The Tank park expands

28/04/2013 2 Comments

Taking advantage of a recent discount offer from one of my favourite sculptors, I bought some more tanks along with JP:

The “delay”, was a mere 5 days between placing the order and it arriving !
That’s a quality service, as usual from Copplestone Castings.

Now as it happened, I was out when the package was delivered (and signed for as per tacit agreement with my regular postie – this is a Local Postal Service, for Local People, we’ll have no trouble here).

And I was out collecting some of my BoB vehicles from Bennett Pinning Services (C)(TM). In this case some Austin-Putilov Armoured Cars by Sloppy Jalopy which generated a few swear words but when finished look excellent. And a Copplestone Garford-Putilov armoured car that the Bolsheviks used a lot.

Finally some FT17’s that arrived in the Crimea and Odessa regions thanks to the French and their Greek allies. A few more arrived in Siberia as knock off copies by the Americans and were promptly diverted by Red sympathisers to the Bolshevik partisans. FT-17s by Brigade Games.

Two with titchy cannon, and one with a Hotchkiss HMG.

Turrets have magnets so they revolve, and as you can see Bennett Pinning Services provide comfy foam trays as well. 😉

Maybe I’ll change my title to Director of Marketing, Bennett Pinning Services… 😉

In the meantime, I have painted and based 200 inches of fencing and have a number of new units ready for photoing so stand by…I guessed people wouldn’t be enthralled by lots of fences…

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BoB: Barn and Outhouses

21/04/2013 1 Comment

I bought several buildings from Brigade Games a month or so ago. The box arrived and I thought when picking it up it must be a part delivery not the full thing. I was wrong.

The resin they use is very lightweight but very sturdy.

This is the barn (duh!), the other two buildings are WIP. I often find that there are not enough barns and outhouses on wargames tables.

The roof is removeable.

So I finished off the spare 4Ground MDF buildings I had. An outhouse and a privy. These help increase the clutter around the village that I will be putting together for my BoB Big Game in June 22nd if anyone is interested).

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BoB: Encounter at Tryitoutskigrog

13/03/2013

Our second game of the day, Gav and I played using the test rules using some of my BoB troops.

I was worried I didn’t have enough Bolsheviks for him, but it turned out I have painted 40-50 of them years ago and forgotten all about them !

Again Gav set up in a straight at ’em linear fashion which, as it happens the scenery favoured. This is something that will be changed in futurer, and I am at work on some Renadra fencing to go around some of these cottages.

His forst shot onto my artillery resulted in a complete wipe out my artillery crew. A brutal, but effective set of rules there !

His troops took up positions in two burnt out cottages, and so I had to try and move ky troops round them.

In the meantime, his Bolsheviks, sacked the church,my Shock troopers hurled grenades to no eect, and I generally lost !

Still first test of the rules and they had some merit – long way to go.

The scenery is coming along. The game mat looks more brown/blecahed than it really is. I have another three to enable me to dress a table 16×8 (actually 16×6 on the boards) for the BoB game in late June.

Louis caught a few more pictures here.

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BoB/RCW: White Artillery and some scenery pieces

27/02/2013

Louis the camera, got an outing today to take some photos of newly finished scenery pieces, and the second White Russian artillery piece I’d painted:

I still need to get to grips with the technical aspects of the new camera (Louis), but the focus is much better. Lighting remains an issue.

As you can see I replaced the officer for this second artillery piece, with a different one from the Copplestone White Officers pack (BC25). I have a third artillery piece to build which will make a full battery, asnd which will probably be actually deployed only once or twice in my life !

In preparation for my planned Back of Beyond Big Game in June I ordered and started building some scenery pieces. Whilst the Ukriane and parts of the Don are part of ther “Black Earth belt”, other areas are very much more steppe and semi desert regions, and as my BoB figures must also do service in central Asia, Mongolia and Manchuria I use a lighter soil mix for the bases…so obviously as Scenery Boy I need a different set of Trees! for this game…

Again I went for Woodland Scenics trees from Antics, and the scale chart indicates they are 24-32′ high on an O/S scale which is roughly 28mm.

Which looks more realistic for the figures.

The trees will be situated around the buildings on the battlefield, as open steppe of the Don, Kuban and Kalmyk regions is obviously grassland and any trees would be planted around settlements.

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BoB: Big Game June 2013 book it now

17/02/2013 2 Comments

A strangely appropriate location for a Back of Beyond game…

To be held on either 8-9th or 22-23rd June 2013.

Let me know by the end of February so I can organise stuff as this is the first Big Game for the Back of Beyond that has been organised I think.
Two possible scenarios depending on attendance:

– 1918 – the Don/Kuban – Germans, Reds, Whites and Cossacks
– 1920 – Tannu Tuva – Reds, Whites, Mongols and Chinese.

Let me know if you are interested, and what forces you can bring.

£10 per head which includes the cost of booking the hall, and lunch.
The lunch is enough to ruin any diet given this w/e’s experience !

As per other games sessions, a curry night hosted at my house just up the road is also on offer.
I am also able to offer a (double) bed, and couches if people want to stay over night.

