Project IV/26

A heavy self-propelled howitzer, attempt two

I've been thinking about the incomplete Hummel project every once in a while and now I got a new one to work on. In case I didn't write it down earlier, when I was paying for the StuG III in Tieto-Nikkari I commented that "this called me the most, but had you had a Hummel I'd grabbed it immediately". The guy had his sales pants on, so he wrote down an order from any manufacturer in 1:35, and promised to call when they had it in the store. Two weeks later I got an SMS and I half-ran from work to fetch it, on just about the last summery day of 2025. At that point I hadn't even opened the box of the StuG. This model was also the reason I ordered a double set of the Panzer III/IV tracks.

 

Memories from the early two thousands

I accidentally found a few photos of the source for all this, the Dragon's Hummel that I had built and painted grey. The winter-geared crew was also assembled but completely unpainted. What cut my project in this stage back in the day? I had been very excited about it, of course, so it was very difficult to come up with an explanation or a reason. This was also my stage of painting all my German stuff grey, most likely because of the way they were depicted in Steel Panthers.

The timeline for these photos I could poke at by the Leman Russ in the background gifted by a friend, and the speaker connected to my father's Beomaster 6000, and the last photo's CRT display. Earliest it could be was 2003, and latest 2007 but I was unable to guess any better myself. Then I realized that the zip file was named based on the photo metadata and that told me they were taken in 2005, handily in the middle of my guesstimate.

A new bumblebee 

When done, I could somehow compare this one to the old memories, even with a very different crew and a completely different approach to painting. The variant was also different, the Dragon's had spare roadwheels on the front armour plates while this Tamiya one had them in the back hull. Tiny differences.

Paper stuff

First of all the box revealed a background information sheet with basic stuff about the Hummel in a few languages. There were two suggestions for a paitnjob, both from an unknown or unspecified unit. One of them was plain Dunkelgelb, the other in three-tone camo. I especially appreciated the third photo's "this is what we're talking about" section for those who didn't live and breath these devices.

Not many decals in a way, in addition to the Balkenkreuze and the unit number there was the black info sheet for the gun aimer. The rest belonged to the shells, I imagined, but didn't doublecheck from the instructions in advance.

In general the instructions were Tamiya-clear and I was very happy to see the 1:1 track schema in the second photo. I could use that when building the Panzerwerk tracks.

Bits and pieces

Hummel's Panzerwanne was a big single entity so that kept me safe from a funky-angled side walls. Painting the crew made me a bit worried but maybe I could survive especially if I didn't get more bright ideas of giving them camo patterns...

This sprue had a healthy set of shells and cartridges. The tracks looked acceptable but they'd go to the bits boxes for some unspecified future moment demanding greeblies of that type.

All the running gear in their sprues were doubled, and I was foreseeing half an eternity going to the painting and fixing the painting on the road wheels, idlers and friends. Maybe this time I should at least prime them in the sprues before getting much further, just to recude swearing.

 

Most of the remaining vehicle was then spread to the last two sprues. The cannon alone at most of one, then the deck and armour plates took the other. Pretty clear to me, as the manufacturer led me to expect. I doubted I had to spend insane amounts of time searching for the individual pieces all around the spruesets.

 

Finally we had a plastic bag with random things, like the tiny screwdriver, a bit of thread to play the part of a tow cable, some sets of poly caps and whanot. Hopefully I wasn't going to drop any on the floor for the cats to play with.

 

This'd be a lot of fun as long as I didn't make a fool of myself with the assembly/paint order choices.

Project III/26

ISD's Devastators

I've used ISD or a variation of it as my nickname for a quarter of a century in different services and games, so it was going to be fine for this Mercenary outfit as well. The same company name I used already in Harebrained Schemes' BATTLETECH and the newer Mechwarrior 5: Mercenaries. The stupid joke's reference maybe went by many people, but it amused me.

Thoughts about the org

The military organizations, let it be real or imagined ones, was always something I had to triple check because the squads, battallions, regiments, platoons, divisions, regiments and whatnot just did not get stuck in my brain. I simply did not care. The only exception was the Clan's five-based chart, because it was simple and consistent enough even for me.

So the smallest practical BattleMech org unit was a Lance for four 'Mechs. Apparently that was close enough to be a 1:1 match to a platoon of foot soldiers, which translated to something like 20-40 people. Some very vague memories from Operation Flashpoint: Cold War Crisis' mission editor said that this was somehow connected to the amount of personell inside a tank squad/team/platoon. That was despite the fact that almost all 'Mechs had only one pilot inside. Maybe it included the support personell in this number?

A company then consisted of three Lances, sometimes with some more folks as support. The support could be scouts, indirect fire (yay!), or tanks or special Lances. Some outfits had a Command Lance on this level already. Then you could use three companies (12 'Mechs each if without a CL) to build a battallion and three to five of those would give you a regiment. Each additional step up in names piled more and more extra stuff and support gear to the noticeable pile of requirements and practical demands. At this point all this was just thinking out loud based on what I read, my named unit was going to be a company alone, meaning ~12 BattleMechs and an HQ truck.

