A friend of mine gave me his Bolt Action army last weekend after a year of not doing too much with it, he felt he’d rather not have it than having the pressure to complete it, and focus instead on Star Wars Legion. He’d amassed a pretty large collection of models, so this was very generous of him indeed. I’ve been itching to get a game of Bolt Action in after all this time so decided to act quickly and paint all his tanks so we could play the Tank War set of rules for Bolt Action, with the goal of painting the infantry later. After tallying up his vehicles (1 Puma, 2 Panzer III, 2 Tigers), I ended up at around 1500 points, so decided to round that up to 2000 by buying a couple of extra tanks to fill out the numbers (a Panzer IV and a Stug IV). This would let this army play against my own 1000pts of British tanks and another friend’s 1000pts of Russian tanks.
I decided to go for a late war scheme (the famed Dunkelgelb, Olivgrün, Rotbraun camo) to match my own armies which I mostly picked because of their presence in Normandy. The Panzer IIIs are a little bit out of place there, but I found three sources that mention there being a handful present, good enough for me!
With that goal in mind I decided that for time efficiency I would paint the lot together as there are a lot of efficiencies to be gained there. Tank painting with oils washes and layers of varnish has a lot of drying time in between steps, while the steps themselves are relatively short. Here’s a quick summary of the steps:
- Undercoat – Vallejo Dunkelgelb Primer through the airbrush for the tank bodies, Vallejo Plate Mail Metal for the tracks (Kept separate where possible)
- Camo – Vallejo Olivgrün and Vallejo Rotbraun through the airbrush, I decided to do a loose striped pattern.
- Basecoat the bits that are not tank bodies (Rubber on the wheels, tracks where attached, attached equipment etc.)
- Gloss Varnish the lot
- Apply Decals
- Gloss Varnish again
- Overall oil wash – Abteiling 502 Dark Mud
- Streaking rust, applied dots and streaked them downwards – Abteilung 502 Oxide Patina
- Satin Varnish all over
- Used Graphite pencil to wear the edges
- Applied mud to tracks – AK Wet Mud
- Applied dust – Mig Europeant Dust Dry Pigment
- Matt varnish all over
Here’s a gallery of all the vehicles
Very fun little project, now I need to paint my British tanks otherwise this will all be in vain!
Lair of the Lagomorph 
Those look really nice, Nicolas! 🙂 Colours and “muck” look spot on! Well done on getting the decals applied so well – I opted not to bother on my early war Panzer III and Panzer IV because of those tricky vision ports and access doors in the turret sides (much easier with late war vehicles with turret skirts). I’ve also seen references to Panzer IIIs hanging around in small numbers until later in the war and they make a nice change.
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Thanks John! I definitely regretted going for the J version when I realised where those number decals needed to be applied! My background reading turned up the existence of P3s as command vehicles late in the war which is what I suspect some of those P3s in Normandy were. As far as I can tell some were basically Js with a bunch of antennas on, hence going with that mark.
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The tanks look great to my uneducated eyes! Fantasy and post-apocalypse are more my jam but its always nice to see some well-painted historicals like this. I hope you enjoy playing Bolt Action in the near future! 🙂
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Thanks! I’m mostly in the same boat with regards to historical stuff, i.e. I mostly do scifi/fantasy, but I do enjoy painting WW2 models when inspiration strikes. My first ever model was an airfix or revell Spitfire, so there is some nostalgia there too. Very excited to get all these models on the table and finally get some games in!
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