BattleGroup: Overlord Beyond the Beaches

All images courtesy of IronFist Publishing.

When IronFist Publishing and The Plastic Soldier Company (PSC) first published their Overlord book in 2013, the tome weighed in at 240-ish pages. The book covered the Western Europe forces in D-Day operations, as well as D-Day+1 up until the defeat in the Falaise Pocket.

IronFist and PSC recently republished a partial re-release of the book: Overlord Beyond the Beaches (BtB) that covers "the battles inland" after D-day. The reprint is slightly over half the pages of the original (at 136 pages).

The new version deals specifically with the forces and operations in Western Europe from D-Day + 1 on. IronFist will publish the D-Day sections and lists from the original at a "future date." PSC teases the release on the web-page for BtB, noting a major anniversary date coming up (2019 would be 75 anniversary of the D-Day landings in Normandy).

Why then did IronFist and PSC decide to republish just half of the original in paperback version?

"...many of the smaller European Theatre of Operations campaign books we'd like to do in the future will use these lists..." (BtB, page 5)

Both the Wacht Am Rein (Battle of the Bulge) and the newly published Market Garden books do refer back to lists from the Overlord book (now accessible in the Beyond the Beaches re-release). The Wacht Am Rein link above takes you to a page to purchase a PDF copy of the book - but check your Friendly Local Game Store supplier if you'd like to find a physical copy. The Market Garden Link takes you to a link for a bundle of Market Garden AND Beyond the Beaches (BtB). I suspect PSC will continue to bundle (on their website) BtB with the campaign books that refer back to it.

What's in the book?

Historical Section
Beyond the Beaches begins with a historical recap that spans five pages, and covers June 7 through August 1944. Photos from the Bundesarchive Archive, US Army Signal Corps, and Canadian National Archives enhance the layout.

Scenarios
Beyond that section, the book showcases several battle scenarios and rules for bocage terrain. Three types of battle scenarios are suggested by the designer: Meeting Engagements, Attack-Defence Scenarios, and Historical Re-fights.

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Review: Plastic Soldier Company T-55 Kit

Like many of you, I was excited to run a mass of T-55 when the Volks Armee book came out.  When I say mass I mean it - in a 100 point list you can run 62 of these guys. Think of rushing forward with 62 tanks, what list can put up enough shots to stop it? For those who dreamed of a huge horde of T-55AM2 tanks like I did, we were faced with the economic reality of the huge cost of such a list. You would need 13 boxes of tanks which gets you 5 for $72, so unless you have $1000 laying around to spend the horde was just a dream.

My actual list for Volks Armee did have about 20 T-55 tanks, and after buying 2 boxes and trading for a box of 4 tanks I was still short and I was waiting for the new T-55 kit from the Plastic Soldier Company to hit the shelf of my LGS.

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Review: Plastic Soldier Company Panzer III J-N

If you listen to the News from the Front show at all, you know I love me a Panzer III.  I was very excited when I saw that The Plastic Soldier Company was making a new Panzer III J-N box set to go with their earlier Panzer III box set.  Being me, I cannot possibly have enough Panzer IIIs in the collection, so I went ahead and got myself a box (...or two...) as soon as I could.

My first task was to follow Steven's advice, and get some Panzer III Ns for my LW Hermann-Goering collection.  Please note that this set comes with FIVE models, but I did four for this review, as that is what my collection required.

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Bolt Action - War Sprays: Plastic Soldier Company Spray Paint

During a recent BTD sale, I decided to expand my Soviet armor a bit. I did not, however, wish to repeat my previous, mad scientist attempts at creating an accurate Russian tank color with green spray paints found at hardware stores, so I forked over the extra cake it costs to get a hold of one of The Plastic Soldier Company's new tank sprays.

Care to hear how it fared compared to a bargain brand? Read on!

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PSC Churchill Review

by Dirty Jon

The British Churchill Tank kit from The Plastic Soldier Company has been very highly anticipated by the Flames of War community for quite some time.  I could not wait to get my hands on some and jumped at the chance to do a review.  I have always been a fan of the British Infantry Tanks - they are just so huge and ugly - exactly what a tank should be!  Let's dig in!