First Lance

As a whole the Mercenaries box didn't entice me to use that 1:1 as the body of my merc unit. I got a stupid idea with a Devastator being the heaviest of the units, and another one of those hiding in one of the Legends boxes. Two Devastators - ISD's Devastators literally and figuratively, but it wasn't going to lead to a Cochraine's Goliaths 2.0. I also really liked Marauders, so I took both of mine to join the fun.

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.

Project VIII/25

The merchant-minded Clanners for a new year

The one Operation:REVIVAL Salvage box from my Mercenaries loot gave me a Piranha that half-surprisingly inspired me to paint it as a Diamond Shark. It required four friends to go with, preferably around the same weight class. I started by checking what my BTTracker said and indeed a selection of Light/Medium 'Mechs tagged REPAINT caught my attention. There were more of those available than what I needed this time, so I let the randomizing song play a couple of cycles.

Star's Points

Not counting the fresh Piranha the other four Poitns were isorla from Jade Falcons and also metallic IWM minis from 10-20 years ago. The metal ones had to be reprimed to begin with.

Piranha

Cougar B

Like all these four minis, the B config of the Cougar was older than the Project Mumblings so I had no memory of where I got the laser under the cockpit, but the ER PPCs were donated by a Warhawk C that didn't need the lower pair of the cannons as they were swapped with Large Pulse Lasers. No artesanal crafting and modding was visible in my doings and I didn't think I had improved over the years.

  

Stormcrow C

This Stormcrow config with an LB-10X and lasers was customized by slapping on a Gargoyle's arm, if my vague memory served me correctly. I really had no recollection of how I ended up with this piece when making my IWM order, and there was no documentation of any sort before the verbose days of this silly blog.

Stormcrow

In case you, dear reader or peruser of photos, wondered why and how this Stormcrow was so different from the one above, the reason was simple: this was an earlier sculpt I had mistakenly ordered at some point. The other Stormcrow was the new sculpt. The differences weren't that massive, I was mostly bothered by the tininess of the lasers in those arms and how tedious painting those was.

Ice Ferret E

How did I have an Ice Ferret, and such a "new" config as E if I hadn't even heard of the chassis back in the day? No clue. It was a funky version with an ATM-9 in the Left Arm and the weapons were painted however.

If nothing else, these old minis showed how I had consistently painted all energy weapons with just red dots. These cockpits had been repainted at some point in red, because I distinctly remember doing them in black for the longest of time.

Project VI/25

The last of the Invasion miniatures

While updating the BTTracker again I was pondering where in the Empire would I assign these last seven 'Mechs. Three of them - Nova Cat, Crossbow, Kingfisher - were Heavy or Assault class, so they could move to the Jade Falcons. With this allocation my Cluster only missed full Trinary C and about three quarters of the AeroSpace Trinary E. The updated painting situation was pretty weak, but it was a self-made problem thanks to my decision of dropping Mediums and Lights pretty much completely out.

My last unstarted minis were: Cougar, Fire Moth, and a Huntsman. One older IWM-made Nova fit here nicely, as it was coming for a reassignment. I was just missing one measly 'Mech from a fresh Star for a new Clan, and as I was just admiring the latest version of my tracker I found a Pack Hunter from the Mercs set. This Star was going to find itself in the Touman of the Hell's Horses.

Apart from the Pack Hunter, Crossbow and Kingfisher they were all already primed black so I was going to be up to speed in no time! If the excitement carried me to new levels of insanity, I might even turn this into a Nova with that one unassigned Elemental Star.

Project V/25

Revell F-15E Strike Eagle

Santa brought me both a Panzer Aces set of paints and surprisingly, a 1:72-scale F-15 that I had wished for, and this was a subtype E. I didn't mind the config myself, and this was the first of the three F-15s I wanted to implement a funny (to me) idea.

This multimodel main project affected how I was going to handle the documentation of this first plane.

Most probably I'd go with a build, cockpit painting, and the priming, maybe even the basecoating of the plane would be included in IV/25, then it would be stored until the other two would have reached the same stage. At that point, with the triplet in the place where they'd diverge, I could do the actual paintjob as its own subproject.

Optionally I'd do this one from start to finish but just skip sharing the paintjob until I was far enough with the others. Some basics I would need to paint in a recognized and proper way anyway, like the titanium engine cowlings and whatnot.

Instructions

On a cursory glance the coloured instructions were pretty clear, I appreciated the colours supporting the A-Z flags. Especially the colouring of the weaponry was a very nice detail. Was I going to bother following those? We'd see.

Bits

There were three transparent pieces this time, the canopy bits and the collector plate for the HUD. Maybe I ought to paint the sides with a coloured wash instead of doing them black. I had to look into that stuff, as I had no clue right now.

All I could say about these was that they looked like pieces of an airplane.