Let's Switch Fronts! 12mm WW1 In The East...

Russian WW1 infantry and MG teams - 12mm metal castings from Kallistra.

History has shown that trying to fight wars on two fronts is likely to have disastrous consequences...on the other hand, painting figures for wars on two fronts should be just fine, right? Let's hope so - we get started here with a group of Russian infantrymen, based in a similar fashion to my recent western front efforts. These are all 12mm figures from Kallistra's excellent and comprehensive early WW1 collection.

Closeup showing some of the riflemen, and an officer.

Yes, my interest in the opening phases of the Great War has spilled from the western front to the east, where the Central Powers confronted the might of the Russian Empire. This has been percolating for some time...I have long been fascinated by the titanic struggle in the east during the Second World War - and quite a lot of my hobby effort has been directed to that setting (in multiple scales, naturally :), but the confrontation in the east during the Great War has always been a bit of a mystery to me.

Not a ton of kit on the figures...they are ready to make a daring assault

The more I dove into the early western front confrontation, the more I wondered at the eastern front. Like, what went on there? Barbara Tuchman's outstanding "Guns of August" sets things up nicely, and weaves in the tale of the mobilization and opening moves culminating in the near-destruction of a Russian army at Tannenberg.  But Tuchman's book is about the opening moves...and treats the Austrians as an afterthought, even though their empire lay at the heart of the crisis which triggered the war. The mystery of WW1's eastern front grew for me...

The wheeled, water-cooled MG team, a classic of WW1 images and games...

"For the Tsar! I'm sure it will be a short war!"

And these sorts of musings have a way of bubbling through my head for quite a while before suddenly turning into a project - and here we are now! I thought it best to start with some Russian infantry - I will certainly be needing plenty of it, I expect. I see no reason the "1914" rules by Great Escape Games would not work perfectly well for an eastern front game, so I am copying the overall basing and approach used for my western front figures.

In addition to some painting for this setting, a new book dropped this fall, which I am looking forward to reading and which I suspect will help sustain the painting momentum into the winter...

Looking forward to cracking this open!

That's all for now - thanks for reading! 

 

Bolt Action Soviet Winter 1:56 KV-1/2

I'm making a tentative start on a new project here, a winter-themed WW2 Soviet force. I picked up the big Bolt Action box set from Meeplemart (they had offered it for an unbelievable deal - less in CAD than the MSRP in USD!) and it included a 1:56 KV tank that can be assembled as either (or both!) a KV-1 and KV-2. 

First I'll show the big chap, the KV-2. Equipped with a 152mm howitzer, the KV-2 was designed as a bunker buster par excellence. Plus it just looks insane with that top-heavy extra-tall turret. So cool.

Of course the heavily-armoured KV hull was identical on both the -1 and -2. In the early part of the war in the East, the Germans' tank guns and AT guns had real problems with the Russischer Koloss; there's a famous story about a KV holding up an entire kampfgruppe of 6. Panzerdivision at Raseiniai. 

I used the Sonic Sledgehammer technique to paint the tank - basecoat with Castellan Green, panel highlights with Deathworld Forest, then sponge with Corax White.

Mr. Sledgehammer recommends as a next step that you sponge on some of the basecoat - but using straight Castellan Green sponged on, is too light - probably because it's going on over a white basecoat rather than black. But I just darkened the Castellan with some craft black and it worked OK.

Before that though, I applied the decals. The Soviets often painted tactical markings and slogans over top of the whitewash so that's what I did on the KV-1. With the KV-2, the yellow didn't show much contrast over the whitewash, so I put those decals on top of the green, then sponged the Corax around it.

I also applied some sponge Corax on the tracks and running gear, like it had been driving through snow. I didn't use Sonic's baking soda mix to apply snow to the model though.

I'm OK with how the model turned out. Lots of base colour showing through the whitewash and I like the effect.

Sadly all of the Bolt Action models are in 1:56 scale rather than my preferred 1:48, and especially with larger vehicles the difference is quite pronounced. At left is a Hobby Boss 1:48 KV-1 I painted for my Finns, and at right is the 1:56 KV-1 I just painted. But I guess as long as I don't put a 1:48 KV next to it on the wargames table it should be OK. But it'll be kinda weird for the 1:48 T-34 I'll be building next to be a bigger model than this one. So it goes. 
 

