More Um Bum

 So I got right into things!  I assembled all the Um Bum buildings, they go together very quickly.

First up is the chapel.  I've added some GNW figures for size reference. The grey ones are the new resin figures from Kordegardia, and the brown ones are the Warlord Games plastic WSS (marching pose) and Warfare Miniatures (the other ones) so there's a bonus size comparison!

The building interiors are detailed, and for the 'Mediaeval Town' series (including this chapel), easily accessible.  Buildings in this series size reasonably well with 28mm figures.

The rest of the buildings are 1/87 or HO scale, so are undersized for 28mm figures.  But that's not necessarily a problem, as there's a viewpoint (often expressed by Doug!) that buildings should be a bit undersized compared to the figures.  I've used a Perry Miniatures DAK rifleman for scale in the following photos.

First up is the 'Collective Farm Office', complete with a choice of three flags and three different banners!  The flags are for the Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic, the Ukrainian SSR and the Belorussian SSR.  You need to look at them pretty closely to see which one is which, however!  The three banners read 'Glory to Labour!', 'Five Year Plan in Three Years!' and 'Our Goal is Communism!'

The building interiors are decorated, but it's a bit of a bother to lift off the roof.  I won't be opening the buildings for a typical game! 

Here's the first of the two churches. This one is based on an 18th Century church from the Karelia region northeast of Leningrad.  

And this one is based on the Church of the Intercession on the Nerl, dating back to the 12th Century.  This church is located in a rural area in the Vladimir Oblast east of Moscow.  Maybe not quite typical of a Russian village church in 1941, but too pretty a building for me to leave out!  And it's to scale!

This little factory is built around boilers - the idea being to boil water, then distribute by pipelines to individual buildings.  Again, I don't know if these would be present in villages, or if they'd be limited to towns and cities.  But for gaming purposes, it's nice to have the option to include a brick building, which can provide hard cover, compared to the light cover that the other buildings could offer.  The brick walls are not very sturdy - I'll probably need to scotch tape them if I want to use this on the gaming table, or else they'll be knocked over too easily.

And to round things out, here are the three new houses.  I was a bit careless in my purchases, the one with the green trim is a duplicate of one that I picked up last year.  My 20th Century Russian/Soviet village now potentially includes seven houses, two churches, a boiler/factory and the collective farm office, as well as a few sheds and other outbuildings.  I guess I should come up with some fences and/or hedges to  put around the various buildings!

Russian Haul

 I'm back!  And I've got a big pile of Russian stuff to work on.

First up, a big expansion to my Um Bum collection.  I currently have a 4 houses, which will be expanded to a small village when I add these.

The new buildings are HO scale buildings for rural Russia, suitable for mid-20th Century (say, for Operation Barbarossa), including three more houses, two churches and a small factory.  There's also a roughly 28mm sized Italian Baroque-styled church that I hope will fit in with my Sicilian terrain.

For the Great Northern War, I have some lovely new resin figures from Kordegardia.  This will be my first project with resin figures, so will be an educational process for me!

The figures are 25 musketeers and 10 grenadiers.

From Siberia Miniatures, I picked up 

- 24 Basmachi (12 mounted, 12 on foot) plus a mountain gun and crew (these are particularly inspired by the look of the Basmachi in the movie White Sun of the Desert).  Note separate heads, still to be added.

- modern Russian Presidential Guard (and president)

- Russian Civil War defenders of the manor

I also got a proper Ushanka, along with a Red Army cap badge.  The Ushanka is plenty warm, especially with the flaps down.  Especially lovely when the temperature drops to -18C!

If I'd been thinking, I would have picked up half a dozen of these cap badges to use as CoC patrol markers!

Armourama

I've managed to accumulate a few new vehicle models for Op Husky, or possibly for later in the Italian Campaign.  In addition to the Panzer IV that I painted previously, the Germans now have a Panzer III, a Tiger I and a beutepanzer Stug M42 (more commonly known by its Italian name, Semovente da 75/18.

The Tiger is from Warlord Games:

Here is the Panzer III.  As far as I can tell, German soldiers didn't name their tanks quite as regularly as Allied soldiers did, but I've decided to name my Panzers III and IV.

The M42 Stug was not used in Sicily by the Germans (although the Italians certainly had some) but once the Italians withdrew from the war in September 1943, the Wehrmacht appropriated any Italian vehicles that they could get their hands on. This model is from Warlord Games.  The kit can be built either as the M41/14 Medium Tank or as the Semovente da 75/18.  Unlike my usual boring plain dunkelgelb paint scheme, I attempted a fairly sloppy camouflage pattern based on this image from Tanks Encyclopedia:

The Canadians meanwhile now have 4 (count 'em, 4) Shermans, of various marks.

