Yet another German…

This one is a Perry DAK figure with no modifications, just painted in regular German colors, the tunic as an early war model. Rivet counters will probably find fault with some of the kit, but it looks convincing enough to me.

And one more…

At the moment one figure at a time is about what I can manage. This one is a Perry miniatures Afrika Korps NCO with a Warlord head, and painted as GD at Kursk. Unfortunately the magazine of the SMG wasnt perfectly cast, and that shows now that the figure is painted. I really should and want to go back and fix that with green stuff, but I am not sure that is a good idea – I may well be that Ill only make it worse. Other than that though, I was pretty happy with it.

Another German…

Just one more Foundry German, again this one has a Warlord Games head. These figures are exactly what you want in ww2 Germans for games like CoC or BA; they wear the high boots, but not the gas mask bag on the chest as some other makers versions. This means that they have the look of a very generic German soldier, which will work well for anything from a 1940 to a 1944 setting.

German officer

Have had very little time over for painting lately, but managed to do this German officer. I painted him in a early war style uniform but a 1943 style of camo helmet cover. I have prepared a few more figures in a similar style and hopefully will be able to finish them in the coming weeks.

A game, sort of…

This weekend I had the opportunity to try out my gaming boards and new terrain pieces with a couple of old friends. We played a bit of Black Powder but only did two rounds or so before we called it a night. Although the gaming didnt really take off, I was very pleased with the way my new fences, roads, stone walls and trees looked. For Napoleonics, it is good not to clutter the board too much, and thus relatively easy to make enough scenery.

It also became clear that I could easily fit a couple of more board sections in the room. The gaming area in the pictures is 160x180cm, and would be extended to 160×240, which is a good size for Finnish war scenarios.

I have also done a bit of repainting to make as many 20-man units as possible out of the line infantry. At the moment, about half the line units are this size and the rest are still 16-man units. This looks good on the table and with this table size, I think that larger units would take up too much space (my basing system unfortunately gives units a slightly larger frontage than what is typical for Napoleonics).

More Russians

The latest additions to the 1808 Russians are Grodno hussars and Velikie Luki grenadiers (they will pass for Azov regt as well). These are small units, which will hopefully be enlarged somewhat in the future. Even so, they are a useful addition to the Russians, as they are still slightly outnumbered by their Swedish and Finnish opponents.

The hussars are Perry figures with Brigade Games heads; the grenadiers are Brigade Games figures.

Pz III command tank

I finished a third panzer III intended for the 1943 setting. The tank model is by Waffenkammer and the commander figure by Empress. I left out the side skirts around the turret on this one, but added some of the hull skirts, which is the opposite of what I did with the other two tanks. I imagine that the commander may have benefited from better vision (the skirts obscured the view quite a bit). I still have the hull skirts for the other two tanks. I might go back and add them at some point, but its not a priority…

The side skirts and the rails on which they are attached are very well made on the Waffenkammer model. It was quite easy to cut the skirts up into smaller pieces and hang them on the rails, pretty much as they would have done in real life. In 1943 in particular these skirts came off all the time because the attachements werent very good. As a comparison, the way this is modelled on the old Warlord resin pzIV, which I did recently, makes it impossible to model loose plates without extensive conversion work.

Trees

A quick update on my terrain making. I mounted some trees -i recently bought from a Polish maker, https://drzewamodelarstwo.pl/en/

These trees are rather expensive, but at least they are in the EU, so no import fees (!), something one is becoming used to when it comes to hobby supplies these days. And considering the quality and size of the trees, I would say they are quite a steal. The trees come with just the roots, so the mounting on bases was my part of the whole thing. I built up the bases in places and added texture and gravel in a couple of different sizes. I painted this and drybrushed it in the same way I do miniature bases and other terrain pieces. I then added many different types of Woodland Scenics foliage clumps and their “fine” and “blended” “turf” material. Using several different colored types gives variation and you can almost do a sort of shading and highlighting of the ground. When the pictures were taken the PVA was not wholly dry, so there are some white spots in the pictures that will disappear when it has dried completely.

Hussars

A recently finished two more badly needed Russian hussars. I started with these many months (even years?) ago. They are a pain because every figure requires a bit of remodeling to fit the period (1808). The base models are by Perry miniatures, but the heads have been replaced with period appropriate Brigade Games heads wearing older type shakos. The tassels are scratch made using wire and green stuff, which is fairly difficult (at least for my skill level!). To make matters worse, the painting process was nearly ruined because of cracking of the AP wash, which is a recurring problem for me. Whether it is caused by shoddy undercoating, humidity (too high or too low?), too short a drying time, I really dont know. Anyhow, I am happy to have finished these, these Grodno hussars were the most commonly seen Russian cavalry unit in the Finnish war together with the ubiquitous cossacks of course. Consequently I will need to do at least 12 or preferably 16 of these. So far, I have done 3…

A crazy idea

For my last set of tank riders, I thought of a crazy idea. One of the officer figures I have for my Soviets is a bonus figure that comes with the Warlord Games army book. The bonus figure holds a flag in one arm. I though this was silly at the time, and just removed the flag and used the figure with an open hand where the flag had been. But I still had the flag in my bits box, and when I was working on my tank riders, I noticed that the figure holding a machine gun could quite easily be modified to hold the flag instead. I removed the mg and connected the flag to the figure by sticking a steel spear into drilled holes at both ends. The figure of course was very top heavy, and would have fallen over on its own. So, to balance the figure up I glued it to a base on which I also mounted another figure, so that the flag could rest on that figure. In that way, the base became better balanced, and could sit well enough on the back of the tank.

I will paint the base and add one more figure to it, perhaps an officer. The flag could serve the purpose of marking out an officer group from the infantry squads on the other tanks. The Bolt Action rules actually dont mention officers being able to ride on tanks, but it seems logical, and can easily be house-ruled that way. Of course the idea looks more like a propaganda poster than something that would have happened in actual combat, but its neat just the same. And it makes me want to get all my Soviets on the table all at once for a pic. They are problably 150 men now, with 10+ vehicles, several artillery pieces and numerous support teams.