Meet my army: Part V - Heavy SS-Panzerspäh Platoon

Actually, I should write about my panzerpionier platoon to make it in the proper order, but couple of additional half-tracks are still waiting to be painted, so I feel justified to skip them for a second ;)

So today, I would like to present the platoon that I recently painted - Heavy SS-Panzerspäh Platoon. It consists of SdKfz 231 8-rad vehicles.

Although the platoon is denoted as "heavy" it is a little bit misleading if you consider the late war period ;) To be honest the SdKfz 231 8-rad is pretty useless in engagement against most of the armored vehicles (OK maybe you can try to knock out half-tracks or mobile AA guns). However, it was not intended to be used for this purpose. I recall the words said by some german veteran who stated that the best recon patrols could be recognized by looking at the muzzles of their vehicles - the one that has no signs of gun powder or soot is the best :) Panzerspäh just should avoid going into combat. It is more important to remain undetected than to burn couple of trucks...

Personally, I plan to use them to support my infantry in assault against other infantry units. They will sneak near the enemy and reveal their position with the "eyes and ears" special rule. They can also provide fire support with their MGs and 2cm gun (ROF 3 and FP 5+ makes them more effective against dugged-in infantry than MGs). I also plan to use them to engage enemy artillery - of course mainly the one that can't fire back ;)

I had an opportunity to try them once against Finns. They were engaging BT-42 with a doubtful success ;) FP 5+ makes it hard to knock out any armored vehicle. Still I like them and I definitely give'em a try :)

Gallery

The SdKfz 231 8-rad models you can see below were produced by Battlefront. They are really nice models, however, the plate at the front of the vehicle is missing two parts between the plate and vehicle's frontal armor. I made them from the blister cover.

I tried to whether them by adding many small scratches to their armor to reflect the damage that would normally be done by the difficult terrain they have to go through. I also added some foliage camouflage - not much to not spoil the model.