Monday 13 March 2017

Winter War Germans and Russians

I have spent the last few months painting and rebasing both Russian and German armies for the period 1941 -1945 but specifically for war in winter (October to March). 

This turned out to be a bigger undertaking than first thought as AFV's changed continuously through this period (as did the artillery) so it required that each period also had the necessary vehicles for each period which significantly increased the size and scope of the project.

Essentially its ended up with some 22 boxes of 6mm stands (roughly 11 for each side) which contain troops, heavy weapons, artillery, trucks, SPG's and tanks. 

Based for Spearhead (3cm square bases) and given a winter basing of my own concoction (a mix of white paint, PVA, ground granite (sparkly!) and bicarbonate of soda (body and 'clumpiness') it smooths over the talus underneath.  Finishing touch is a sprinkle of green foilage to simulate a bit of vegetation poking through.

I've also worked on some 'Stalingrad' style ruins with rubble-strewn roads separating ruined buildings and including parks and open areas to allow some tactical situations to develop.  In addition, I'm working on finishing a winter river but I don't know whether to 'freeze it over' or leave it flowing.

Anyway, here's the pics of some of the units.  I've retained enough Russian units to also do a spring / summer campaign if required but that's for another time...

Ruins with rubble-strewn roads and open spaces

A more aerial view of the same

German STU's on a winter board

The boxes of units for both sides.  Some just need finishing touches to the bases

Summer Russian tanks - bases just need drybrushing and finishing off.

Russian troops - riflemen (left) and SMG's (right)

Russian support weapons - HMG's, mortars etc/

Close up of Russian Ski-troops in white camo 

More Russian troops in Winter uniform (including brown overcoats for many)

Russian Summer Troops (box 1)

Russian Summer Troops (box 2)

German Heavy Tanks (some finishing touches required).  

German medium tanks (again, some finishing touches required - essentially creating units with the same camo scheme for each unit so they can be easily distinguished 'in the field')

German Waffen-SS troops in camo smocks

Russian 'secret weapon' - Katyusha Mk4 (actually a missile from Warhammer 40K Epic chucked in for fun!)

German early war medium tanks (Panzer III's mainly).  

German troops in various attempts at winter camo 

German trucks. 

German APC's - box 1 of 3

German troops with colour coded bases to denote unit and type

5 comments:

Ian said...

Wow most impressive. We will need some of your summer Russians for Saturday.

jono said...

Brrrrrr!!

mark said...

very nice

Russ said...

Nice work Phil they look the part. I thought it odd when at tesco they had run out of bicarbonate of soda the other week.....

Broeders said...

1 tub goes a long way...