Spotlight: Jagdpanthers

by Dirty Jon

At Fall In, I picked up a Jagdpanther Platoon for no other reason than the fact that they look cool as hell and I got a pretty good deal.  When building this Tank Destroyer, the Germans took the King Tiger gun and slapped it on a Panther chassis.  Mobility and Firepower make this vehicle very powerful in Flames of War.

The box set comes with three tanks and decals.  The new-ish Panther plastic sprue is in here, which makes the model very light, with the tracks and the barrel being plastic.  These plastic items are also very crisp and require very little flash removal.

Weighing it at $45 USD, the tanks are a bit expensive at $15 each.  The good news is that you will need very few for your army.

As you can see, it is a Panther, minus an MG, plus a King Tiger gun.  This is awesome, but you must pay for this awesomeness.  In looking through Desperate Measures, I saw that these are available as both Confident Trained and Confident Veteran.

2 Confident Trained Panther Gs: 290
2 Jagdpanthers Confident Trained: 360
2 Confident Veteran Panther Gs: 375
2 Jagdpanthers Confident Veteran: 470
2 Confident Veteran King Tigers: 690

In looking at the cost of these, I am not sure I am going to find a ton of reason to put these on the table in a tournament, but I will most definitely be springing these on Luke and Paw Paw at the first opportunity!

I assembled everything and primed the tracks separately.  This allows me to just fill in the wheels, as seen on the right tank.  For this build, I also had to prime and paint the front mud guards in dark yellow, as you cannot really attach them to the hull without the tracks.  I like to hit the tracks with a fairly lightly colored grey for an initial highlight.  I roughly painted some of the wheels in the brown and green to give a little bit of color.

For the camouflage, I tried to follow the box pretty closely.  I did not have any great pictures in my books to use as a guide, so this worked out pretty well.  I have never done this pattern, and I thought it looked pretty neat on the box, so in I went.

I used German Medium Camo brown to make the outlines of the pattern, then filled them in with German Camo Dark Green.  After that, I did my standard drybrush with Middlestone.  

You may notice that the '131' Jagdpanther's decal is a little bit off at the bottom.  Whenever I need to have a part of the decal 'under' something - in this case, the tow cable - I usually just attach the decal normally and leave the part overlapping.  When I add the decal softener, I do not put it over the raised part, so it will not stick well.  When the softener dries, I use a very sharp hobby knife to trim off the part that needs to be 'under'.  I think it works pretty well.

Hatches are a bit off.

One problem I did notice on this tank is that the hatches fit very loosely.  I did nothing to try to correct this as I figured that it would not be too noticeable on the table.

I added some chipping to the areas without Zimmerit with some dark grey.  I think this helps make the tank look used and more realistic.  I also went with some red and white numbers from Dom's Decals.  I always liked this look and went ahead and used them here.  I still think my undercoat on the chipped sections is too red, so I may go back and make it darker and/or browner.

Hatches are a bit under-sized for the resin hull.

I put a little rust around some of the hatches and the gun barrel - hard to see in these pictures.

I think I should rust up that fender.

Hatches no fit, man.

I like these models.  They are big and chunky and look cool - that is enough for me!  I think they will have limited usability in my games, but they will be fun to give a go now and again....especially if I can surprise Luke or Paw Paw!