Just purchased a set of Armorscale Road Wheels with chains for a Staghound I'm building. The Staghound will be a representation of a picture I found in the Hockwald Area of Germany in March of 1945. What is the best way to paint and weather the wheels? I plan to use European earth pigments but, how should I paint the chains? Should I paint the tires w/chains flat black and dry brush the chains a metal color? From the pictures it looks as though both the wheels and chains are pretty well covered in mud or dry earth.
Help. I am a newbie to modeling. One can only play so much golf!!!!

Hi Phil and welcome to Armorama!
Your idea of drybrushing the chains on is correct. However, heavy mud is very hard to do convincingly without your model looking like you really messed up part of the build or paint and are hiding it by making the model look like a big brown glob.
Start light, then slowly go darker, but don't obscure the details, or else why did you buy tires with chains?
Don't try to start at the top of the learning curve. You know that doesn't work with golf, either. Get the basic stuff right before you try trick shots. If you search "mud" on this site or youtube, you'll get plenty of step by step mud techniques.