'Epic Fail' from TeemuL - Stalingrad

Curt encourages us to use our creativity and imagination on these bonus rounds. Sometimes creativity and imagination are greatly bended, sometimes not. At first I had no idea what to paint for this bonus round. I don't have any historic miniatures, so I can't paint Waterloo, Gettysburg or anything like that. I also try to paint for the gaming table instead of dioramas, so any story written around for example old WHFB miniatures won't work. I quickly thought about LotR, but that story doesn't have much epic failures...

One night I was not getting any sleep, so I started again to think about these bonus rounds. I did make up couple of failures, but nothing epic. I was quite tired and started to think about what really is epic. For example, Napoleon tried to conquer Moscow. He didn't bother to take a look at the calendar or care about the supply lines when he was full of himself and the campaign ended in disaster, Moscow was not conquered. That was a failure, and on some scale it might be even an epic failure. But when something is tried for the first time, anything can happen, lots of unexpected events might occur and so on. One should learn from the mistakes and not make them twice. Napoleon didn't try it again.

So if someone after Napoleon tries to conquer Moscow and fails, it might be an epic failure. Back in the 1940s Hitler was bored "I don't want to fight these boring capitalists only, I want to fight the commies as well", he probably thought. By commies he meant Russia, who were Germany's secret allies at the time. He didn't bother to take a look at the calendar or care about the supply lines when he was full of himself and the campaign ended in disaster, Moscow was not conquered. Sounds familiar? If not, check the previous text in italics.

Hitler made the same errors as Napoleon did years before, that's something I would call an epic failure. Not only that, but Soviets really kicked some German butt later in the war and were the first Allied force to conquer Berlin. A major turning point of the Moscow campaign was the Stalingrad. The battles of Stalingrad are famous and I have chosen the battles of Stalingrad to be the symbol of the Epic Failure. Yes, symbol, not idea or chair or something like that. But as this is not a terrain building challenge, I needed to think of something to make my symbol come to flesh. Or steel.

My symbol of the Epic Failure of the Battles of Stalingrad is the German tank Panzer IV. Panzer IVs were used by the Germans for the whole WWII, they saw the first victories, they were in the Stalingrad, at the Omaha Beach and they saw the fall of the Third Reich.

This Panzer IV is plastic model by Days of Wonder. They are not officially in any official scale, but based on this conversation they are roughly 10mm: https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/658279/memoir-44-scale. I don't know if this model is Ausf. D, F2, G or any real model, I don't know which kind of engine it has nor how long barrel there is. Probably the unit markings are incorrect as well, since I don't know much about them. The camouflage is loosely based on this:

I was not able to make the German Cross fit in to the chassis, so I painted it into to the tower

I have only painted fantasy and sci-fi miniatures before, not any ancients or modern real life miniatures and I have never painted anything in this scale before. I hope the purists won't kill me because of my painting and I hope my "Use big brush and bold colors" technique is pleasant to watch by others as well.

The miniature is from a light war board game Memoir '44, which concentrates on the Battles of Normandy. It has several expansions however, one focusing on the Eastern Front and other especially on the battles of Stalingrad. But this tank is from the base game. It is a one piece and it has some details, tools, extra track pieces and stuff like that, so there are some details there. It is soft, bending plastic, which doesn't take paint very well. Same kind of plastic is used in some toys and FFG's Mansions of Madness miniatures feel the same. It was hard to get the undercoat, I should have sprayed the miniature (or wash it?), but the Finnish winter didn't give me a chance to do it outside. After I managed to get the first layer, it was a nice thing to paint. I tried to make it have a little bit rusty and weathered and snowy look (also something I have never really done).

In fact, I painted all 24 of them by hand and brush, how about that for epicness?

The next problem is that now these winter painted Panzers need to fighting in the Normandy at June as well... And that my M4A3 Shermans look quite dull now. :) But if the design suites you and you need lots of tanks, I recommend you to buy the Memoir '44 game - you will get lots of tanks, some artillery and lots of plastic soldiers (in different scale) as well. Plus a great light war game.

That's 24 10mm vehicles, so 72 points unless there are some deductions because of the missing bases? They don't have bases in the game, sometimes the unit has three tanks, sometimes four, they are removed, when there's damage and you need to see in what kind of terrain they are. So are they worth only 2 points a piece, making it 48 points? Or 2,5 to make it nice and even 60? Or are these toys even miniatures, which would result as 0 points and an epic fail? I leave that for the Curt to decide.

Different steps of painting

P.S. Any other game where I could use 24 Panzers?