Cold War '85: Soviet T-72 Tank Battalion

Following closely behind the recently painted 6mm T-64 tank battalion, I have now polished off a T-72 one in (for me) quite quick fashion!

The models are all 3D prints, I think of Bergman STL's, from the now defunct Resin Historicals. Vallejo 924 Russian Uniform once again, washed with Dark Tone, drybrushed with Russian Uniform then some light highlights with Russian Uniform lightened a bit with Stone Grey - quick and easy! Onto the BMP-2 next!

Cold War '85: Soviet T-64 Tank Battalion

Whilst I haven't added anything to my Cold War '58 project of late, efforts have returned to the IGB (Inner German Border) as I looked at the pile of shame and thought I really ought to do something with the masses of unpainted GHQ and other classic Cold War models that I have amassed over the last few decades...

So starting the liberation of West Germany rolling I have painted up a battalion of T-64's, mainly GHQ but with a company of 3D printed models that I think I bought from Resin Historicals a few years back when they were around.

Next up a battalion of T-72's followed by a shed load of BMP-2's and BTR's of various model - better buy some more Vallejo 924 Russian Uniform!

Western Desert: 7th Armoured Division II

Over the last couple of weeks I managed to try out Dan Mersey's Armoured Storm tank battle rules and whilst I plan to write up a more in depth piece about the games and thoughts on the rules, let's just say the bug has bitten!

Initially I only planned to paint up one squadron/company of tanks per side but having had such fun I decided to expand beyond the Crusaders with a quick order to Scotia Micro Models see a squadron of 1/300th Matilda II's winging their way south pdq. They are the Bergman STL's resized (under licence) and the prints were exquisite!

I decided to go with a basic sand scheme, the three colour Caunter scheme being a little too daunting in 6mm, but on the plus side they'll be on the table this week!

Sharp Practice: The Relief of Dojjibotti!

Having tested Phil & Jen's I Ain't Been Shot Mum! scenario for Winter Wonder Lard V four days before the event, I thought it a sound idea to give mine a run through two days before! Ideally the scenario needed four players (two a side) each with differing objectives, but one man short we combined the British commands into one.

The scenario centred around the small mission station at Dojjibotti, the mutineers under the command of Subedar Tendulkar tasked with capturing the mission and killing all the Firangee within. His subordinate, Jemedar Ganguly had his eyes on another prize though...

The Dojjibotti mission was garrisoned by Captain Older-Duffer of the Punjab Irregular Force with his Sikhs, a cannon of the Bengal Horse Artillery and some Gurkhas who had just arrived under the command of Lieutenant Goodmount, along with a Mem-Sahib and some native attendants.

Tendulkar had three units each of three groups of Mutineers under his command and he pushed these forward towards the Firangee...

The lead unit led by Jemedar Dravid coming under fire from Sergeant Knocker's cannon taking Shock and casualties.

Meanwhile Jemedar Ganguly, now outside the command range of his commander, decided to pursue his own agenda - trying to find stolen treasure rumoured to be hidden in the jungle around Dojjibotti.

Unfortunately the first thing his men found was an angry tiger which inflicted some Shock on them!

Meanwhile the North Somersetshire Light Infantry commanded by Captain Turner-Round was marching double-time to relive the mission with Lieutenant de Poncenay-Bout's South Gloucestershire Light Cavalry protecting their flank.

Jemedar Dravid's sepoys bravely pushed forward, now finding themselves under fire from  Lieutenant Goodmount's Gurkhas.

Heavy casualties were taken...

But with the help of a Holy Man removing their Shock, the Sepoys reached the walls of the mission station!

One group of Sepoys were beaten back by the kurkis of the Gurkhas, but a second group managed to take a portion of the wall!

Unfortunately for Dravid the group he was attached to was forced to fall back and came once again under fire from the Bengal Horse Artillery. 

Although a small number of mutineers were inside the mission, they were outnumbered by the defenders and with the North Somerset's relief column in site we called it a day and went for a well earned drink.

Overall I was happy with how the game had gone and with a few tweaks was looking forwarding to inflicting it on the public at Winter Wonder Lard V that weekend.

I Ain't Been Shot Mum: Taking the Starmaskaya Bridge!

Apologies for the radio silence on the blog, life, the universe and whatnot... Having a quick look at the draft posts for the blog there are at least 20 so I better try and finish some of them... :-)

Earlier this year with Winter Wonder Lard V then creeping up very quickly, Phil and Jen recruited Andy and I to play-test their new I Ain't Been Shot Mum scenario which featured a change of scene for them being set during Operation Barbarossa where a German reconnaissance unit was tasked with capturing a strategically important bridge...

Near the bridge was a Kv-1, unfortunately it had broken down and the crew were trying to fix it by banging it with spanners...

