A Valentine for Russia!

I used to claim that, despite a few false starts, I didn't game WWII.  I tried Flames of War (to the extent of building and then abandoning a few different armies), I sampled a few other games, but overall felt that WWII gaming just didn't "do it" for me.  Well, judging by my painting table today, I think I must confess to being part of the club.

I'm going to blame Craig for bringing his What a Tanker games to the club.  Fun, fast games, great for multi-player, keeps each gamer involved even when it's not his turn.  And so I placed an order with Die Waffenkamer (JTFM Enterprises) for some Valentine tanks.  Why Die Waffenkamer?  The first reason comes down to basic patriotism, I always like to support a Canadian company when I can!  Another reason is that his tanks are actually better priced than the competition, whether that be Warlord/Italeri or Rubicon plastics, or metal or resin tanks from a variety of British or American companies.  Die Waffenkamer tanks are all resin, giving them nice heft compared to plastic, and the modelling and detail are superb.

I picked the Valentine with an idea of doing the Northern Desert, where Valentines were a mainstay of the RTR for much of the campaign.  In fact, Valentines appealed to me as they are among the unsung heroes of the war - while other vehicles were higher profile, the Valentines were in production right to the end of the war, and performed steadfastly while other tanks were achieving more heroics.  The Russians specifically asked for Valentine tanks to continue to be provided even after they were retired from British and Commonwealth armies.  And finally, back to patriotism again, Valentines were manufactured in Canada throughout the war!

As I mentioned, my original plan was to build some tanks to battle the Deutches Afrika Korps in North Africa.  However, Doug started to steer the gaming direction elsewhere - he wants to repurpose his Napoleonic 1812 Retreat from Moscow terrain, and found the Battle of Moscow to be an excellent target for his attention (his recent battle report can be found on his blog here).  I did a tiny amount of research and found that the first Valentines reached Russia in Sept 1941, just in time to participate in the Battle of Moscow.  So instead of painting my first tank for operations in the desert, here's a Valentine that has just entered service in the Red Army!

(The models in the background are a cardboard model of the Spasskaya Bashnya, which is the clock tower on the Kremlin facing Red Square, and a paper model of a manor house from Peter Dennis' Paperboys collection).

So here is a shot of the tank with the hatch closed.

 And with hatch open.  I've used magnets so that the commander can be swapped for a closed hatch as needed.  Not sure if I over-did it with the rusty exhaust pipe. Right now it looks a bit disconcerting.

And here are the components:  separate turret, hatch and commander.

Here is a series of size comparison photos.  All three tanks are 1/56 scale.  The T-34/85 is from Rubicon Models and the Churchill III is from Italeri/Warlord Games.  You can see that the Valentine is clearly the smallest of the three!

So there it is, my little tried and true Valentine.  Not the most glamorous, but she was reliable and she got the job done!