Description

Sculptor Bill Chilstrom has created a great looking figure for Warriors with his German Stormtrooper (Verdun 1916) #WA54033. Our miniature friend is cast in a dramatic throwing pose holding a multi-head grenade and wearing his gas mask.

The figure is crisply cast in cream colored resin and is broken down into seven pieces as follows;
• The legs and torso are cast as a single piece.
• The arms.
• Head.
• Right hand with grenade.
• The rifle and bayonet are cast separately.

The fit of the parts was quite good with just a hint of Krystal Kleer being needed to fill a small gap on the right arm to torso joint and there was minimal flash to clean up. Assembly took less time to accomplish than it did for you to read this. (Well almost!)

the Build

The only snag I had during building this figure was removing the rifle and bayonet from the pour blocks. I was careful, but still managed to break the rifle mid-stock. It was a clean break and was easy enough to fix with some CA. I also broke the bayonet while removing it and decided to leave it off as it was a more severe break. I left off the head and the right hand/grenade until after the majority of the painting was complete and painted them separately and then attached them. The sling on the rifle is a piece of blue painters tape painted brown.

Painting

I applied a nice coat of Tamiya white primer as a starting point. I was going to try my hand at using Vallejo’s acrylics entirely for this build. Well, what started out ok, soon turned to frustration as I couldn’t quite get the hand of building the thin layers required with this paint. I reverted back to my oils, which worked very well. The Vallejo acrylics provided a nice base for the shadows and hi lights that I added with the oils. I painted the helmet using acrylics for the main colors and lamp black oil for the black striping. The oils flowed very smoothly and worked well for this. The wood grain effect on the rifle stock was done by streaking the appropriate color over the tan colored stock until the right wood grain effect showed up. A couple drops of Testors gloss was added to the lens areas of the gas mask. The final touch was some MIG pigments to make some mud for our grenade throwing friend. A little thinner, some pigments, and viola’, mud. I applied this around his lower extremities and called it good.

Conclusion

This is a great figure that will build quickly and would look great in a diorama, or as a stand alone offering. Take care when removing the rifle and bayonet. Thanks to Warriors for the review sample.