Flames of War Late War German HMG Platoon

It's been far too long since I posted some Flames of War miniatures, so here's a sMG Zug (Heavy Machinegun Platoon) from my late war German Panzergrenadier army for Flames of War.

I've not played any FoW in quite a while but I'm having a bit of a WW2 resurgence at the mo so with any luck there might even be some new battle reports coming up soon.

This sMG Zug was constructed from two of the very old Late War German HMGs by Battlefront Miniatures, and the two HMG stands from the SS-Panzergrenadierkompanie boxed set.

During the war, these guns were crewed by a team of four men, though Battlefront include 3 crew per gun. To take them up to the full compliment of 4 crew I added extra miniatures from my spares box.

The miniatures were painted with a fairly standard palette of colours from the Vallejo Model Colour range. If anyone is interested I can put together a guide for which colours I used.

The MG 42s in a sMG Zug were mounted on a lafette, which roughly translates to 'gun carriage', though in the case of the MG 42 it took the form of a tripod. This made the gun capable of accurate sustained fire as the lafette had a built in shock absorber to absorb a lot of the recoil. It was also issued with a telescopic sight that could be adjusted for both windage and range.

My old reenactment group portrayed an sMG 42 Zug, so I've actually had the privilege of firing an MG 42 both on a lafette and on a zweibein (bipod). Being number one on the gun was a fantastic experience, less so being number two and lugging the lafette about though, those things are backbreaking!

I added a rangefinder from a FlaK crew to the command base to mark it out as belonging to the HMG platoon. In reality, HMG units used a similar range finder but it was a slightly different model. However, at 15mm scale they are rather hard to differentiate so fingers crossed no-one will notice!

The bases were textured with Vallejo Coarse Pumice, then covered with patches of static grass. The bases were then finished with various Silflor static grass tufts. I'm not entirely happy with the choice of static grass I used as a base. It's a very 'summery' green that I think could do with being toned down a bit.

For a bit of variety I threw in a rogue MG 34, despite the intention to phase them out they weren't a particularly uncommon site even late in the war.

I spent this weekend applying decals and freehand insignia to a Panther Platoon from I.Pz.Rgt 26 (First Battalion, Panzer Regiment 26), so expect them to make a long-awaited appearance in the next week or so (yes these are the same Panthers I started painting last August - the shame!).