15mm German Tanks for Project Kursk

 

Those of you who follow Yarkshire Gamer on the Twitters will no doubt have seen this bunch of German tanks grow during my recent holiday in Scotland. I had bought some 15mm Russians a couple of years ago and painted up a few but drifted off onto other projects. This time last year, again whilst on holiday I bought some Germans having decided to build some Kursk Forces. I have big collections of Early War (Desert) and Late War (Normandy) so wanted something in the middle and Kursk always fascinates.

I've done a short video on the Utubes covering the tanks with the usual still pictures and text below.

There was no real plan to this initial purchase it was simply a case of 1 box of each of the tank types at Kursk, first up is my favourite tank, the Tiger. I've deliberately not gone for a specific unit although I have used Otto Karius (Tiger Ace and author of Tigers in the Mud) number 217 on one of the vehicles.

These are lovely models with various crew options and really look the business. After looking at a ton of photos from Kursk I've gone for a two tone camo pattern which very much seems to be the norm in Summer 43.

Next up Panthers, 5 of them. They had their first outing at Kursk and had a bad time of it, poor deployment and mechanical problems plagued their first outing. I've gone for high numbers on the tanks as that seems to be the numbers I have pictures of, I struggled a bit with the decals I had so they are no sequentially numbered.

Next up the workhorse of the German Army at the time, the Panzer IV, not my favourite tank as I always seem to lose them all in Normandy games ! Let's see how they get on against T34s 🤔

And finally on the Tank front some lovely PzIII, these have got a bit of a sports car look about them. I really mixed up the additional armour on these, photos from the battle show IIIs in all sorts of states.

When is a Tank not a Tank ? When it's a Stug ! and who doesnt love a Stug. I put numbers on the side of these although I couldn't find any pictures of them at Kursk numbered up (only later Normandy pics) sometimes tabletop recognition takes precident over historical accuracy.

So there we have it, the start of Project Kursk, I really don't know where I will go with it, it's been one of those, I fancy doing that, rather than a group project thing. I have some German Infantry, AT Guns and Transport to do before I have enough for games but then with Covid games aren't happening !

I'll probably try and solo a few things with the Kursk stuff to tweek our existing rules for larger numbers of vehicles. I will be adding some more IVs IIIs and Stugs and look at getting some SP Anti Tank Guns, Marders and the like.

Next week I will do a similar thing with the Russians I've done. I'm off to try and persuade myself not to buy a Crusader Castle, somehow I know I'm going to fail 😎