-BY DIRTY JON
While I was at
Guns of August, I participated in a raffle they have each year. You buy some tickets and put them in a particular box for the items that you really want to win. I saw a 50 pound gift certificate to Peter Pig and decided that this was the prize for me, and put all my tickets ($15 worth) in that box. I had seen their stuff before and I was very interested in picking up some. I was lucky enough to win! For this review, I will take a look at their
PAK 40s and Gun Crews.
As you all know, I am slowly building up my Germans, and I decided that a platoon of
PAK 40s was a good investment. They are effective and common in just about every list. I also got on the Peter Pig web site and noticed that they had an option to order 'camouflaged'
PAK 40s, so I jumped in! I also ordered Gun Crews in overcoats -- sounded interesting!
The Guns
The guns came with built-in
camo draped over the barrels and on the gun shield. First off, I noticed that each gun would be slightly different. There were 2 patterns for the gun barrels and each of the 4 gun shields I got had a different pattern -- this is very cool!
Assembly was very easy with the all-metal parts, but I did have to provide my own bases -- this is the case with all Peter Pig models, as they supply figures for use with a variety of gaming systems.
I was very happy with the amount of detail on the guns and would rate them slightly higher that the same from Battlefront.
The Crews
The crews came as separate packages with 8 per pack. I got 2 packages for my 4 guns. Now, the separate crews sounds like a pain, but it does allow one to get just what you want -- this is especially cool when one wants to get the elusive flamethrowers for your other lists!
The detail on the crew was pretty good on the equipment, but I have to admit that the facial details were fairly poor -- significantly below the Battlefront equivalent.
The shipping charges were pretty high (almost $30 on a $80 purchase), so I think I will probably do other purchases at conventions where I can buy from resellers.
The Painting
I went for a typical
LW paint job here, as I will mostly use these with vanilla
Grens or with my Hermann Goering Dogs and Devils list. Brian Fuller left me some random scenery bits when he moved to California, so I incorporated some of that foliage on the bases.
I built this brick wall out of
Linka stuff I had lying around. An overcoat of white glue makes it pretty rigid. I hope is stays together.
The trees looked like Italian mountain trees or something to me. I went with it. They are wire with foliage glued on. Again, some random bits Brian left me. I was not going for a permanent dug in position, but kind of a hasty deployment. I do not like the models to be completely hidden. Though that may be historically accurate, I don't like it from an aesthetic perspective.
Conclusion
These are fine. The guns look fantastic and I like the camo option. I especially like being able to order individual packs of guys to get exactly what I want. I think the sculpting on the faces is fairly poor, but certainly acceptable for 15mm figures observed from 5 feet. I will use these for gun crews and such, but I would not make my John Dutton Frost figure from these.