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Review: PSC M5A1 Stuart

by Dirty Jon

We were lucky enough to get our hands on some Plastic Soldier Company Allied M5A1 Stuarts, so I decided to paint some up for my growing American army.  Though I am not the King of The Stuarts like Luke, I did want to pick some of these up to flesh out some of my options moving forward.  The US Stuarts are rather nice - 16" move, Recce [Editor: Thats only Brits!] and Stabilizers make these very dangerous on the battlefield.  With up to 5 machine-gun dice, you just can't beat these guys.  So, lets see how there went together!

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Review & Build: PSC Cromwell Boxed Set

Hi WWPD! Throckmorton here stepping in on my first official post as a WWPD writer. I'm really excited to join the team and lower the level of discourse around here a little bit.

So, without further ado I give you a complete review, build and paint of the new British Cromwell Tank set from Plastic Solider Company.

I love the Cromwell tank. I think it's my favorite Allied tank of the war, with the Chaffee being a close second.  There's just something about the look of these guys that feels like World War 2 armor to me. Now that I'm working on an Overlord Desert Rats army for my ever increasing Flames of War collection I jumped at the chance to review these when I saw them available at my FLGS.

I have a love hate relationship with PSC. Their tanks are dirt cheap, and that's great for a gamer on a budget. They're plastic, so paint is less likely to chip off and, due to the molding process used to put parts on sprue, they're less likely to have serious manufacturing defects than other forms of casting.

However, multi-part plastic kits are not everyone's bag. Sometimes you just want to crack open a clam shell, slap some super glue on there and get priming. But my real issue with PSC, and it's in evidence here, is the fidelity of details on their soldiers and crew. I like chunky details in 15mm, it allows for more visually striking contrast on the table. Which I think is one of the keys to a good 15mm paint job.

Here's the stats rundown on the Cromwell from the wonderful Easy Army website:

A light, smoke shooting tank that also comes in artillery bombardment form. This sounds like exactly what I want out of a tank. To bad it doesn't have .50 cals. But no girl is perfect right?

Now, on to the build and review!

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Plastic Soldier Company Zis-2 57mm AT Guns

Recently Bob Sixninesix wrote a spotlight article for WWPD on the Plastic Soldier Company 15mm Zis-2/3 Gun set. Concurrently with his effort, I was also working on the same set of PSC guns for a friend of mine and was also intending to write a review of them.  When I saw Bob’s article I thought “there goes that idea” but then I thought since he built his set as the Zis-3 76.2mm version of the guns, then it might still be worthwhile to do an article ones I worked on because my friend wanted the Zis-57mm AT Gun versions done. So….

I had recently assembled and painted ten T-70 tanks from PSC that I was very impressed with. So I was excited to try my hand with set of PSC guns and their crew to see how PSC's foot figures and artillery were. Plastic Soldier Company products are easily available from my LGS. They had no problem getting them this boxed set in a timely manner and at a very reasonable price.

My fist "worry" about these 57mm guns was that the barrels would suffer from the gun tube droop shown in the models on the box cover image. Happily this was not the case and I noticed that the guns shown on the box cover must be the 1/72nd scale ones rather than the 15mm scale guns and crew as they crew figure were different with blanket rolls etc added.

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Bolt Action - Review: Plastic Soldier Company Soviet Infantry

By now I hope you've all seen Joe's "Work in Progress" pictures of these beauties- but now I am happy to say I am the proud owner!  Joe has dilligently painted 2/3 of the 28mm Russian Infantry in Summer Uniform by The Plastic Soldier Company.

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Bolt Action - Review: PSC Russian Infantry

Here's a look at some new infantry from the workshop of Joe Messerle. Outstanding work again - I think he gets the most out of what he's working with. I also couldn't help but notice some WIP pics of my Warlord Games British Infantry in the background. Keep churning out Bolt Action, Joe! - Judson

Greetings Comrades,

     Comrade Joseph reporting from the glorious painting desk of Comrade Messerle.  We have been preparing strong infantry to be shipped to the Steve-O-grad front for victory.  Please sit and enjoy the review of the troops.

