Characters

 Here are a few character models that I've just finished up.

First up are a couple of French resistance fighters from Wargames Atlantic Digital, printed by Only Games.  Officially these are WWII French Resistance, but I anticipate they will show up in gangster and other games.  

The one on the right reminds me of a certain sight gag from the movie, Top Secret!

This bloke was fun to paint up.  He's a Reaper Miniatures model that Doug gave us.  His headgear reminds me of Tim the Enchanter from Monty Python and the Holy Grail!

Medieval clergy, cargo containers and a mock vargr

 Arthur and I visited Imperial Hobbies last week, so of course I made some impulse purchases.  First up, I picked up a pack of early medieval clergy from Bob Murch's 1066 line.  Although they are intended for 1066, I will take advantage of the timelessness of their garb to use them in more modern settings, whenever a monk or nun would fit in.

I slightly modified the Mother Superior - she has a greenstuff veil added on top of her wimple (hopefully I got those terms correct!).

My other purchase was a pair of MDF containers from Canadian company Xolk.  I liked them so much I sent in an order to the company for more!  They go together very quickly and paint up easily.  They will do nicely as scatter terrain in the cargo hold for starship boarding actions.

Our recently started Traveller RPG campaign includes a vargr NPC, so I decided to convert one of Fletch's 3d printed werewolves to represent him.  This is clearly not an accurate representation, as vargr are typically shorter then humans, with an average height of only 1.6 m.  So this is a particularly jacked vargr, as he is notably taller and bulkier than Captain Handsome!

Conversion was minor, I replaced his arms with a flamer and a left hand from the bits box.

3D printed resin is regrettably a bit brittle.  You can see that this poor vargr was dropped and his ears were chipped!

As you can see, the Xolk containers have nice detail on the ends.  They can be built with the doors open, but I chose to keep them closed.

 Next week is Trumpeter Salute - I'll hopefully fit in lots of gaming :)

More Dangerous Dames and some other stuff

 I finished up a few miniatures from my backlog.  Partly inspired by the upcoming Mad Dogs with Guns Gangster campaign, I finished up some of the backlogged Pulp Figures' Dangerous Dames, along with a couple vehicles and some scatter terrain.  Plus a couple figures from the lead mountain!

First up, some Pulp Figures.  Central three are from the 2020 Dangerous Dames kickstarter (gradually clearing out the backlog!).  I call the lady on the left "the ornithologist", she might end up being a interfering busybody/helpful citizen who can inform the police (or the press) about illicit goings on in Chicago as our gangster run rampant!

These three are French resistance fighters from the Wargames Atlantic 3D STL print files (printed by Only Games).  However they are sufficiently generic that they could also end up in gangland rumbles!

A couple of figures that finally got cleaned up.  The winter soldier is HLBS British intervention in the Russian Civil War (now Tiger Miniatures) - unfortunately the rest of his unit has since disappeared from my collection!  The ranger on the right is one of Faramir's rangers of Ithilien, suitable for any sort of fantasy gaming.

And finally a couple of vehicles and bits of scatter terrain.  The Company B Model T has been sitting around for many years!  It is one of three that I bought 15 years ago.  One of the three was converted into an Armoured Autocar, and the other was chopped up to make a minefield look authentic.  The driver was converted from a Warlord Games US GI jeep driver, with a headswap with a Wargames Atlantic resistance fighter.  The tractor is an MDF creation from Sarissa.

And finally some bits of scatter terrain from JTFM.  Can never have too much scatter terrain!

Top view to show off the bed of the Model T.

Petrukha and the Shield Maidens

 No, not a band headlining at the local pub, just some figures I finished painting over the weekend :)

First up are the four shieldmaidens from Wargames Atlantic 3D/Only Games.  Playing to stereotypes, all four are blondes.  It was fun to paint slightly more colourful clothing for a change!  No particular plans for these, they may show up in a fantasy or dark ages game sometime.

Next up is my take on Petrukha, the naïve young soldier assigned to assist Comrade Sukhov in White Sun of the Desert.  I simply took one of the Wargames Atlantic WWI Russians with a budenovka hat.  This model doesn't look quite as young as the actor in the movie, but for me, he's close enough!.

Women's Battalion of Death

 As I noted in my recent post for my WWI Russian Army, the force includes a few members of Maria Bochkareva's Women's Battalion of Death, from Siberia Miniatures.   The figures however are big, beefy soldiers, who tower over the regular soldiers. While I want a full platoon of the Battalion of Death, I decided that the majority of the woman soldiers should be closer in size to their male counterparts.  However I love that at least a few of the women soldiers satisfy the stereotype of the big, strong Russian peasant woman!

