Warpaint Armour #1, Armour of the Eastern Front, 1941-45, German and Soviet Armour from Barbarossa to the Fall of Berlin. Published by AV Vallejo, Edited by David Grummitt

So, I decided to brave the snow and cold to fight off a bout of cabin fever and headed Up North for the Mid-Michigan show. I always end up getting slammed with snow and a white knuckle drive home, but I don’t learn, do I? Last Cavalry was there and I was surfing his tables when I found this book. I picked it up and started looking at the Russian armor and was hooked. To be fully transparent, I do like my big green machines, but am only a so-so fan of German armor. If you like one or the other, this is a good book, if you like both, it’s a must have for the shelf. I would also like to point out that at in the less than $30 range, it’s also very affordable.

The first thing that grabbed my attention was the author of the Russian section, no less than James Kinnear, who is well known for his books and articles on Russian armor and his use of primary source material for his research. Thomas Anderson is the author of the German section, and is no slouch himself when it comes to research.

So let me back off right now and go into a bit of serious shiny object syndrome on this book. Not only is this a neat piece of kit for the shelf, but it’s the first in a, wait for it, ten volume series in a cooperative effort between Guideline Publications and AV Vallejo. For those of you not familiar with Guideline Publications, they are the publishers of Military Modelcraft International, the magazine that supplanted Military Modelling as my favorite modelling magazine. For those of you not familiar with Vallejo, well, you probably live under a rock or build cars. The series will cover everything from WWI and between the wars, to several volumes of armor today. This is gonna be good.

So any way, back to this volume. The book is printed in a soft cover format with very good production values and is 82 pages long. The core of the book is eight articles, four cover the Russians and four cover the Germans. There are also full color profiles for each article, and full color pictures, when available. In the Russian section, these are mostly from Kubinka and Russian war memorials. Oddly enough, the only color photos in the German section are also from Kubinka. An interesting interlude between the two sections is a small gallery of models from world renowned modelers of the subjects of the articles from the pages of past issues of Military Modelcraft International.

The subjects of the historical articles are Red Army medium armored cars, the SU-76 Self-propelled gun, The Soviet KV heavy tanks and the IS heavy tank series. The top of the batting order for the Germans are “Strange Bugs”, a history of Germany’s late war light panzers, The long barrel Mark IV’s, Kanonenwagen and the Sturmgeschutz III, ausfuhrungF/8 and G. There is some good info I here, and some nice profiles to inspire future builds. Of course, all of the color call outs are from the Vallejo paint range.

I purchased my copy from Last Cavalry, they are available at www.lastcavalry.com.