German infantry guns from Caesar and Pegasus

The first real project of this year. (I’m not counting the nearly 100 28mm figures that I cleaned, pinned and glued together in January as a project. But they are the start of the project of painting through the tin and plastic mountain, the first step is putting everything together. I’m not even finished with that yet.)
I’ve had two 75mm infantry guns from Pegasus lying half-finished on the work-table for quite a long time. And now I just happened (cough; cough) to buy Caesars’ 150mm infantry gun.
I started by gluing all guns together. The Pegasus sets were rather fiddly, but Caesars’ were more optimized towards war-gaming and finished rather quickly.

I’m mostly modeling early WWII, primarily France 1940, so all the guns were painted panzer grey. Dry-brushed in a lighter grey, and a coat of matte varnish.
I bought some Vallejo pigments the other day. I’ve never tried this before, and these guns were as god test subjects as any. I brushed some on, and I’m rather satisfied with the result. (My competence when it comes to photography isn’t the best, the flash makes everything look quite gloss, which it really isn’t in natural lighting.)

Now to the figures

The Pegasus sets have 2x4 figures. On one hand early infantry and on the other SS in camouflage smocks and I chose the early infantry. The figures are made of softer plastics, and they are multi-part. I glued them with cyano-acrylate glue. Bases were 18mm spacers.

I started by painting them with slightly diluted white glue, to get a surface that holds the paint. When that was dry I gave them a base of white paint, and then a black wash. In this way I get the best of two worlds, a rather light base-color that makes the colors brighter, and black in all nooks and crevices, giving a natural shading and I also avoid white spots if the paint doesn’t cover well in a crevice. As a bonus I’ll also get a first warning of flash or other uneven spots I might have missed in cleaning the figures.

The box from Caesar contained 8 figures in hard plastics and a lot of fiddly parts. Every figure is made up of body + leg + leg + arm + arm + head + helmet + equipment in many parts. I got a bit nervous about putting them together, but it went surprisingly well and the level of detail is outstanding. As a bouns you’ll get a lot of extra weapons and heads. A lot! This set is worth its price just for that.

Painting. I started with all dark details: smock, gas mask canister and cup for the water-bottle Vallejo 830 German Field Grey, Trousers: V 836 London Grey, helmet: V 869 Basalt Grey, webbing and other leather stuff: Black. All this was given a black wash.
After that the light details: Haversack V 912 Tan Yellow, shaft for the shovel: V 843 Cork Brown, bottle: P3 Bootstrap Leather, Flesh: Vallejo Light Flesh and a wash over all this with GW Devlan Mud.
The collars were painted with V 975 Military Green, and insignia white.

The bases were then painted with a mix of chocolate brown paint and fine sand, and covered with static grass.

In the games from  Too Fat Lardies, the infantry guns ahve five-man crews, so with the men from the boxes I get three fully manned guns, and a bonus figure.