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!