GERMAN SNIPER

I am currently in the process of building a Late War German Army for  Chain of Command. The first item I wanted to add to my  Support List is a Sniper team.

 After viewing pictures on the web of German snipers, I came across a unique pose by German sniper Matthaus Hetzenauer. 
I decided to perform plastic surgery on one of my 28mm German Warlords games plastic figures to mimic his pose.

Sniper team on the ruin Church grounds

Close up 

CONVERSION PROCEDURE

Legs:

Carefully remove the legs of a torso with a hobby knife and secure the torso upright with blue tac.

Right Leg: 

Repostion the right leg along the ground and trim to fit the torso.

Using blue tac, temporarily fix the leg in place to assist in getting the right position.

Once you are happy with the position fix in place with model glue. 

Left Leg:

Make a cut above the knee on the leg leg that was removed and position it on the ground so that it is upright in a position to support the left arm.

Note there will be a big gap between this leg and the torso.

To Pack out the gap use bits of white plastic styrene sheet and pack them into the gap and glue in place: you are not trying to replicate the detail of the trousers and leg, all you want to achieve is a solid link between the leg and torso. (later using Green stuff you can complete the gap and sculpture the detail)

Arms:

Locate this item from Warlord games German Grenadiers sprue.

Left arms:

Carefully remove all components of the left arm from the rifle.

This arm will be missing the hand, position the arm to rest on top of left leg and temporarily fix in place with blue tac.

Right arm:

trim the right arm with the rifle to fit hard up against the figures cheek.

Cut a small grove in the left arm so the rifle seats nicely in this slot and temporarily fix in place with blue tac.

Back to left arm:

Select the trim off a hand fro the spure and position it so it is covering the firing hand and rifle and fix in place with modelling glue.

Once set remove all the blue tac from the arms and fix all the components in place with modelling glue. Note large gaps need to be filled using white plastic stryene  sheet as described above.

Allow to dry,mix the two part Green stuff and with the aid of a modelling knife, contour the missing detail adding straps to binoculars and rifles.

Model a scope for the rifle using spare plastic sprue and white plastic styrene sheets.

I mount my figures on thin magnetic sheets with superglue and build up the base with Milliput. 

Undercoating, paint and flock and the Sniper team is ready to be shipped out on the next halftrack to the front line.

Matthaus Hetzenauer notorious for provoking fear amongst  Russian troops on the Eastern Front with 345 Kills.