A Couple More Syrian T-62s

More Syrian T-62s ready to roll out

I continue to fall further and further behind in Curt C's Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge (it's all I can do to cling to 10th place) but I can at least make some more progress towards my "par" goal.  Here are another two Syrian T-62s.  These castings are from QRF, and bases are from Warbases out of Scotland.

The antennas are cut from floral wire

My Syrian forces now boast 13 T-62s - a healthy company of Soviet-supplied armour and more than enough to fill an average gaming table with flaming tank wrecks. 

There is still more armour to go on the to-do/wish list for my Golan Heights Project (IShermans, PT-76s, more T-55s, etc.) but I am pretty happy with where this collection is at, and I look forward to rolling out another game sometime in the winter.

Another Batch of Syrian T-62s - 15mm

Syrian armour, ready to roll

Curt's Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge continues to roll along, and my initial charge from the blocks, fuelled by a lovely holiday vacation, has faded.  But I can still show off some more entries/progress.

These are QRF castings - a pain in the @ss to build, but worth it in the end

After a Samurai and then an initial batch of colonial stuff from Sudan, my entries switched over to more stuff for my Golan Heights Project. Up first are some more Syrian tanks.  Because you can never have enough Syrian tanks!

Ready to tangle with the IDF...just need to watch out for the Syrian air force...

These three T-62s are from QRF miniatures.  As with my other QRF products, these had a lot of problems - lots and lots of flash, lots of tags, flimsy MGs, bent track assemblies, mould lines - on and on.  But even with these problems, the QRF models are much nicer and more realistic-looking than the Command Decision T-62s.

This platoon brings me up to 11 T-62s for the Syrians.  Just a couple more of those, and I think that will be plenty - a full company of tanks!

Syrians In September - More Infantry and T-62s

It has been a few weeks since I have posted any progress on my Golan Heights Project, but I haven't forgotten about it.  Here is some progress to hopefully prove it.  Again, apologies in advance for the pictures - whatever its merits, the iPhone sucks for miniature photography, and the lighting in my house does not help...

Up first are a group of Syrian infantrymen.  These are from Peter Pig's AK47 modern line, and the bases are from 15mm.co.uk.

Peter Pig "regulars" from their AK47 Republic range

Minimally equipped troops, but they will do the job for representing Syrians.

Colour references to Syrian uniforms for 1973 are universally absent, so I just made a best-guess

These troops will be ready to fight for the Golan heights

I added a few special weapon troops as well - two RPG troopers and two RPD MG gunners.

Two RPGs on the left, to RPD MGs on the right

And another pair of T-62s from QRF.  I now have 8 T-62s, almost enough for a company.

Two more T-62s ready to roll...

I was amused to note this thread on TMP, posted in august following my original commentary on these models, in which the proprietor of QRF miniatures manages to position each flaw (and there are many of them) with the QRF castings as somehow important to doing a proper model.

The back ends of the T-62s from QRF are a cloud of flash and mold lines....very poor quality on these castings. 

Not sure why Peter Pig, Battlefront and others can manage to a proper, in scale MG that isn't cast with the quality of a limp spaghetti noodle, but QRF can't.  But again, the QRF T-62s are really the only game in town for this particular MBT, and the flaws are annoying more than critical.

Up next are some infantry and APCs for the IDF.  Stay tuned!

Syrian Reinforcements - QRF T-62s

15mm scale T-62s from QRF

Continuing with the Syrian build up I have a couple of posts featuring some more vehicles.  Up first, a platoon of three T-62s from QRF.  My first platoon of T-62s were Old Glory models, and I wasn't crazy about them, so I was hoping to see an improvement with QRF.  At the same time, my history with QRF products is mixed, so I wasn't sure what to expect.

The QRF T-62 models were a significant improvement on the Old Glory castings.  The turret looks much more accurate.  The treads/wheels look a lot nicer.  The models come with a cupola MG (something that I find really "makes" the look on Soviet MBTs) and an unditching beam (again, another standby for Soviet tanks).  Overall the detail was much stronger on these than on the Old Glory tanks - and much better than the metal turd plops which were allegedly crew for the QRF 100mm AT gun.

