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. 

Barons' War, 8th Army, British Paras, Fallschirmjager Painting Update!

OK! Lots going on at Conscript Towers! Some random progress on random projects but I wanted to get a post up now that I'm back from a short vacation. First up  is a couple of knights for my long-simmering Second Barons' War project. I wanted to show a bit of a comparo between a very inexpensive plastic knight and a quite-a-bit-more-expensive metal model. 

At left is a knight from Conquest Games' very reasonable multi-part plastic knights box. List price for the box of 16 (!) knights is twenty quid, but my preferred US retailer (Little Big Wars in Fargo ND) had one box on the shelf for a remarkable $21.95. I like models a lot and the scale is good and the box comes with a lot of different heads and weapon arms, but none of the horses are caparisoned so they kind of give off a "mounted serjeant" vibe. But they are an awesome value and quite nice. The model is painted in the heraldry of Robert de Vere, Earl of Oxford, a Montfortian rebel.

The First Corps/Curteys metal models (example at right) are amazing, super nice models, among the best 28mm knights for the period, full stop. This one is painted as Gilbert de Clare, another rebel Earl.
 

Next up is another small rescue/rehab project. At left is a Bolt Action 8th Army Vickers .303 and crew, at right the rehab... the gunner and loader are old Battle Honors models, they were painted already and in the bits drawer.

I decided to build a third crewman and fortunately had an extra kneeling body from the Perry 8th Army box. So I did him up and put him on the base with the old BH guys.

Turned out pretty well I think, I did need to do some surgery on his left arm though. But it's a good extra MMG for the 8th Army.

Next up, some more newly painted Brit Paras. I'd painted these as the Company command section for the recent Arnhem game but my British players foiled my plans to get 'em on the table... they literally left the jeep out and deployed the dismounted models. Hmmm.

Anyway I'm not sure who made 'em but they're really nice. I do like the steering wheel molded into the hands of the driver, suits my diecast jeeps.

The passenger looking at the map is great too. Painted in the same style as my other paras.

Lastly here's some old Bolt Action German Fallschirmjager with looted weapons. These have been in a Plano case for YEARS and it's well past time they were painted. The only obstacle was figuring out the colours I'd used for all the other Fallis on the shelf.

Anyway for the splinter smocks I basecoated with Vallejo Khaki, painted in brown splotches with a very dark brown (GW Rhinox Hide), then added green splotches and the characteristic stripes with GW Caliban Green. 

There's a nice mix of weapons on these guys - Thompson, Sten...

SVT-40, PPsH 41, M1 carbine (who would want to loot one of those?!?)

I did the pants field-grey and the Luftwaffe uniform bits with The Fang or Thunder-something, I'm too lazy to go downstairs and look. But it'll be obvious when I look in my paint box.

Anyway that's the update. Be back soon with more!

Bolt Action 3rd Edition "Market Garden" Battle Report!

Well! It's been a minute since we've posted a battle report but we had a great game last week. My copy of the Bolt Action 3rd edition rules arrived on Tuesday 1 October (thank you Tista Minis) and we got the game on the table on Thursday 10 October. Happy birthday (on the Friday) to me!

I had decided to have an Arnhem/Market Garden game to commemorate the 80th anniversary of the campaign that had just passed. The game was a scenario from the 2nd ed rulebook pitting 1st Battalion,  British 1st Parachute Brigade (1,136 points, at left) against elements of the SS-Unteroffizierschule "Arnheim" (1,008 points, on the right). Each side had 12 order dice. The fictional encounter took place on 17 September, the campaign's D-Day. The British were on the move towards the Arnhem and Oosterbeek bridges from their (rather distant) drop zones, and the Germans were mounting a hasty defence to block them. Victory points were scored by the Brits for destroying German units (1 each), for getting units into the German deployment zone (2 each), and for units exiting the German table edge (3 each). The Germans scored one VP for each British unit destroyed.

The Germans deployed first (on the near long table edge), mostly hidden. Here we see the heavy weapons platoon commander with two MMGs and a sniper team.

On the German left was a rifle squad and medium mortar.

Over on the right there was another rifle squad. The Germans left their Puma Sdkfz 234/4 armoured car, two rifle squads and the company commander in reserve. 

The British all came onto the table at once. They had a limited number of turns and had to maximize movement.

On the British right a para section moved forward, taking heavy fire from the German MMG. These weapons are even deadlier in 3rd ed (one more shot than before) PLUS the German special rule gives each MMG another shot again, for 7 shots total! Yikes! It was a good thing for the Brits that their troops are veterans and only wounded on a 5+.

Over on the British left more paras advance, covered by the other MMG and a ranging-in mortar.

Waffen-SS squad enters from reserve to intercept onrushing Brit paras.

The Puma came on from reserve on the German right as well, as the Brits were really putting on pressure there. Unfortunately the PK-berichter missed some of the vital parts of the fight over here. The Puma drove up to the low wall at top centre of the photo to pour some fire on the advancing Brits. Unfortunately neither the armoured car nor the infantry squad were able to eliminate a two-man British PIAT team crouching on the other side of the wall... they put a PIAT round through the side of the Puma and blew it sky-high. Men of the match no doubt.

Over on the German left the Brits mostly got chewed up in close combat, but a platoon commander and the remnants of a para section escaped off the table. 

The company command section shown here also just managed to make it into the German deployment zone. Shooting is nasty when your targets are in the open (no saving throw) but you still have to wound... and this roll failed utterly. Veterans are tough customers.

Anyway the game went seven turns... and at the end, the Germans had destroyed six units for 12 VPs, but the Brits had exited two units, gotten one in the German zone, and destroyed 6 - totalling 14 VPs for the British and a victory for the Red Devils.

The game was really fun, I like 3rd edition a lot. As referee I did fudge one ruling in favour of the attackers for the sake of a cinematic game - allowing the company commander to issue an order to a unit that was more than 12" away at the start of the leader's activation (albeit within 12" after the commander had moved). That was technically contrary to the rules. But it added to the game as it really increased the tension on the German right - and I could justify it by relying on Major Brown's bugle extending the command range slightly... right? And the new command rule was one change that met mixed reviews from the group... commanders now can draw FOUR extra dice from the bag when activating. That can make a real swing in a game with only 10 or 12 order dice. But it worked well in our game.  

The game also inspired me to revisit the models to be used. I painted the group above for the game, 10 Paras (including some excellent new sculpts by Paul Hicks from the recent Kickstarter) and four passengers for the jeep (which was included in the British list but was LOB by the British players).

I'll also make a note for posterity here on the paint colours used: Denison smocks are basecoated Vallejo Khaki, the brown is AK acrylic Dark Brown, the green is GW Caliban Green highlighted GW Warpstone Glow, the whole thing washed with Agrax Earthshade. Webbing and gaiters are Zandri Dust, washed and re-highlighted.

I'd also noticed that some of the Battle Honours (and Foundry?) Paras I'd painted (something over 20 years ago) could use some help with their helmets. The sculpting never pleased me (the helmets were just too small and didn't have nets or scrim) and my "fix" at the time was to apply some very coarse texture gel that I painted like scrim. Well this had to go. So I scraped off the gel and sculpted helmet nets out of greenstuff. Much better I think. 

Maybe we'll have another Market Garden game soon. I shelled out for the Bolt Action 2nd Ed Market Garden campaign book (now obsolete, but the scenarios are useful) and I'd love to get the Red Devils out on the table again. We'll see.

Until next time, or as the Paras would say "WHOA Mohammed!" :-)