StuG III Ausf. G build

A five-evening construction show

Cutting plastic, sanding, dry-fitting and playing glue was something I had been missing when I mostly just painted the preassembled miniatures for a good while. Now I could tinker to my heart's content.

[0] build init

Some tinkering had been pre-tinkered for me, as the build got a kickstart with the torsion arms being already molded on the Panzerwanne. I was only tasked to install the bits for the drive sprockets, some suspension-related bits and stoppers, and the track tension adjusting setup where the idler wheels attached. Most of the time went to cleaning the bits up, and careful positioning with my suffering fingertips.

Missing from the photos: all the wheels with their cleanups and gluings.

[1] casemate

The second subtopic was the 105mm howitzer and the assault gun's casemate. In principle the gun was supposed to be movable to some degree both traversing and elevating, but the accordion piece I chose kept it pretty tightly locked in one position.

The gunner had their own periscope, which was probably very unfun in a bad weather, considering the openness of the roof.

This time the commander didn't get a machine gun installed on the cupola, but they got a two-branch binocular for stereoscopic vision. I could've built the loader's hatches open but as there was nothing but emptiness to be seen on the inside, I glued them shut.

In the back wall there was a rack for the track armour, I even had some remaining track links from the DAK PzKfw IV project that I could use here instead of any kit bits.

[2] deck

My third build evening took me to the assault gun's deck. I was assuming in advance that this'd be very quick and pretty simple. Hah.

At this point I didn't glue the backup road wheels on the rear deck, despite the instructions telling me to go for it.

Mistake: I set up the cooling grilles just like the instructions told me to. Only a bit later I realized that there were much better-looking PE bits in the little bag. This was my own stupidity, I didn't check what the photoetch sprue had as I trusted the instructions to at least suggest them as optional parts the way they are usually done. I kept them for later use, I didn't feel like dissolving these connections later on.

I found the sprue markings a bit funny. Sometimes I spent a stupid amount of time to find a duplicate part, much more time than actually using said pieces :D

[3] connecting hull parts

With the deck and its stuff done, I glued the casemate into the upper hull and got something pretty acceptable-looking on the desk.

More grumbling about the instructions and their cleverness. In this case the gun's travel lock and the headlight were marked so very weirdly that I didn't somehow understand what it was trying to show me. I ended up gluing the travel lock into the middle of the upper front glacis plate, which I a bit too late realized to be offset from where it belonged. Yes, I had the travel lock on the spot of the light. Again, I didn't start dissolving my installation but let it be, because I would've only caused more damage than good.

Some more frowning with the instructions, but now on the opposite side of the vehicle. The relative obscurity of the illustrations and the interesting gluing targets kicked my ankles, now with the exhaust pipes. There were surprisingly few pin-hole pairs for aligning the pieces, most of the "glue something here" areas were just some gently raised flat surfaces, which made aligning anything a bit weird.

In the photo below I had two exhaust pipes with their mufflers facing away from each other, and between them the attachment for a tow cable. Then I was to install a fiddly bracket-shaped set of protective metal sheet, the other extreme end simply didn't go where it was supposed to fit. How was this possible? I was a bit confused, as the space between the exhausts was dictated by the towing hook assembly, there was no way to get them any closer to each other.

[4] finishing touches

For the last evening I had a few silly pieces left to install. That small mysterious piece of aluminium was the gun barrel that was much nicer-looking than the plastic options with muzzle brakes. This was also the moment that validated my failure with the travel lock that I had misinterpreted from the illustration and weird "this one goes this way, that one goes that way" arrows.

Then the ultimate pieces, while excluding the various wheels and the tracks, were the Schürzen-racks. For whatever reason the Schürzen were not a part of this set so I assumed a crafty crew could hang camouflage nets, little trees and branches, or tarps for air cover or something along those lines.

A super-excited Finnish modeler could've tweaked this further by using the more angular piece instead of the Saukopf along with a thematically correct muzzle brake. Then they could just model some concrete armour blocks and instead of the metal racks tie down some lenghts of tree trunks. But I was not one of those people, I stuck to the sometimes annoying instructions.