These tanks received the standard Syrian treatment (it's getting to be an assembly line now) and are mounted on bases from Litko.  I continue to struggle with the Arabic numerals, but it's close enough for me.

These casting still have a lot of issues - the cupola MGs were very poor, thin castings. There were a number of flaws and flash tags on the treads and road wheels.  The mould lines on the turrets and main gun were particularly marked, and required a lot of work.  None of these issues were critical, but they bug me because you never see a lack of quality like this from the likes of Eureka, Khurasan, Old Crow etc. The contrast between this reality and the love-carpet-bombing QRF receives on TMP really bugs me.

But QRF deserves credit for the wide range of its offerings.  At least they sell at T-62! And it is still markedly nicer than the competition - so watch for more QRF T-62s appearing in this blog in the future.

Nova Respublik Heavy AT Gun - 15mm Sci Fi

Back to the future - 100mm AT gun for the Nova REspublik

It is wonderful to be on vacation in northern Ontario - and wonderful that I can pack up the paints and a few pending projects and work on them along the shores of Lake Superior.  One of the projects that had been sitting in the "pending" pile for some time was this notion of a heavy AT gun for my 15mm sci-fi Nova Respublik/Red Faction troops.  I had put this together earlier this year when I was adding stuff to the 15mm sci-fi collection.

Crew are various Khurasan models - the infantry platoon officer is the gun commander

The "Nova Respublik" are very much near-future Soviet/Russian troops - and I find them to be some of the nicest near-future sic-fi figures on the market period (note to GW - this is what Imperial Guardsmen should look like).  While of course the near-future troops would rely on missiles to knock out vehicles (much as current troops do), to keep some "Soviet" flavour to the force I thought a nice big AT gun would fit in well.  The Soviet/Russian army has 100mm AT guns in the arsenal (admittedly, much lower on the depth chart that missiles and other up to date kit), but if the other guys roll out armoured stuff, shooting big guns at it can't hurt...

The AT gun is from QRF - it barely holds together - a total sh*t model

The infantry models are from Khurasan's Nova Respublik/Red Faction range, and as I raved above, are some of the best figures out there for sci-fi, in any scale.  I used the officer figure, one of the guys from the mortar team, and a couple of spare guys from the other heavy weapon teams to stand in as the gun crew.

The crew will have some kind of fancy-pants sci-fi rounds...

The gun itself is a 15mm Soviet/Russian 100mm AT gun from QRF.  QRF quality is very hit-and-miss, and the quality of the gun and the crew that came with it was complete sh*t.  The gun barely fit together - and is still barely holding together on the base.  The cannon has the strength of a piece of spaghetti. The Russian crew that came with it very much resembled little lead metal turd plops (fortunately I was not looking to use them anyway).  The whole thing looked like something that had barfed out of the moulds.  Thank goodness for black primer.

Top view - not sure the barrel of the gun will last long...

All the same, it turned out OK - it is supposed to be a big gun, and it pretty much looks like one. The crew make or break the model in this case, and the crew are of the very reliable quality from Khurasan.

Ready for action!

This gun will look forward to some action when we return to 15mm sci-fi on the Fawcett Avenue table sometime soon.  In addition to 100mm future-HEAT rounds, I'm sure it will be armed with extra fancy, depleted-uranium-baby-seal-eye AT rounds or something.

15mm Sci-Fi - "Red Faction" Infantry, Single Bases

Group shot of a platoon of 15mm "Red Faction" troops from Khurasan - vehicle from QRF

In the midst of making a big push to finish a bunch of Austrian Napoleonics, I'm continuing to fiddle with 15mm sci-fi.  I painted up some "Red Faction" 15mm sci-fi infantry from Khurasan Miniatures, and I found that I loved the castings so much that I decided to base them individually, instead of the group basing we have been using so far for our 15mm sci-fi.   I have finished a platoon-worth of guys and one test vehicle - here are a few pictures.

