Monument

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I finished off the monument using the irregular renaissance cossack musketeer - I'm pretty pleased with how it came out.  As this is going to be fairly prominent in my ruined city scenery (or atleast the 40mm incarnation of it) I am tempted to add some graffiti to it. Not sure yet. If I do add graffiti to the ruined buildings then I can always come back to this.  My main issue with graffiti is what language to use - the ruins will be seeing duty as post apocalypse UK as well as a war torn Eastern European city... maybe I need to use some fairly neutral names? I might go digging through pictures of Grozny, Vukovar, etc to see if any 'authenti graffiti'would look ok in the UK....

WiP update: a quick trawl over the desk...

I just thought I'd share some of the WiP stuff and 'things to do' that are currently lurking on my desk. They are mostly 40mms (statues, Russian VDV airborne, milita of shapes and sizes,  government regulars and lots of unstarted stuff) but there are some 28mms (Malayan emergency CTs, security forces, planters and home guard+ ssome deamons for a Fistful of Kung Fu and some near future special forces ) slowly chugging along in between other things.  They'll probably get a boost a bit later this year as John and I were chatting about rules for the Malayan emergency the other week, and he has masses of jungle scenery... I still have lots of 20mm in the pipeline, so there will be more cold war goodness in the future too...

1/43 diecast Ural truck

I picked up a 1/43rd diecast Ural 4x4 truck from eBay.  No idea on the manufacturer (the box was all in Cyrillic!) At first I thought the model looks a little big when compared with a 40mm but compared with the pictures below I actually reckon that the scale is pretty much spot on.  The same company does  kamaz and zil trucks,  as well as the 6x6 ural and a variety of UAZ 'jeeps' and trailers in a range of camo schemes,  so I might have to see about picking some more up soon...

Irregular miniatures 42mm and HLBS 40mm size comparison

My quest for compatible figures continues, although I may have found the motherload... Irregular miniatures do a wide range of 42mm figures, ranging from flats and toy soldiers to properly detailed figures.  It includes a selection of modern milita types, riot police,  Vietnam war stuff and lots of WW2 bits.  I decided to take a punt on  couple of figures after Ian at Irregular said that the figures are 40mm from the top of the head to the bottom of the feet.  A quick measure of the HLBS figures showed them to be 39mm by the same method. 

The milita range includes a wide variety of head and weapon options, as well as figures im civilian and military clobber,  so has lots of potential. I started by ordering a standing and a kneeling civilian, with an ak47 and a DP lmg, as well as a seated military driver, all with random civilian heads

So far so good. The figures are fairly free of flash and cleanly sculpted.  The HLBS figures are more detailed, but the irregular figures are quite acceptable! Weapon wise, they match up well with HLBS and the chunkier TAG pieces. The next phphotos are size comparisons with both kneeling and standing HLBS figures. As you can see, the Irregular figures are slightly taller and a little thinner, but I think they should match really well once they are all painted up and based.  The chap in the centre of the last photo is from the Irregular late renaissance range, and will be going on a plinth as a statue to some long dead hero. 

The last thing I picked up is a 100mm WW2 Soviet artillery piece I picked up from the 'very useful guns' range.  The model is pretty big, and although not massively detailed it should really look the part painted up. In many ways, the lack of fine detail (winding handles etc) should make the model more robust.

Painting catchup part 1 (or what did I do whilst I wasn't blogging?)

As promised, I'm trying to catch up with posting some of the stuff I have done  before getting back to my blog.  I'll probably go over the figures in more detail another time, with better pictures,  but for now these might give some idea...
(The  28mm Africans in the last picture I painted ages ago, and the 20mm BTR-80's in sand and green were pre-paints. A couple of the Malayan Emergency figures have been redistributed from other projects too)

IS-48 vs other tanks size comparison

As promised - a size comparison between the Dust Tactics IS-48, the Kitech T-72 (same dimensions as their T-80 and T-90) and the Die-cast T-55

As the models are all fairly iffy on the scale front, I thought I would do some comparison pictures from my 1/72nd stuff to see how the vehicles should match up when they are all at a consistent scale.  In this case we have an IS-3, T-72, T-55 and a T-54...

Based off the 1/72 stuff, the 40mm models all scale up pretty well! Not that I'm a scale stickler, but good to know that they aren't wildly off!

Dust Tactics SSU IS-48 for 40mms...

I have a strange love of the Soviet IS-3 (AKA JS-3) heavy tank. I don't know why, as despite being rushed out for the very very end of WW2 (several took part in the Berlin parade, and scared the socks off the British and Americans) they have only seen limited military service (Hungary in 1956, the Sino-Soviet border clashes of the late 60s/early 70s and theArab-Israeli wars come to mind). I think I just like the shape. I have 3 in 20mm in various colours,  and when I discovered that the Dust Tactics range had 1 in something around 1/48th I knew I had to get one.  Being part of the Dust range, it wasn't particularly cheap, but atleast I got a fair bit knocked off for having a slightly crushed box (!). The model came pre-assembled, and has the option for a weird war tesla gun and/or front mounted flame thrower.  They both slot in, so could be changed if one wished.  It also comes with a 3/4 commander figure.  Its not a perfect fit for an IS-3, having a rear facing mg in the turret which I don't recall on the 'real' one,  but it's a good enough substitute. 

How am I going to use it? Not sure yet - probably supporting my militia.  It's not unprecedented,  as the Ossetian Rebels were gifted a handful of IS-2s by the Russians in the late 90s (98?) to use against the Georgians.  Apparently there are still stocks of IS-3s about, so a similar thing might happen...

I'll get some size comparison pics against my other tanks up another time. IIt's going to dwarf the T55...