Fortunately, Wargames Atlantic's digital shop includes STL files for 3D printing the Women's Battalion of Death (WBD from now on).  Now, I don't have a 3D printer, and the WGA shop has a pretty strict licence attached to STL files that it sells, so I decided to purchase printed models from WGA's partner, Only Games.  Naturally, I couldn't purchase just the WBD figures, so I boosted the order with some Viking shieldmaidens, French female resistance fighters and Queen Zenobia of Palymira.  When my order arrived, I was pleasantly surprised to find that I received 9 French partisans, instead of the 5 I was expecting, and 5 Zenobias instead of 2.  Look to see these all painted up in a future blog post. Today the attention belongs to the WBD!

The 20 figures came loose in a bag.  OnlyGames did a good job of stripping the supports, which I imagine was quite a lot of work. I still needed to do some minor cleanup but what was left for me was quite minor, not much different from metal or plastics.

The figures are well proportioned, no exaggerated boobage.  In fact, as long as figures clothed, women soldiers don't really look much different from men in 28mm!  One thing that did stand out for me was that the women's heads all came with hair nicely pulled back into a tidy bun.  However, the recruits into the WDB all got the standard Russian army head shave, as can be seen in photos of the WDB soldiers.  

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/38/Ruk_genskii_battalion_1917.jpg/473px-Ruk_genskii_battalion_1917.jpg?20131018092953

My solution was to cut off the buns.  It was too much to completely shave the heads, besides the hair would gradually grow back as the soldiers completed training before moving to the front.

The women took some assembling, about the same as with multi-part plastic figures.  Plastic cement is no good but CA glue worked well.  They are mounted to 1/4" washers, same as the WGA Russian men.

And here they are painted to match their male counterparts.

Here are a couple done up as officers, including the only one that was allowed to keep her hair in a bun!

These three are intended to serve as NCOs, probably as Yefreiters (section leaders, equivalent to corporals).

A firing line!

Here is a comparison with WGA on the left and Siberia Miniatures on the right.

And another comparison, WGA WBD, WGA man and Siberia Miniatures WBD.  The WGA woman's proportions are not extreme, and match well with the male soldier.  Of course both are shrimps compared to the Siberian WBD!

I've now got 25 members of the WBD plus Maria 'Yashka' Bochkareva herself!  I have a scenario ready to go, but of course it calls for 31 WBD figures :P  So I will still need to make up some numbers with men, but as they match closely I don't think it will be obvious as long as I screen for beards and moustaches!

WWI Russians

 Wargames Atlantic recently released a set of plastic Russian soldiers for World War I (with the option to stretch the timeline to include the Russo-Japanese War and then on through the Russian Civil War).  I resisted for a while, but eventually Arthur asked for some, so I naturally caved and bought the three-box multi-deal. And of course I then overdid it and placed an order with Siberia Miniatures for even more WWI Russkis.

I've now got roughly a platoon worth of Russian infantry, along with some basic supports.

The core of the force is infantry from Wargames Atlantic.

Officers and NCOs.

And the riflemen.

From Siberia Miniatures, a stretcher party with nurse and priest.

I hand painted a regimental colour.  Not quite historically accurate, and not completely satisfactory.  I may need to replace it with a printed version.

Based on this image I found on Wikipedia of a Pavlovski Guardsman from 1914, I found some extra heads with mitre hats to make my own versions.

My order with Siberia Miniatures included a selection of members of Maria Bochkareva's Women's Battalion of Death.  There's a great article on them (with photos!) here:  https://girlswithguns.org/maria-bochkareva-womens-battalions-death/

I did my best to paint the correct slogan on the flag, which was made easier as the words are lightly etched on the casting.

Here's a photo of the flag.

Here is Maria "Yashka" Bochkareva herself (not a great photo, I will get a better one soon).

This is how she looked in real life.https://klimbim2014.wordpress.com/2016/06/06/maria-bochkareva-%D0%BC%D0%B0%D1%80%D0%B8%D1%8F-%D0%B1%D0%BE%D1%87%D0%BA%D0%B0%D1%80%D0%B5%D0%B2%D0%B0-1917/

Indy Neidel made a nice little video about her on Youtube:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cndgoEd3fkk

These ladies are pretty hefty - they look quite intimidating next to the Wargames Atlantic infantry!

Support weapons include a field gun with an imperial navy crew.  I made up a couple extra loaders from the WA set.

The gun crew are magnetised so that they can be removed if necessary.

There's also Maxim gun with again, extra loaders from Wargames Atlantic.

No Russian army is complete without cavalry!

Officers

Lancers

And sabres.

As the Circassian Cossacks didn't adopt the new cavalry uniforms, these lads can come over from my 1880-ish army of Central Asia!

Late addition!  Here is a comparison shot showing the Siberia Miniatures field gun compared to the Great War Miniatures German field gun.