Command group - Lieutenant in the middle, a medic on the left, and a communications dude on the right

Switching up the basing scheme will likely make some of the fellows' heads explode (sorry, Dallas). At one time, Dallas had a collection of 15mm WW2 stuff based individually and he switched to the group basing. Of course, at the time we all piously agreed that such a move made perfect sense, and individually based 15mm infantry models were silly...I think he has some Space Demons mounted on single bases, though, so perhaps he did not quit the single-based 15mm entirely...

Normally I'm up for causing a little trouble, but in this case I am genuinely not trying to cause headaches.  The group basing works very well for 15mm sci-fi, and I'm not about to go and rip my already painted troops off of their bases. I just really, really like the Khurasan 15mm figures, and since they are unlikely to every be available in 28mm (although we can hope), I thought I would try 15mm single bases.

Red Faction fireteam - one SAW (in the middle) and a LAW-rocket-style grenade launcher (back at left)

At the end of the day, it doesn't represent much of an incremental investment - one or two packs of figures turns into quite a few guys.  I figured we can use these for systems such as FUBAR, Tomorrow's War (assuming we can ever figure out the rules), or a 15mm version of Space Krieg, our in-house skirmish rules system.

Another fire team

So far I have four five-man fireteams, a three-man command group, a mortar and a sniper.  I have more figures painted, but I ran out of bases. For bases, I opted for Litko over the bases from Irregular Miniatures.  After a couple of tests, I found the ones from Litko easier to work with, even though orders from Litko tend to take an ice-age to arrive.

Mortar team and a sniper

Khurasan has a comprehensive selection of vehicles available for the "Red Faction" too, but I'm not wild about the Red Faction APC - just doesn't float my boat.  So I thought I would try for something a little different, and use a 15mm scale BMP-3 that I had lying around.  The BMP-3 is one of my favourite vehicles, and already has - in my subjective opinion - something of a sci-fi look to it. We'll just call it a BMP-300. 

The BMP-3 is not commonly available in 15mm - in fact, QRF Models has the only one I could find, and I had ordered one as a test model about a year ago (for a project that did not go ahead).  So rather than junk it (which had been the plan - see below) I primed the sucker up and gave it a coat of paint.

Close up of the BMP-3 model from QRF - quality of the casting was very, very bad

I had been nervous to order from QRF.  QRF has a very, very wide range of models available, and the proprietor is constantly on TMP pledging to have this-model-or-that-model out very soon. To his credit, the new models seem to appear regularly, and there seemed to be a number of positive reviews of QRF stuff from other TMP folks. But I have always been suspicious of figure companies with web sites that have few pictures, tons of pictures that won't load, and an "enlarge" feature that opens the picture in a separate window so that it is SMALLER than the original picture.  In this day and age, considering how much one person can do with an iPhone or comparable widget, a lack of product photos and a mickey mouse web site is simply inexcusable in my view.

When I received the model, my fears were confirmed. The quality of the casting was very poor. The mold lines were awful. The tread assemblies were a mess - had to be bent back into shape, and had all sorts of holes.  Fortunately, black primer and paint hide a great number of sins.  The regular retail price is 6.00GBP (that would be $9.50 Canadian at today's prices) for a single vehicle - not an epic cost, but enough that you expect decent quality. This was very frustrating.




Red Faction dismounts near the APC...not sure if this will work out scale-wise...

 I'm not sure about the scale either - you can look at the picture and judge for yourself. The BMP-3 can allegedly hold eight fully armed motor riflemen. I don't think the "Red Faction" infantry are too far gone from current motor riflemen, and when you see the model, there is now way that eight men are in there (I like to call this the "1/56 effect"). On the other hand, Soviet/Russian APCs seem to be notorious for horribly cramped spaces, so perhaps I am over-reacting. I may mount the vehicle on a base to improve the perception of size relative to the infantry.

So I'm not sure if I will go with more QRF models to round out the APC line for these fellows, look for other BMP-3s in 15mm, or just give the "Red Faction" APC a try....I'm a big fan of the BMP-3, so in the end, I might just plump for a few more of them, and hope the black primer will hide the weak quality of casting of these vehicles.  It could be the quality of the casting at QRF will have improved over time too - you never know.

I'm working on some "OPFOR" for these fellows too - watch for more postings on the blog soon!