Initial 15mm Sdkfz 251/1D platoon

Hi folks,

A bit of time has been spent over the last two weeks trying to get my first unit of German half-tracks to a state I was happy with. Unfortunately, this turned out to be more of a chore than I was expecting. I'm still not 100% happy, but seeing them based up tonight they actually look ok. Painting British stuff is a lot easier!

These are older Battlefront 15mm resin kits, with plastic tracks and wheels. 

I've still to add crew to them, which will come much later. Two will have machine gunners and passengers, while the other two will have passengers. 

I've based in my standard style, and added some foliage to the vehicles in the form of seafoam sprigs and leaf scatter. Not hugely keen on how this looks, but it helps break up the camo pattern a little. It also fits in with by SS tank units.  

Decals have been applies as usual, a mix of Skytrex, Doms Decals and PSC. 

Looking at them now, I've forgotten to add my usual dust weathering powder on the wheels and tracks, so will have to sort that. 

I really struggled with these, mainly I think because I went too bold with the camo colours, used the wrong brown, had to work to bring up the yellow more and to make the camo more subtle. My earlier attempts looked much more like the very late war hard edged stripes, rather than the more subtle Normandy camo. Still, the images I used as reference showed that this unit used a lot of brown and green on their vehicles, with only small amounts of base yellow showing. This is very different from the common schemes people use with a yellow base and small splotches of green and brown. I eventually tried multiple times, before resorting to using thinned down yellow and a stippling effect to tone down the camo pattern.

They look much better on bases, and I will use these as templates for the next lot. Thankfully, there isn't a lot of painting on them, if you know what you're doing!