Russian WW2 Scouts

Taking a break from the Lord of the Rings miniatures, I painted up some WW2 Russian scouts.

These are a mix of Artizan Designs and Black Tree Designs.  I had to look at reference photos on the web to do the camouflage - I don't think I did it too well...*sigh*

The guy in the first picture looks like he's doing some kind of funky Russian dance.

 

In a few hours I will be flying up north to work until Dec 19th.  It should be fun as there is a snow storm going on right now and my flight has already been delayed over an hour.

So until I get back, get painting!  ;-)

Painted while listening to:  Wayward by Blake Crouch

I finished listening to this one.  It was good!  Not as good as the first one, but I liked learning a bit of the back-story and what's going on in the world outside of Wayward Pines.  I'm looking forward to listening to the next one in the series when it is available! 

Bolt Action AAR November 30th 2013

I was very happy to be able to get a game going with my friend Grant - it has been a while and I wanted to try out my new Russian army!

I was defending the objective...errr...stand of pigs.  Grant was attacking me with his Germans.  We were using his new buildings, which were awesome!  I brought the 4ground building, roads and fields - purchased from Terra Firma Studios.  It was the first time I had used the terrain I purchased and it is amazing!  I love it and will be getting some more in the future.  Looks like the owner is sick right now though.  :-(

The table at the start of the game.

Grant's starting force.  Note all the trucks...there will be more coming in later.

Most of my starting force of Russians.  Sniper was in the second floor of the 4Ground building, there's a MMG in the barn and an AT-rifle team off in the field to the left offscreen.

Some of Grant's new buildings - awesome!  The roofs all come off too.  The church tower was to take some heavy fire from the inexperienced Russkie squad and bust its steeple.  :-(

Grant brings his force on the table, trucks leading the way (to my surprise).  It was our first time using transports.

I tried to surprise the German commandant with moving some of my force up to the nearest building.  In fact, I was trying to get my flamethrower team in the mix asap.

My anti-tank rifle team tried all game to hurt the tank to no avail!  You can see them far in the distance, taking fire from the tank.

My flamethrower rushes up and blasts the German squad in the church.  I killed a few but they survived their morale check.  In typical Russian fashion the flamethrower runs out of fuel after the one shot.  Dimitry forgot to fill up the tanks from the last battle apparently...

Some good shooting from the MMG in the Renedra barn knocked out the truck and (if I remember correctly) took out some troops.  You can see the Kubelwagen in the background.

After some confusion about how airstrikes worked, I brought my Russian LMG squad up to the pumpkin patch.

An overview of the mid-game.  All the little red dice you see are my pin markers (just little red dice I picked up on eBay).  

The Germans concentrate their fire on the Russian squad, which held up their advance for a few turns.

Sadly, they were whittled down over time (and even rallied!) and perished.

On the other side of the board, a my squad is wiped out and the HQ whittled down from three men to the LT.  He didn't pass his morale check for about three turns, so the Germans snobbishly ignored him! (sorry for the blurry picture)

My lone AT-rifleman lasted most of the game, but I don't think he even hit anything.

A very blurry picture of my green, inexperienced rifle squad that I get for free.  You get them for free because they suck!  After shooting at the Germans in the church on round two, they didn't pass their morale check until the second to last turn of the game.  *sigh*

The remains of a squad and the pioneers.  Unlike my flamethrower which fizzled out after one shot, Grant's flamethrower kept on blasting away the entire game!  Argh!  ;-)

About half of my remaining force at the end of the game.  The LT FINALLY passed his morale check and ran to the building.  The useless Russian squad is in front of the house.

Grant got excited about being so close to the objective that he sent up his medic first for some reason.  ;-)

This was a really fun game!  It was interesting to see how the Russians worked as I had never played with them before.  Most of my force was regular, the HQ and flamethrower was veteran and some of the support teams were inexperienced.  I really need to have a tank on the table.  I couldn't really do anything to the German's light tank and it dominated.  I managed to pick at the squads and support teams, but not much in the way of complete kills.  

I may have to pick up some transports too.  Grant used them to good effect, zipping them and his squads all over the table.

My most valuable players were the MMG team and the rifle squad in the building near the AT-rifle team.  My mortar got one hit in, and the sniper hit a few times.

I will definitely be tweaking my list for the next game!  :-)

And of course the obligatory pictures of Pixie:

Russian ZIS-3

I rushed to get this gun finished in time for a game, but then had to cut it in order to trim down some points!  LOL! 