Starmaskaya village was a nondescript little hovel but had a nice church - and a Soviet supply dump.

The German reconnaissance unit, commanded by Andreas von Krähe, aggressively advanced down the main road to the bridge a Schwerer Panzerspähwagen leading the way.

Not realising the Soviets, commanded by the legendary Bolshevik Krasnyy Stiv, were lying in wait!

But before the Soviets could meaningful react Von Krähe gunned his BMW motorbike combinations down the road to the bridge, though some Germans were caught in the rear by Soviet rifle fire.

The Kv-1 crew manfully fought off the first assault by the now dismounted motorcyclists - more than one fascist receiving a dent in his helmet from a quality Workers spanner - but they were soon machine-gunned down. 

Heroes of the Soviet Union to a man, their sacrifice for the Motherland will not be forgotten and even as their still warm blood seeped into the soil of the Rodina, their noble delaying action allowed the Soviets to bring up more armour in the form of two T-70's!

Pikiruyushchiy Bombardirovshchik!!! With the German advance stalling on the outskirts of Starmaskaya a dreaded Stuka appeared and rained hell on the defenders inflicting casualties and shock!

On the opposing flank German armour appeared over the hill a second Soviet 45mm 53-K anti-tank gun (Sorokapyatka) engaged the panzers, though it soon fell victim to another Stuka attack!

However despite several of its crew lying dead around it the other Sorokapyatka fought bravely on...

An Sd.Kfz.231 falling victim to the deadly "little 45"!

Meanwhile with the Soviets no longer having any anti-tank capability to protect the other flank, Von Krähe aggressively pushed his jack-booted force forward...

The Soviets on the outskirts of the village put up an valiant resistance against the superior numbers of fascist invaders but were pinned under the weight of enemy fire and eventually pushed back into the village itself.

However with dusk starting to fall and the Sorokapyatka AT gun, now down to just one crewman, taking out a Sd.Kfz.222 (another Hero of the Soviet Union here!), Von Krähe realised he was not going to able to complete his mission despite the crumbling Soviet defence and would have to try again another day (assuming he was not sent to a Strafbatallion for his incompetent failings).

Another fun IABSM game owing a lot to Phil's running of it and Jenny's lovely terrain, it went down well at Winter Wonder Lard V and subsequent Lardy Days were P&J ran it - hopefully I'll get a chance to play the follow up 'Return to Starmaskaya' at some point and remove all traces of the fascist from the Motherland!

Indian Rebellion: Bengal Native Infantry Mutineers

The beginning of 2025 saw all hands to the pump for Winter Wonder Lard V where I had decided to run an Indian Mutiny Sharp Practice game - The Relief of Dojjibotti. Whilst Phil has happy enough to lend me his Mutineers for the game I decided that given the numbers of Pandies sat in the pile of shame (some since the late Eighties) that I would try and paint up what I had amassed over the decades.

In the main the miniatures were from Old Glory which are decent enough slightly chunky sculpts, full of character and with lots of head variants. There were also some Foundry, including the two command figures in the picture above originally painted back in the late eighties/early nineties when the miniatures were first released. There were also a smattering of Empress Miniatures which are lovely figures but whose bayonets have a tendency to break off if you just look at them.

With at least 110 figures to paint in a month I decided to forgo using Army Painter dip due to the drying time and after experimenting on a civilian figure used Sonic Sledgehammer's Marine Juice wash. If you are unfamiliar with this I very much recommend watching the video (click the link), it was a life saver. Essentially all the figures are just base coated, washed with Marine Juice then a few highlights picked out (Ivory for the white clothing)

Whilst it was somewhat repetitive I managed to get nine groups of Mutineers plus command (84 figures) fully painted in under four weeks! But that was not all...

Using the same technique I managed to paint up four groups of skirmishers with command for each too.

The cavalry had been painted for a while (indeed they made their tabletop debut back in 2018 proxying for the Bengal Lancers in this The Men Who Would Be Kings game with George), but to tie them in with the rest of the army I gave the clothing a wash of Marine Juice and applied a few quick highlights...

Following the game, and given how quickly I painted up 110 miniatures I decided to plough through the remaining Mutineer box of shame - which contains several cannon and crew and a load more cavalry. Progress without a deadline has of course slowed to snails pace but I have managed to finish this twelve-pounder with Bengal Horse Artillery crew...

And this nine-pounder with crew in native dress. The Guns I think are Foundry for the twelve-pounder and Mutineer Miniatures for the nine-pounder, the crews are Mutineer Miniatures.

For a deployment point I used this lovely Empress Miniatures snake charmer...

And no Indian Mutiny scenario is complete without some local fauna. The tiger would randomly appear out of patches of jungle and the goats (Bengal Blacks, I probably spent more time researching the correct goat breeds and colouring than I did on the Mutineer regiments!) who just sat on a hill looking at the silly humans shooting each other. All these miniatures are from Irregular Miniatures.

