28mm Cold War Brits

I had a pack of the new Empress Miniatures BAOR British arrive today to compare with some old Mongrel figs I had.  Great service from Empress and the figures are beautifully sculpted and cast, with good natural looking proportions.  

L to R: Empress, Mongrel, Eureka, Empress

They are big lads though! They stand about 35mm high to the tops of the helmets, which will go nicely with 1/48 scale kits or Empress' own 1/50 scale vehicles but my poor old Mongrels and the Eureka Aden brits will feel quite intimidated.  The SLR is 2-3mm longer on the Empress fig too. 

Probably best to wait for the Empress Soviets to fight them, although Under Fire Miniatures Russians may work.  I don't have any to compare.

Soviet Naval Troops

All the nice girls love a sailor, so here are some WW2 Soviet naval troops I've just finished.

Four squads of eight men (3 x smg, 4 x rifle, 1 lmg) as the rank and file of the platoon.

The Command team

For support these soviet sailors have a maxim mg, an anti-tank rifle team and a sniper team.

Last is an assault squad lead by a junior officer, perhaps a political officer to bolster their morale.

They are mostly Warlord figures with some extras from Black Tree and Artizan Designs and intended for use in our Battlegroup games.  There are some boats to come when I get around to them.

The Macedonians so far

Here is where I have got to with the Macedonian army.  Leading the charge is Alexander himself and his companions.  All the figures are from Wargames Foundry

Next are some Peltasts that I can use as the Agrianians or perhaps as Greek mercenaries.

These archers provide more light troops and can be Cretan mercenaries or perhaps Macedonians. 

Last but not least is the Phalanx.  These heavy infantry with be the backbone of the army and usually formed its core even on the smaller side campaigns.

Some more Phalangites and some Thessalians are on the way.  After that I will start some Persians.

Alexander goes east

My latest project is to do some armies for the Alexandrian Conquests.  This is another unfinished project from the archives and I haven't completed my Russians yet but I fancied something different for a while.

The plan is do small armies about the size of those for Lion Rampant or possibly a little larger.  I was never very good at finishing full sized armies for WAB or other similar games, the large units are just too tedious to paint.  I've enjoyed painting the RCW and Middle Earth forces though, so I'm again doing the same single skirmish basing. 

For games I'll either do scaled down battles or concentrate on smaller actions.  While Alexander's conquests involved a handful of great battles there were dozens, if not hundreds, of smaller actions. I don't have a definite set of rules in mind yet but there seems to be a few newish skirmish sets available now and I could use a Lion Rampant variant or Fistful of Lead Bigger Battles too.

RCW Nationalists

Here are a few pics of some nationalist units one of my club mates has done for our Russian Civil War games.

First some Estonians

And some others, which I think are Czechs or Poles

These have been kitbashed from various plastic sprues mostly Wargames Atlantic WW1 Germans but the lancers may have been Napoleonic cavalry originally.  I imagine these troops will fill in, with some of my less obviously equipped Russians, as the various nationalists, Freikrops and revolutionaries found all over the east at this time.  Not great photos but all I have for now.

Dog Soldiers

This was a quick game we squeezed in before lockdown.  Werewolves versus 1980s British army, that classic match up.   

The game used the Fistful of Lead Core Rules with the Tales of Horror supplement and nicely demonstrated the flexibility and ease of using these rules for just about anything.

The game was inspired by the 2002 B-movie Dog Soldiers starring Sean Pertwee and Kevin McKidd.  In a remote part of Scotland a patrol of British soldiers on excercise get a much tougher experience than they expected.
 

 

The scenario was a simple farmhouse defended by three soldiers and two more coming from reserve. The soldiers must survive until dawn. It was based on the Under the Blood Moon scenario in the supplement but played on a bigger table and without the farmers.

The Werewolves are truly dangerous under the rules being fast, strong and very difficult to kill without silver bullets.

The squaddies shot well, racking up the shock markers to slow the monsters down.  The seargent even manged to bring down one werewolf in close combat. 

It wasn't enough though as a well timed Queen of Spades card saw a werewolf leap back to action and slice his way through the patrol just as the sun started to rise.

It was a fun game and we'll probably try another along these lines in the furture. 

6mm Cold War

We played a Cold War game this week.  The Warsaw Pact, all Russians in this game, advance against a mixed force of NATO defenders (Belgians, Brits and West Germans).  

All of us were old enough to remember when this was ultra modern.  The miniatures are Heroics and Ros 6mm.  I think many are of a similar vintage to us and if I'm right they have held up remarkably well for their age.  Better than me anyway.

For rules we used A Fistful of Tows 3.  These rules are platoon based, so a vehicle model represents 3-4 real vehicles.  This allows a lot more of the the rear echelon kit to make it on to the table. 

We used cm for measurement but this made ranges and movement very small and maybe inches would be better,