T-Gewehr

I wrote the other day that the German WWI anti-tank rifle wasn't very effective. I found an interesting video that either confirms or refutes that point depending how one interprets it:

At least part of my interest comes from wondering what their shoulders look like after that recoil; firing a Lee Enfield always left me bruised enough. The Early War Miniatures model comes being fired prone, which is correct, and the separately cast weapon is rather good, with the bipod at right angles to the model rather than flat on to the mould, an inconvenience that one often gets in plastic models. And it is pertinent to mention plastic models because it turns out that I already have a shed load of these things from the Hat German Heavy Weapons Set; so add that to the reasons why it was a waste of money. The EWM set comes as a two man team, but the second chap should be an ammo carrier rather than the observer with binoculars supplied. If the firer can't see a tank at a close enough range to shoot at it then I would suggest that he probably isn't the right man for the job. I could easily add rules for them to Square Bashing; indeed there are a whole host of little chrome tweaks I could envisage. Whether they would improve the game play is another question entirely.

While I'm discussing my Vapnartak purchases I should mention that the other model I bought was a 6" Heavy Howitzer rather than the 4.5" Field Howitzer that would actually have been on table at the scale we are playing. My logic for this was that the EWM 20mm models are somewhat smaller than the plastic 1/72 equivalents available from other sources which I already use for field guns. The 6" is very similar to the 4.5", but larger. It will substitute passably.