I probably could have squeezed it on to a smaller base, but oh well.  It's a big gun, so it gets a big base!  :-)  This is the ZIS-3 76mm Divisional Gun from Warlord Games.  I had to look online at pictures of the gun in order to figure out where the gun shield went, etc.  No biggie. 

I used a 2-part epoxy glue to cement the thing on there, as well as the gun shield and wheels.  I didn't want them to be falling off on me as there's not much holding the gun shield on there, and the only contact points to the base are the wheels and legs.

The gun came with three crew, but the rulebook says it needs a fourth.  I had a spare figure from the Forward Observer pack, so I added him on there.

I like how you can use this in Bolt Action as either an AT-gun or as a light artillery piece.  Good flexibility, depending on what your opponent brings to the table.  I knew my nemesis wouldn't be bringing tanks, so felt fine leaving this one behind at home.

Painted while listening to:  Wayward by Blake Crouch

 

Wayward is the sequel to Pines.  I'm finding this one less exciting as you already know what's going on in Wayward Pines from the previous book.  Aside from that, the book is good so far!

More Russian Partizans, Alligator Man & The Creature from the Black Lagoon

Okay, I took a break from prepping miniatures and took some photos of the last batch of miniatures I polished off before I left for work.

First up are some more Russian Partizans from Black Tree Designs.  I really love the character in this miniature range.  All were easy to paint and I have a few more to finish off before I'm done all I purchased last time.

Just in time for Halloween are the remaining two monsters from Brigade Games.

I had a lot of fun painting these!  I tried something a little different with the bases on these - trying to make it look a bit more swampy.  I used this brown and red flock (which you can see a little bit in the pics) for a different effect, and to make it look dark and spooky.

I really like how they turned out and I think the eyes really pop.

I took this picture for my gaming pal and wasn't going to post it here, but why not!  

Microarmour!!!  :-)  I painted these a while ago, and as I will be gaming Cold War gone Hot I've been prepping up some more miniatures.  I haven't really done infantry at this scale before, so it's been trial and error.

Russian Partizans, The Fly and X-Tro

I have a bit of a mix for you today.  First up is some Russian partizans from Black Tree Designs.

These miniatures have a ton of character.  The young girl has a pack with a spare round LMG clip, and is a great assistant for the big LMG dude.

The bottom picture has some great red-necky Russian guys in it - great character again!
I am very happy with these BTD purchases and will pick up the rest in the near future.

Amongst my big purchase from Brigade Games, I picked up the mutant pack from the Atomic Cafe genre.  I got it because it has some great movie monsters in it and because they are sculpted by my friend Blackstone, who has sculpted some miniatures for me as well.

These were very fun to paint, especially The Fly.  I think the other is X-Tro, based on that silly horror movie from the 80's.  I am working on the other miniatures from the pack right now.

Tomorrow I head back to work for two weeks, so I will be absent again for a while.  I'll try and post any miniatures I get done today before I leave. 

Russian Heavy Mortar

I finally made it through the heavy mortar!  I must say that some of the crew were either miscast or badly sculpted.  One was so bad I tossed it out and added another from a different manufacturer.

The mortar and crew I bought from Warlord Games.  The soldier with the accordion is from the Black Tree Design Soviet Character Set II.  I bought the set mainly for the guy with his arms crossed, as he's awesome.  However, the accordion guy came in handy as a replacement.

If anyone has a spare DShk machine gun from a plastic kit or some other source, let me know!  I'd really like to have one for a HMG instead of using the Maxim.  :-)

Up next is my mobsters!!!

 

Russian Commissar, Flag Girl and Tank Hunters

I had this week off, and have been doing crazy amounts of painting!  I have only been posting some of the many, many Russians I have painted.  Here's a pic of the red horde so far:

I just finished assembling the two storey house yesterday.  The bare miniatures at the bottom right are future Harwood Hobbies releases!  :-)

Here's some pictures of another commissar and the forward air observer:

I used some decals from an old tank kit I had sitting around.  I like the colour of the hats, and have been using that scheme for the unassociated or miscellaneous officers, etc.  Flag girl (as I call her) is a Bolt Action mini, and the commissar is from Artizan.

I have a lot of flamethrower miniatures for some reason, and I painted up a couple from Black Tree Designs.

 

The above four miniatures are my tank hunters, made from the Warlord Games plastic set.  The plastic minis grew on me a bit, but I still prefer metal.  The guy in the first picture on the right looks a bit dodgy - I don't know what the sculpted facial features were supposed to be.  Maybe of asian heritage?  

Doing double damage on tanks really make them dangerous!