Project II/26

Dragon Models StuG III Ausführung G 10.5cm Imperial Series

In the final days of summer '25 I visited Tieto-Nikkari and their shelves because I felt the fever for something tracked and German. Based on some looking around and chatting I dropped a StuG III on the desk and pondered out loud that if they had a Hummel, I'd taken one immediately. The shopkeep thought also out loud that "we'll get them at some point soonish, come by and check. Or it's actually easier if I just call you when I get them". This very clearly meant that I had a heavy SP howitzer elbowing its way to my work queue. Like I've said before, I had one and had even mostly painted it, but it got stuck in some sort of a limbo over the years.

Back to the business at hand: the theme was a StuG III's G variant with a larger howitzer. This happened to be a mightily titled Imperial Series box from 2004 according to my searches. Of course this all meant that I had to start thinking of ordering some tracks - or two sets of them to be more exact - from the Polish supplier.

Sprues and stuff

We've got a healthy load of plastic on numerous sprues, even the tracks were individual links in this set. There were some bits of photoetch, and one piece of aluminium.

A surprising number of said pieces were going to fly directly into the bits box. The tracks I didn't even glance at again, nor open them from their bags.

Instructions

What to say about the instruction sheet? Typical Dragon stuff, which had pretty-looking isometric views of how some things were to be set together, but occasionally being made less than clear enough for stupid people like me. My personal feeling was that they tried to be a bit too clever with these.

It had been way too long since my last tracked vehicle.

Miniproject I/26

Mass-priming

Having all this freedom of choice was surprisingly bothersome. I didn't have the faintest clue of which BT miniature to poke next and nothing really jumped out as the next item. My cleverest idea was to just take the whole untouched mass and prime it all in a batch.

When the inspiration would strike, I could just take anything and start working on it. The latest minis I have painted recently had mostly been primed at some random calm moment, and that had made me happy. Now I'd just do that in a planned way.

VSP red

Surprisingly I still had a bit of the red primer left. I wanted to use it before it got too thick with age to go through my airbrush.

Mercenaries

I started with the most numerous of the lot, the default Company in the Mercenaries box.

Legendary MechWarriors II

Going on I had enough red primer to coat 66,666...% of the units in the Legendary MechWarriors II set. The SM1, the Devastator and the Charger got red, then I was out. It was a handy primer, and it lasted for years, and most importantly it remained perfectly good until the very last drop.

VSP black

When the red was done I switched to the large bottle of black primer and continued with the second Legends.

Legendary MechWarriors II

From this set just the Marauder - without its rooftop guns - and the Caesar went black.

Legendary MechWarriors III

Also the third Legend set's Marauder was primed without its dorsal gun options. I just didn't feel like fighting with them while priming rapidly. The Marauder was also the last one painted and was still a bit damp when I took the photo of the rest already in their storage blister. This was a nice set with a good amount of nice rides.

Clan Direct Fire Star

Probably I mentioned back in the day that the Rifleman IIC I knew first in MechWarrior II was the reason to pick this box. Not that the Highlander IIC was bad either. The rest just happened to be sideshows that I wasn't familiar with. Finding a home for them all was going to be an operation of its own.

Clan Ad Hoc Star

Pack Hunter had been painted a while earlier. The Kodiak was eager to get painted as a Ghost Bear, but I already had five of them.

Battlefield Support: Objectives

This photo showed the MASH truck's right side using the extended bit, whichever operating theatre module it was. There was just one of these modules, and it could be set on either of the sides - or left completely off.

Salvage: Battlefield Support: Vehicles

Galleon / Maxim. On the vehicles I was most concerned about the undersides, I didn't want unpainted plastic shown when taking photos from the ground level.

Salvage: Battlefield Support: Vehicles

Hetzer / Maxim. Same approach as with the previous duo, undersides first and foremost, the rest would be much easier.

Salvage: Visigoth

I didn't bother taking a separate photo of the bottom of the Visigoth.

Salvage: Blood Asp

Blood Asp could've been a good candidate for the Blood Spirits had I not already painted a full Star of them much earlier.

Salvage: Mercenaries: 'Mech

Dervish. No idea what to do with it yet.

Salvage: Savannah Master

For priming I set the tiny hovercraft on the hex base in a way that should, hopefully, maximize the underside coverage. Doing this with anything this size was a bit funny, but at least they stayed on the bases just by their pegs instead of flying away like autumn leaves. Or a five-ton hovercraft after taking a gauss slug into the side.