The above tanks are from left to right, Sherman V (M4A4), Sherman III (M4A2), Sherman I (M4) and Sherman V (M4A4).  I can barely tell the various marks apart, but I'm slowly learning!

Cyclops is a Sherman V, from Warlord Games.  As I was assembling the model, I realised that I didn't have as much stowage as I wanted, so I looked around for some other options.  Many WWII tankers welded spare track around their tanks to provide some extra protection from anti-tank (AT) weapons.  

This was generally discouraged by the higher ups, but that never stopped the crews from doing whatever it took for them to at least feel safer!  In order to make my own extra track armour, I learnt how to make a press mould from modelling putty.

And here is how the press mould tracks look on the finished model.  This one is Cyclops, a Sherman V from Warlord Games.

Chief is a Sherman I, from Rubicon.  

Corvette is a Rubicon Sherman V.  I assembled the 17-pdr turret as well as the regular 75 mm turret, so that there'd be an option to field Corvette as a Firefly version if I so choose.  Although theoretically the Firefly turret can fit on any of the 3 Rubicon tanks (Chief, Corvette or Cobault), I piled on so much stowage on the other two Shermans that the extended turret can't rotate properly!

Chief is a Rubicon Sherman I.

In addition, the Canadians also gained a couple of softskins. The jeep is straightforward, simply the Rubicon Models model.  However, I cheated a bit on the driver and passenger:  the crew figures that came with the model were American, but I did a couple of head swaps and painted them to match my Canuck infantry.  The white-on-red '56' insignia on the jeep shows that it belongs to the Hasty Ps, but I've given the crew tam-o-shanters (as i had a few in the bits box) so they are more likely to be Seaforths or 48th Highlanders than Plough Jockeys!

What's up with the pink stain on the driver's back?  I'd better cover that up...

The Chevy 30 cwt MCP is most famous nowadays for being the transport of preference of the LRDG, however the reason it was available for use in desert raiding was that it was present in large numbers in the Mediterranean theatre.  While the story of the Canadian Military Pattern (CMP) trucks is pretty well know, with over half a million produced for the war effort, the Modified Conventional Pattern (MCP) trucks are now a bit obscure.  These were basically civilian trucks that were adopted for military use.  For my force, I simply took the Rubicon Models Chevrolet 1533x2 1.5-ton 4x2 truck, which is intended to represent the type in LRDG service, and simply painted it to match the other vehicles in my collection.

I kept the stripped down cab, as reinstating a covered cab would require modelling skillz beyond my meagre capacity.  Vehicle markings are for the 3rd Canadian Field Company, RCE, with the intent that this truck will be a support vehicle for my sappers.  That will also provide the justification for the stripped down cab - the engineers needed to get the truck into some tight space or other!

And here they are with the CMP 15 cwt that I already had.

Commando Characters

A while back, I picked up this pack of Commando characters from Warlord Games because I wanted the piper Bill Millin figure.  Lord Lovat (the slightly eccentric commando commander) and Brigadier Peter Young (later to be a "famous"* wargamer, as well as a historian and re-enactor).

*well, at least as famous as a wargamer can be...

Russian Grenadier with Flag

Many months ago, Arthur gave me a pewter figure of a Russian grenadier.  He's been standing on my painting table for far too long, so I have finally put some paint on him.  He is just under 50 mm from the soles of his feet to his eyes, or about 100 mm from the bottom of the base to the top of the flag.

I'm no expert on Russian regimental flags. I simply copied the colours from one of the flags on the sheet that comes with the Perry Miniatures Russian Infantry, for the Simbirsk Regiment.

I have no particular plans for this model, other than to keep it on the shelf above my computer.  Maybe it will be a token if needed for a game.

Sean Connery as Roy Urquhart

 I was sad to learn of Sean Connery's death yesterday.  He was such an iconic actor, and featured in so many of my favourite films.  Then I remembered that my lead mountain included a Stoessi's Heroes figure of Sean Connery, in his role from 'A Bridge Too Far', playing Major General Roy Urquhart, commander of the British 1st Airborne Division.  

So Sir Sean quickly climbed up to the top of the pile, and here he is.

Here is Sir Sean himself, in the scene that this figure recreates.

(although I suspect those lovely Dutch people will be a bit put out if he brought all that grass into their dining room; perhaps I should have given him an indoor base instead!)

Incidentally, and making an obscure reference back to my Operation Husky project, Roy Urquhart was the commander of 231st Brigade, aka the Malta Brigade.  During the battle for Sicily, the Malta Brigade was attached to 1st Canadian Division for part of the campaign, including the battles for Agira and Regulbuto.