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Stalingrad, December 1942, the shattered remains of the great city on the Volga are covered by a thick layer of snow. The largely encircled survivors of the 6th Army make desperate attempts to punch through the increasingly well organised and equipped Soviet forces, but to no avail...




This project began as an eye catcher for the SIG 144 display at Scale Model World 2024, part of a series of armoured vehicle vignettes.

I was also motivated by a desire to use some of the many whitemetal and Gashapon vehicles and figures that I have accumulated. Until the recent improvement in resin 3d printing, these were by far the best way to get figures and vehicles in 144th but the figures in particular are now showing their age compared to the lovely delicate 3d models available, so it seemed like a good excuse to clear out some of the stash.



This scene was inspired by the availability of this 3d print from Highland 3d prints on eBay, with the iconic profile familiar from books and films on the urban battle.



The building print is 10mm wargame scale (roughly 1/160) so a little small, particularly the door, compared to my figures. So I added a layer of cork beneath it to raise the door higher.

Cork offcuts were also placed into piles and I used Duluxe Materials Create & Sculpt paste to blend the areas which will represent snow covered debris.



I wanted to take advantage of the smaller scale and include a convoy of vehicles, so this became the layout, following several hours of reference book inspection to get a plausible mix of types.

The lead Panzer II and trailing Stug A are Arrowhead whitemetal models, the Hanomags are injection kits from Victrix. The Grant was an early 3d print I picked up several years ago which was filament with unusable amounts of stratification. But covered in forgiving snow paste it made an interesting visual reference.



Although I don't have any shots of the Hanomags under build, these are two others I made up for a parallel project. The detail is lovely and they come with a selection of accessories which provide nice variation of detail.



Unusually for this scale they, even include decals.



Paint was very straight forward. Panzer Grey was still de rigeur at this time and varied amounts of whitewash were added.

Figures painted in a mix of winter camo and uniform to represent the chaos of this later stage of the battle.



With that it was just a case of careful blending of the snowy texture paints and some additional debris to give a suitable look to the scene.

A name plate was added, produced by Name it Plates. The title for the scene comes from the 1959 German film of the battle, summing up what must have been a 'do or die' attitude of the last German survivors.

The final touches were added just minutes before we started loading the car for Telford for the display.



Thanks for reading - this model and its cousins will be on the SIG144 IPMS UK tour this year, do come and see them in person.