Fielding Schweres Panzerjäger-Regiment 656 in Flames of War

As promised last week, the article detailing ways to field Schweres Panzerjäger-Regiment 656 in Flames of War is now up on their website! There has been a lot of recent discussion online about the flexibility inherent in the V4 lists, and how that can lead to some ahistorical combinations, like Panthers in North Africa for example. Hopefully this article will show the opposite, how that flexibility can yield some 100% historical lists as well.

Ferdinands at Kursk!

An article I wrote detailing the history of Schweres Panzerjäger-Regiment 656 has just been published on the Flames of War main website in support of the new Ghost Panzers book. This article goes into the background of the unit and how it was fielded during the Kursk offensive is one of two on the unit I've submitted at this point. If you read to the end, next week an article detailing how to accurately field the unit in Flames of War is on tap!

Battlefront Updates Ferdinand Assembly Instructions

With the latest update to the website, Battlefront has updated the assembly instructions for the new Ferdinand Tank-hunter Platoon box (GBX127). The box art, of course, still features the original model and retains the circular hatch error, but had the rectangular hatch attached correctly. Hopefully at some point they can go back and re-master those metal tracks...

Battlefront's New Ferdinand - A Design Study

I received my new Ferdinands in the mail yesterday, and imagine my surprise to discover that the whole resin miniature as well as the tracks had been re-done for this new release. I chalk the confusion up to the fact that if you look at the box art on the new Ferdinand Tank Hunter Platoon box (GBX127), the cover art is all of the original GE131 Ferdinand miniature. In this blog I'll go through the details of the new miniature as compared to the old miniature, line drawings of the real thing, and photographs of the Ferdinand in action at Kursk. In many ways the new miniature is an improvement over the old miniature, but there are some notable gaps!

The Front

So let's start right up front looking at the forward view of both miniatures as compared to a line drawing. In the image below, the new miniature is on the left, the old miniature is in the middle, and the line drawing is at right. It's immediately apparent that there have been a lot of changes. The rivet count on the new miniature is correct - the old miniature had too many bolts on the front armor - though the side angles look a tad closer to the real thing on the old miniature. The track width is also more proportional on the new version, and it includes the headlights. The mantlet width of the new miniature is also better.

Modeling Schweres Panzerjäger-Regiment 656 in Flames of War

It's been a while since I posted. Unfortunately some non-miniatures wargaming work and a few major holidays have been impacting my hobby time, but I'm hoping to get back on track here in the next few weeks as a couple of major obligations move to the rear-view mirror. With the release of Ghost Panzers, the V4 mid-war German lists are largely complete at this point. While I'm still working on my Stalingrad force, with the release of the Kursk books, I can finally (FINALLY) get around to doing a force I've wanted to field properly for years - Schweres Panzerjäger-Regiment 656!

Unless you've been under a rock, you'll know that the Ferdinand / Elefant is one of my favorite German oddball AFVs. I even wrote up the late war list and modeling guide that were published by Battlefront for Flames of War V3. That being said, truly fielding a representative 656th force in V3 using the published lists was difficult - and impractical given the high point cost of the Ferdinand tank destroyer itself. There are a lot of ways to get the unit on the tabletop now in V4 using a combination of Ghost Panzers and Iron Cross lists, and I'll likely be fielding mine as support for a Grenadier list, though with the available command cards, there are a lot of other options.

In this particular article I'll go through the various fun and unique vehicles that comprised the unit and how they can be represented in Flames of War. Fortunately all of them are already available through Battlefront's existing line of miniatures, but many of them could use a little extra detailing to make them better represent the unit as it fought at Kursk.