100mm Timber Wolf

This was the pretty and pretty large miniature. Great details.

Mass-operation operated

This all took three evenings. Somehow this made me more inspired, with all the bits and pieces being at least primed and I could just pick something up to work on it for real. Small things made a huge difference sometimes. Still, I felt like doing something else than miniatures for a change, even if it was just one scale modeling project.

Finished: Project VIII/25

Sharks of the black seas (2985–3100)

This Clan that had changed its name a couple of times during its history was a very merchant-minded, like the Lyrans. Politically these folks had been also visited both the Crusader and Warden camps, unlike my Jade Falcons. As an Invading Clan it got to my painting table despite being occasionally a softie.

Piranha

Piranha, a 20-tonner, was the only ClanTech BattleMech in this group. It was armed with an ER Medium Laser on each arm, an ER Small Laser in the middle of CT, and the side torsos were packed with 12 Machine Guns. If it wasn't anything but a very-close-up evildoer, it was doing it quite heat-efficiently.

Cougar B

My modified 30-ton Cougar was armed quite like the Puma, but looked so much cooler in my books. Both arms had an ER PPC, and the nose carried a single ER Medium Laser. To make it clear that this was a victorious Warrior, a shark mouth was painted below the cockpit.

  

Stormcrow Prime

Bringing the Star's average weight up was the first of the two 55-ton Stormcrows. This one was configured as the Prime variant, carrying two ER Large Lasers and three ER Medium Lasers. To help a bit with those, a dozen additional Double Heat Sinks were installed.

Stormcrow C

This C config was built around an LB-10X AutoCannon. To accompany this munitions-hungry tool there was a Large Pulse Laser and two Medium Pulse Lasers for medium and short range fighting.

Ice Ferret E

In the lower range of the Medium 'Mechs we had an Ice Ferret, from a newer end of the timeline, an E configuration. The Left Arm was replaced with an ATM-9 launcher I had never used in a game. To help with the expendables-reliance it carried an ER Medium Laser and a Small Pulse Laser.

Diamond Shark terrain

Sharks on dry land

Piranha's hex texture

Being done nearly twenty years ago the other four Points had their bases shaped, and I shockingly didn't have the original stuff left anywhere anymore. I used what I actually had and made a bit of surface texturing with Vallejo's Mud.

 

When the mud dried they all had some sort of a terrain under their feet, if non-matching at this point. I thought I'd use oil paints to unify the bases, which was something I hadn't done in a short bit. In the name of unification I might need to fish out some foliage fluff for the Piranha, otherwise it'd be easily finished.

Star's battleground

To counter the lightish paintjob I wanted a bit darker and earthier set of bases for the Star. I coated the terrain with a slightly thinned down Dark Brick Red (ABT220) and applied some even thinner Industrial Earth (ABT090) in splotches.

 

After a night in the sauna I painted the front hex edges with greyish blue (the AMT-7 kind) and drybrushed the terrain a bit with Buff (ABT035). I used that also gently on the tops of the minis which accidentally made the Piranha a bit dirty. Maybe it had just fallen down in battle?

At this point I used gloss varnish on the viewports and energy weapon lenses.

For the absolute fun of it I painted some effect on the Cougar B's ER PPC barrels. It didn't stand out that specially from this blue/grey scheme, unlike in the earlier Jade Falcon. But I did it anyway.

Now I was left with some little finishing touches anymore, those being cleaning up the hex edges, drybrushing black on the Stormcrow C's LB-X, and perhaps adding that still missing fluff to the feet of the Piranha. Without veggies it was the only one in the Star and that wasn't cool.

Final finishings

From ponderings to doings. I fixed the missing things on a calm evening. In addition to sooting the Stormcrow C I also did that on the Ice Ferret E's ATM launcher.

Our cats were again blocking the long-term storage so the plants for Piranha had to wait for another day. Otherwise this was about done now, maybe the front edges should get the hazard striping still. Speaking of caution stripes, I completely forgot to add any on the 'Mechs!

With the cats being distracted I got some foliage and superglued it in place for the Piranha. Then I added the caution stripes that I had been pondering about many times. Ready.