Panzer IV platoon.

by Kasper Fischer

My first 1/100 platoon for my first Flames of War army.

 I love gaming. Especially strategic or tactical games. I have played about a million games of Risk and Axis & Allied through the years. Now I mostly play computer games but it's still tactical games, like Company of Heroes. I have been looking at wargames videos on YouTube searching for modelling channels and I became real curious about the miniature game, called Flames of War.

Flames of War is a World War II game, where you play company commander and have to carry out either an offensive or defensive mission. It's not really realistic and the rules are a bit strange from time to time but I have joined a local club and have been trying it out the last couple of months. I really like it and have decided to build my first army.

The game is made by a company, called Battlefront and they manufacture almost every WWII vehicle made in the war but they are very expensive. With all my other hobby projects, I don't really need another money pit so I have been looking for a cheaper option. The scale is 15mm or 1/100 and as you guys properly know, it's not easy to find models in that scale. New manufactures are starting to appear with much cheaper kits.

Plastic Soldier is one of the new companies. They have started to make a range of armoured vehicles and infantry but are mostly focused on German late war tanks. Because of that, I have decided to start with a German Panzer company and I have made a test platoon of Pz IV's to see how good the kits are. I most say I really impressed by the quality. The box comes five kits for €22, which I think is a really good deal and the details are real crisp looking.

The unpainted tanks from Plastic Soldier.

I have added some over-sized antennas to make them more robust for gaming.

It took me two nights to complete the five tanks and I'm really pleased how they came out. They are only a test platoon and they will not be included in the final army list because I didn't have the right decals for the numbers and such. I have also since decided to add magnets in the turrets for safer handling during gaming and I don't want to after install them in the finished models.