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BoB/RCW: White Command II

14/02/2013

Here are some figures for my White Command unit, to lead their ragged troops into battle:

One of the standards has slipped a little as you can see – somenthing you notice in a close up photo like this is totally unseen when deployed on the table. The second more animated standard is the St Andrew’s flag that was occasionally used and was also the standard of the Imperial Russian Navy.

A Brigade Games and an Artizan figure – a medic, and a mad officer wielding two mauser pistols (one with snail magazine). I painted the Officer’s ‘tache white, like the one in Dr Zhivago.

Get back in your ranks !!
Even more officers !

One’s from Brigade Games, the rest are Copplestone. As you should notice, the right hand one is the officer from the White Field Gun. I swapped him with another White Officer to make the command and artillery units more varied.

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BoB: More revolting Bolsheviks

11/02/2013

As part of my plan to get through figures and paint them as I find them, here are some Bolsheviks, even though they aren’t per se part of this year’s painting plan.

Artillery:

I had to check I wasn’t missing a crewman – the Bolshevik gun crew by Copplestone (BU6) only has 4 crew, whilst the White gun crew number 5:

A Bolshevik standard bearer:

The slogan is “Forward !“:

Nice figures.
Some White command and artillery tomorrow.

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BoB: Ragged White Russians

06/02/2013

As commented earlier the White Russians in the RCW had way to many officers and way too few ordinary infantry. they resorted to conscription, but all levels of their armies suffered from supply problems. I’ve just painted up 10 Ragged White Russians from Copplestone (BU23) and have another 30 on the painting table.

there are more than 10 variants of the model, but I won’t bore you with each and every one.

The models are based on a fairly well known photo:

The Whites were supplied lots of weapons and uniforms by the Allies. Not much got to the front due to corruption and inefficiency.

So much of these supplies reached the Bolsheviks, that Trotsky sent the British General Knox a letter: “thanking him for his help in equipping the Red troops” (Figes 1996).  Knox was dubbed the Quartermaster General of the Red Army.

Some of these models include Lee-Enfields, some are in British tunics, most are in ragged Russian uniform and most with Mosin-Nagants. These poor souls made up the majority of the White Russian armies on all fronts.

Gen. Yevgraf Zhivago: [narrating over a military parade in Moscow]The party looked to the peasant conscript soldiers – many of whom were wearing their first real pair of boots. When the boots had worn out, they’d be ready to listen. When the time came, I was able to take three whole battalions out of the front lines with me….By the second winter, the boots had worn out… but the line still held. Even Comrade Lenin underestimated both the anguish of that 900-mile long front… as well our own cursed capacity for suffering. Half the men went into action without any arms… irregular rations… led by officers they didn’t trust.

I’m designing a game system to generate BoB/RCW factions/armies, and the Whites (and the Reds) will be getting a lot of these demoralised poortly equipped troops.

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BoB: Tanks

05/02/2013

Grinding my way through the playroom, I stumbled over my second armoured park (the first being the AVBCW armoured park). Loads of Brigade Models/Company B Mark V tanks.

I had assembled the main resion components but shyed away from the metals guns and other components. As I commented to Richard:

This is partly why I’ve had them a good few years and not built them – they’re complex and fiddly and I knew unless they were pinned, then I’d waste a lot of time bodging it before they then fell apart when stared at too intently.
One thing I have learnt from doing up houses, is that you need the right tools for the job, if you bodge it, it’ll break/fall apart, and then you’ll have to do it all over again properly.

As in, I’ll wave a little white flag and admit to not have drill bits small enough, and not having the skill to do that level of detailled pinning – I can do bigger stuff no problem (size isn’t everything).

L-R: Male; Hermaphrodite; and Female
(Oh yeah is that going to generate some spurious Google search hits or what ?!)

The Male Mark Vs had a cannon in each sponsoon; the Females had two HMGs (Hotchkisses) in each sponsoon; and the Hermaphrodite tanks had a a single male sponsoon (cannon + HMG), and a single Female sponsoon (2 HMGs). HMGs were also mounted (this spurious Google search is getting worse…) on the front of the tank and also one…on the back.

So off they went to Uncle Rich’s Pinning Service(TM).

As I originally bought these for my BoB armies I was planning on painting them in White/Red Russian colours, but seeing as my interests in WW1 and AVBCW have expanded their use I’m now a little stuck as to what to paint them. My books on RCW armoured vehicles indicate that they would probably have arrived painted in British colours: either a Khaki Green colour; maybe a drab Grey; or possibly khaki. Books on WW1 British armour indicate all of the above, especially Khaki for those in the Middle East, and I’m guesing those would have been shipped to the AFSR first. Then there is some indication that the Whites/Reds used camo patterns (see Kolmiots et al 2001 – Tanks of the Russian Civil War). Certainly both the Whites and the Reds went to town with extra markings and slogans on all the tanks and armoured cars that came into their possession.

So I think I’ll go for a plain starter with green/khaki (I may need to deploy these models on the 16th for the AVBCW Big Game JP and I are organising).

Good job I have another 2 of each of these models stashed away awaiting attention. 😉

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BoB/RCW: Cossacks II

24/01/2013

Well I painted some White Russian Cossacks before, but here they are with fur caps (Copplestone BU36).

Actually its very useful to have a different set of Cossacks so you differentiate units.

One unit of 10 have caps, another unit of 10 has fur hats, then the third is a mixture. 😉

Next up some Shock Troops.

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