my army.

Over to the right you can see a high speed version of what half the weekend looked like.

Since the launch I've been continuing to chip away at the army and building vehicles when I have some spare time, or when the garage is not too cold at night.

My hobby space is in the corner of a garage with no heating or insulation so the choice is to park up in front of the TV with the fire going vs going out to build models means progress has been slow even by my standards. Of course any progress is better than none and since the launch I have managed to finish building most of what I have left with three Panzer IIs and a couple of Sd Kfz 231s to go. Of course there is no point painting the minimum sized force so I need to purchase a few extra units to round out the force. Currently I am thinking I need some Stukas, anti-aircraft, artillery and infantry to round out the army.

Sticking to my plan of making sure that the army covers both periods (as much as possible) I've put together the model list below with a breakdown of what works when...

Model Early-war Mid-war
Panzer III (short) tanks Yes Yes
Panzer III (long) tanks No Yes
Panzer IV (short) tanks Yes Yes
Panzer IV (long) tanks No Yes
Panzer II light tanks Yes Yes
Sd Kfz 221 and 222 light scouts Yes Yes
Sd Kfz 231 heavy scouts Yes Yes
Afrika Rifle Platoon* Yes Yes
Panzerjager 1 tank hunter Yes No
Diana tank hunter ** No Yes
10.5cm artillery battery Yes Yes
Sd Kfz 10/4 light AA Yes Yes
Ju 87 Stuka dive bombers Yes Yes

* There are some organisational differences between the Early and Mid War versions so I will need to paint a few extra figures but I don't see that as a big problem.

** The Diana doesn't feature in Afrika Korps but I am planning on using this really characterful model in my army and just using the stats of the Marder instead as they fill the same role.

With my model list all sorted I need to buy a few extra units and get them built. In the meantime I've started looking through the pile of paints and spray cans I've bought over the years (all with good intentions) so I can work out my colour scheme. As I've never painted an army quite like the DAK I want to nail down a process where I am really happy with the outcome as I don't want to hit the airbrush until I am comfortable with what I need to do.

In the coming weeks I hope to have some examples to share...

~ Chris

Chris' DAK almost assembled