So that's the Mutineers, I suppose next I ought to tell you how they fared outside the walls of Dojjibotti...

War of Liberation: HaT Prussian Landwehr

A few years back you may recall that HaT Figures, manufacturers of 20mm soft plastic figures, dipped their toes in the 28mm hard plastic market releasing several boxes of Napoleonics and an El Cid range. Whilst the Napoleonics were nice figures (indeed I use some as my Italian Light Infantry skirmishers) they were slightly smaller and less bulky than figures produced by their competitors such as Perry's, Wargames Atlantic, Victrix etc. and, presumably after not proving as popular as hoped, releases ceased.

Lessons learned, HaT are moving back into the 28mm hard plastic market with releases of Napoleonics and American War of Independence soon to be forthcoming. HaT were kind enough to send me a pre-release sprue each of the new (2001) Prussian Landwehr Marching and (2002) Prussian Landwehr in Action.

Dealing with the elephant in the room, compatibility with other ranges as you can see from this photo they scale well height and bulk wise with other Prussian plastics (left to right - Perry Infantry, Wargames Atlantic Reserve Infantry, HaT Landwehr, Warlord Games Landwehr).

To be clear the miniatures are hard plastic, the same as Perry's, Victrix etc, NOT the soft plastic HaT uses for its other ranges. The marching box (2001) will contain 40 figures, each sprue holding ten. The figures are either one piece castings or two with a separate back pack that you can glue on with plastic cement as you do with Perry's etc.

The figures are reasonably well detailed, not as sharp as Perry's but similar to the Warlord Landwehr and Wargames Atlantic Reserve Infantry. They certainly are good enough for the wargames table. The bayonets are a bit thick, which is good in that they should not ping off like Perry models during game play.  I would consider just filing the tops a bit with a quick swipe of a file to make them more pointed.

Some of the figures have backpacks which fit well enough, however the cartridge box is affixed to this and can end up not snug to the body. It took less than a minute to cut them off the backpacks and glue them directly to the figure.

The Action set (2002) - also 40 figures - is very useful given the absolute dearth of Landwehr other than in marching poses (the Landwehr were able to skirmish!). Like the Marching set I would file the top of the bayonets and I fixed the cartridge boxes but aside from that I was happy with the pose variety which should give me some good Skirmishers for Sharp Practice!

All in all this is a decent first step back into the 28mm market by HaT. The detail could be a little sharper and I hope HaT consider manufacturing them in a nice boring grey plastic not the bright blue the samples came in! I'm not sure about the price point, but HaT usually offer very good value so hopefully this will continue.

Along with the American War of Independence range HaT have as coming soon, they have now extended the 2000 series list to include Landwehr command, as well as Hungarian, Austrian and Russian Napoleonic troops, which all sounds very promising...

Sharp Practice: A Hero in Peril at Roganjosh!

Back to a turbulent India with Phil and Andy, and another Sharp Practice game was the British race to rescue Colonel Flashman, captured by the Pandies and about to be fed to a crocodile!

As the unfortunate British hero was about to become croc-kibble, Badmash skirmishers kept an eye out for any last minute British rescue effort...

Hold on Flashy! The British army is marching to your rescue...

With the Gurkhas protecting their flank, the North Somersetshires' march boldly into Roganjosh...

Whilst the South Gloucestershire Light Horse canter around the town seeking an alternative entrance into Roganjosh to rescue old Flashy.

Meanwhile in the town Andi Pandi is rousing his fanatical Ghazis into something of a lather.

Resolutely advancing forward, the Piffers (Punjab Field Force Sikhs) fire a volley at the Badmash bounders on a roof top killing one.

The other Badmashes try to shoot down the advancing Gurkhas, but make a complete hash of it.

Kai Kai! Andi Pandi looses his frothing Ghazis on the stout lads from North Somerset...

The North Somersets give the Ghazis a volley seeing them off. Min Jeeta then sends her Badmashes in on the gallant Brits...

Who beat them back with stout British courage and fortitude!

With the efforts of the rebels focused on the main road into Roganjosh, the Piffers scale the walls on the right and given some retreating Badmashes a volley...

Whilst the steady fire of the Gurkhas sees the Badmashes forced from the buildings to their front.

And then the coup de grace... With a cry of Bole So Nihal, Sat Sri Akal! the Piffers go in, bayonets levelled into the Badmashes routing them.

At this point the Indian Force Morale hit zero and the rebels fled from Roganjosh. Flash Harry was safe, a soldier of the North Somersets put a bullet into the crocodile, which Flashman subsequently had skinned and made into a nice handbag for Elspeth...

Another atmospheric game of Sharp Practice and my first win of the year!