     Plastic Soldier Company has been a strong ally in the wargaming department here recently, having ranges in 15mm and 28mm.  I have found that every new product coming out is an improvement on the previous models.  I have experience with their 15mm German armor ranges and looked forward to diving into their 28mm ranges.

     These lovely troops of Mother Russia are provided by Steve.  He asked me to paint them up for him and it is always fun to see the final project on his wargaming table.  These Russians are from the 28mm Russian Infantry, Summer Uniform.  This box set is a HUGE value for the cost.  You get 57 figures in one box.  It includes 6 Jr Officers/NCOS, 45 Riflemen/SMGs and 6 LMGs with loaders.  The only downfall when first opening this box is realizing that it includes NO bases.  A small inconvenience but noticeable.

One Squad of Comrades, the box gives you three of these !

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PSC Panzer IV F2

I'd been sitting on a box of Plastic Soldier Company Panzer IVs for quite a while, and finally sat down to knock them out just before Christmas!

Assembly Review
These guys are fairly par for the course with Plastic Soldier company.  A bit more complicated than a Battlefront resin/metal model.  There are a lot more fiddly pieces to deal with- that is, unless you're counting the dreadful schurtzen assembly for the Battlefront Panzer IV H.  The Panzer IVs were an improvement over the T-34s I'd assembled previously, but still required a significant investment in time to clip the pieces, clean up flash, and assemble them.  I have to point out that the tracks on the Panzer IVs went together FAR easier than the T-34s.  But, they're still in two pieces and it's difficult to get them to line up perfectly.  Overall, however, this was no more or less difficult than any other plastic kit.

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Review: Plastic Soldier Company SdKfz 251/D Box

We were recently given a box of the new Plastic Soldier Company SdKfz 251/D to review. Since I had recently painted up some of the Battlefront version for Flames of War, I was given the task!

Basic Information
The box set comes with 5 half tracks, 1 to each sprue. I saw the box for about $25 from several vendors at Fall In, which makes them pretty cheap! The sprues come with stowage and several passengers in different positions. No decals are provided. There is also no option to make a 251/10.
The details on the vehicle are very sharp - much more sharp than resin or lead. I did find that the crew is not so sharp - but, it is just crew. There was very little flashing on the casts, and the plastic made clean up a breeze where it was required.

Assembly
Since these are really just little models, there is quite a bit of assembly to do before you can prime. I chose to create 3 groups of pieces: the top, the bottom and the tracks. It seemed to me that this would make painting the crew fairly easy.


As I put the models together I broke 3 of 4 of the MGs - they are VERY thin. I was able to glue one back together, but had to use a spare Battlefront MG in place of another. I am guessing that the others will break pretty quickly.
The only word I can think of to describe the assembly process is "fiddly". I kinda have ham-hands, so I really needed a set of tweezers to assemble these things. It took me about 15-20 minutes to assemble each model.

The Painting
I painted these up very much like the other half tracks I did. Everything went well and I cannot complain. I actually thought that the plastic tracks were very well done, with crisp detail - much better than lead.

Conclusion: 3 out of 5 Donkey-Fausts
These are ok. One must make the time/money decision on these. For me, I don't think that these are worth it. I have more money than time. I do not want to spend the time in assembly or the time that I think will be required to fix broken MGs and such. However, I am a 40 year old guy who wears a tie to work every day -- this equation may be different for some of my younger or miserly commanders!

For me, the German Panzergrenadier Box Set is better - it costs about double, but you get 4 halftracks with the 251/10 option AND a platoon of awesome Grenadiers. To me, it is worth it.

The Good:
- Cheap!
- Same size as Battlefront models
- Lots of stowage and bits

The Bad:
- "Fiddly" Lots of assembly time
- Broken MGs everywhere
- No decals
- No 251/10 Option (Editor: Now available in a kit)
- Passengers are kinda lame sculpts

Here is a pic of the Battlefront (212) and the PSC (224) models together:

Our friends from View From the Turret also reviewed the Plastic Soldier Company halftracks recently- check them out here: http://viewfromtheturret.com/2011/11/07/plastic-soldier-company-sdkfz251d/

Models provided by The Plastic Soldier Company

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