by Dirty Jon
I collect a lot of models for Flames of War. Sometimes I have a plan, and sometimes I don't. In this case, I had absolutely no plan at all.
A strange series of events came about to make the beginnings of this army, Luke gave me a box of Pz IIIGs he got from some tournament prize support. The Flea Market at Cold Wars gave up four more Pz IIIGs for $5 each. I ran out of German Late War Armor spray paint, so I had to find SOMETHING to paint. Enter, the Accidental Army - DAK Edition.
I dug through the pile of tanks and picked out all of the Pz IIIGs I had. When I did that, I also discovered that I acquired Oberst Rettemeier -- he looks cool! I took a look at Easy Army and figured out that I could make the beginnings of a great little Mid War army by running this as the 21st Panzer Division.
This is only 780 points, so I will have to add in some things. I am thinking that some PzIVs would be nice -- I guess I should have kept some of the ones I painted... Oh well. I do have some 88s hiding out somewhere -- they could be nice for some heavy AT. Adding some infantry is a priority and perhaps a little Recce.
I went for a pretty worn look here. I used a can of the Battlefront British spray paint. No problem, as I think each side used whatever paint they had available at the time. I think the color turned out pretty nice.
I could not fit any numbers on the sides of the turret and have them look good. I do have some I94 small red/white numbers, so I may try them later. I do wish that some small sizes were available for the smaller DAK tanks.
I am a big fan of the heavily weathered look for the desert stuff. I painted these with the base yellow undercoat then used a chopped up sponge for the weathering. I used Dark Grey for the splotches. This indicates that these tanks came to Afrika in Panzer Grey, which I think was common for the IIIs.
So, there we have it -- another army. Do you have any stories of Accidental Armies? Tell us all about it on the Forums...