Back To WW1 - Western Front in 12mm

12mm WW1 French in early war uniform - metal figures from Great Escape Games.

This is a fairly quick post - but that is the point, to get into the habit of posting! Here we have a collection of 12mm sized WW1 French, resplendent in their lovely early-war blue and red uniforms! These are metal castings from Great Escape Games, part of their range of figures for their "1914" game.

Infantry, a little closer up - the chef-de-battalion can be seen on the front base, with the red kepi and sword drawn. 

View showing the detail of the packs on the infantrymen. This sort of detail puts these figures a cut above the sculpts from Kallistra, although both are great, and I recommend both. 

These sculpts are chunky, and full of character, and are a real treat to paint. In the "1914" game, each base of four figures is meant to represent a company, so these four bases together would represent a battalion - they would also take a Hotchkiss MG along that I painted earlier this year. 

Another closer shot of some of the other infantry.

My 1914 French force for this game and setting is still not totally rounded out, but it is getting to a much better place - we now have two battalions of infantry, a regiment of dragoons and a unit of the famous 75mm guns - more than enough to confront some Germans in a recreation of a battle from the tragic "Plan XVII" and the Battle of the Frontiers. As always, watch for more to come during the approaching Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge! 

To Alsace!

And, you know, nothing helps a project move along like trying it another scale...so watch this space for more on that too...

That's all for now - thanks for reading! 

A Couple More LI Tanks

Kratos tanks for the Imperial Fists in Legions Imperialis. Plastic kits from GW.

It's been...what...well, a quite the "little while" since my last post here. I have no good excuse - and I have been painting, really! Just have been quite put-things-off when it comes to getting useful photos of the output, and the procrastination has certainly been adding up time-wise. Well, let's try again to break that habit! Just a small post to get things started - a pair of tanks for Legions Imperialis, GW's "Epic" reboot which was released last year. These are Kratos heavy (ish?) tanks, painted in the colours of the VII Legion Astartes, the Imperial Fists.

Top view of the tank mounting the big meta-thing...looks like a fun weapon, very "30k". 

I use the term "heavy (ish?)" not because the Kratos is in any way a light vehicle - you can probably tell by all of the weapons, it is not a light tank at all. But it is also still smaller than the Fellblades and Glaives, so I guess one way to look at it is that this is the heaviest tank the Space Marine Legions can access - for now. 

View showing the standard battle cannon. I mounted a commander in the cupola of this one, to mark it as a "command tank" should such a thing be needed in the game. 

I've said it before with the Legions Imperialis models - they can be a touch fiddly (assembling the sponsons is tricky AF and should not be attempted near any sort of carpet), but holy cow, they are very, very nice little models. There are two main weapon options, and for this pair of loyalist tanks I decided to take the "one of each" approach - one tank sporting the generally-standard battle cannon, and the other rocking the shorter-ranged-but-harder-hitting "melta blast gun" because, well, had to try it out on one tank, right?

Lots and lots of weapons...all pretty much anti-tank, as that is how I see these being used in a game...

Just to get back one more time to the details, the choice you have in terms of how you want to kit out your little tanks is incredible. You get the choice of using either auto cannons or lascannons for smaller front turrets, and the choice between lascannons or heavy bolters for the sponson mounts. They are small, they are tricky, but the models are gorgeous. 

"It's like anti-tank, but closer..."

These hitters will provide a bit of a boost to my small Imperial Fist detachment for LI, but the painting progress as ever on this game is just quite...leisurely. I haven't even had a chance to try the game yet, owing to work and travel, and the still-very-much-in-progress attempts to connect with fellow gamers here in Toronto. So I don't see it as a big rush, and it is fun to just take my time at one of two vehicles or a few infantry at-a-go, and the forces build up slowly. I'm hoping the next edition of Curt's Painting Challenge will provide a good impetus to get more LI stuff finished (although, I am thinking that for like six different projects, so we'll see). 

That's all for now - but stay tuned for more (really!) - thanks for reading.