8.8cm PaK 43/42 on Cruciform mount Part 1

A while back I got a hold of 2 boxes of of these Battlefront Flames of War big, bad, Anti-Tank guns. I had a list in mind when I got them but that has since been forgotten. Typical gamer ADD. However recently I thought about making a Hetzer list from Grey Wolf. Looking at the list it does not have access to any Panthers, Tigers, Jagedpanthers, Hornisse....you get the idea. No mobile, big, bad, direct fire tank busters to give those big high armour Late War tanks something to think about. The options are dual purpose Flak 88, Heavy Arty, Tank Buster planes or Anti-Tank guns. So with a Hetzer list in mind I decided it was about time I recalled these toys from the 'round to it' file. These guns have Gun Shield and also Turntable which is handy in the game but they have a very, very high AT rating.

Each box came with 2 Guns, Crew, 2 x resin bases with details and a command team with a regular plastic base. I got 2 boxes to allow a full sized platoon of 4 guns and 1 Command Team. I have Command teams for many other platoons in my collection so I put those figures to one side and concentrated on the guns. Lots of parts came in the box and I was initially stumped as to what fitted to what and in what order. No assembly instructions came with the box. To the INTERNET! Turns out that Battlefront withdrew these a while back which means they also had no Spotlight article on them. You can probably still get some from shops that have them in stock. However careful study of the images on the box gave me a few clues as to how to put it to together.
These Gun platoons can be a big project so I will divide this project into a few posts like how my work process went down. I considered just posting the results but it might be useful for readers to learn from how it went for me and for other experts...well...it just might be entertaining. :)
Project 1. The Figures
Project 2. The Gun
Project 3. The Base
Project 4. Finishing it all off.  

Project 1. The Figures
File, shave, remove flash, the usual starting point. Blu Tack them onto old paint containers for easier handling. The aimers I actually glued to the old paint containers. Gave them a quick scrub to clean them with a wet brush. Once dry painted entire figure with German Field Grey Uniform. Wash with Black Shade. Went over them again with the base colour in a semi dry brush type of way. Highlighted with a lighter drybrush of Grey Green, same colour for gaiters and bread bags. Painted German Camo Beige on uniform parts to be camo. Paint flesh areas, Brass shells and German Grey on helmets, boots, belts and armour piercing round. Brown shade on Skin, Brass and Beige Camo bits. Re paint Beige areas to get rid of excess Brown shade and then apply brown squiggles then less green areas for camo material. Go back over skin and faces with base skin colour but just looking to highlight really. Brass also again to highlight the shells.

Raw cleaned figures.

Under coated then ink style wash.

Base Uniform done.

Before Brown Shade.

 Re-do Beige after Brown Shade (Compare pointing figures).

You will see the Figures again later when they are added to the Bases. You might have noticed that I also painted the bases (English Uniform).

Part 2 coming soon.
Cheers from Brendon (The Kiwi)