A trip to town = goodies!

On Saturday we went pottering around town, and I discovered further advantages of doing stuff in 20mm: model shops become useful for more than stocking up on paint and glue! Between Antix & Modelzone, we spent £36 and came away with 2x BTR-80 pre paints, an 'army' land rover, a mini & an electricity sub-station (reduced from £30something to £12) - here are some pics, along with some figures for scale. The BTR-80s are both 1:72nd, whilst the rest is 1:76th/OO scale. Technically the platoon 20 figures are 1/6th scale, but that is without their built in bases, or penny washer mounts.

As an aside, on of the scale figures in the Platoon 20 90's British Infantryman which I don't think I ever got around to putting up the other week...

So, the OO scale stuff is a little too small, but doesn't look out the way - especially not at a glance - and looks 'alright' alongside the 1/72nd military vehicles. As I don't really get on well with painting vehicles or scenery, the availability of pre-paints means that my forces are more likely to get finished sooner, and have something to fight around! The only downside is that most of the readily available buildings are very British - good for England invaded & Winter of 79 games, less good for trying to represent West Germany... still, there are some ranges of OO/HO continental railway buildings out there, so some of those might be of use...  

More Platoon 20 figures - a continuation of my review...

So, my next batch of Platoon 20 figures arrived - British packs (P-b)1, 6 & 6a; and Soviet packs (M-SM) 1, 2, 3, 5 & 8  - enough to make a section of British Marines/Paras with GPMG & CG, as well as having a guy with a blow-pipe, and officer, radio op & NCO in beret left over; who will form the nucleus of my infantry; and 2 sections of Soviet Motor rifles (either BTR-80 or BMP1/2 mounted) with between 7-9 men, 1x RPG-7, 1x RPK & 1x PKM, a platoon HQ and the beginnings of a 3rd section.

Actually, that's a bit of a lie. In the packs, the MG pack has 1x RPK, 1x PKM & 2x RPD. At the moment the RPDs are standing in for both an RPK and a PKM, but these will be balanced out when I put in an order to Liberation at some point. To meet the orbats in the various Cold War Gone Hot scenarios, I'll also need to get a couple of guys with SVDs, and  a few with AK/UGL combinations (I've got one so far).

Generally speaking, the castings are still fairly good to good - a few have more mould lines/more flash than others, and the occasional figure has slight 'metal fluff' around then end of their rifle (this mainly seenm to effects the Soviets)'. My main comment is that whilst the rest of the figures live up very well to comparison with my 'taster' figures, the British command  (P-B1) are noticeably poorer than other figures -the models are shorter, have less defined detail and are not as clean castings. The photo shows 2 of them (guys in sand base coat) alongside 2 figures from P-B6. The standing command figure is actually mounted on a slice of credit card to brig him up to height!

The figures take paint readily enough, here are some I finished today - the blowpipe operator is from P-b6a, whilst the other two are from P-B1

As I say, definitely not dreadful, just not as nice as some of their others. If it turns out the rest of the Platoon 20 squaddies are of this quality, then I might well focus on the like of Britannia & Liberation to fill out numbers; but it certainly won't put me off getting things from them which other manufacturers don't make (Wombats!). I'm going to finish with a gratuitous close-up of my soviet platoon commanders, just to show how nice the figures are!

The Soviets are coming! World War III is on!

Or, atleast, some minaiture soviets, along with some boot-necks to try and hold the line...

I decided to give 20mm a whirl, and with some money in my PayPal account after a few 28mm sales, it seemed as good a time as any. So far, although a couple of companies have said they'd send samples, only East Riding Miniatures/Platoon 20 have done so (in fariness, Elhiem & Under Fire did say the figures wouldn't be sent until this week)... so ERM got my order :) I had perviously drafted up a 'wants' list for s Soviet Motor Rifle platoon in camo suits, part of which was Platoon 20 and part  Liberation - so I ordered the P20 part, along with a pack of RPG men to make up sections in the mean time.

To face off aginst these guys I added a section of Royal Marines, including a CG launcher, and what will become part of a platoon HQ section.

I also had a quick look, and painted 20mm modern figures seem to have a reasonable retail value, so if everything goes awry with the current plan, I should atleast be able to make a bit of a profit on them...

More on 20mm - Platoon 20 mini review

Thanks to everyone for their imput, thoughts and comments - I hope I'm not boring folks (too much) with these musings!  Still making my mind up - I think any final decision is going to wait until my other 'sample' figures turn up and see how they all mesh together, and if I like the finished results, but I am currently leaning towards 20mm...

Well, the first of my 20mm samples turned up mid-week: 3 figures from East Riding Miniature's "Platoon 20" line.  They comprised a 1990's British Infantry man (will I be able to paint DPM in 20mm? I struggle in 28!), a 1970's Soviet Motor Rifleman in hooded camo suit and a masked 'bank-robber' type with a stocking over his head with a shotgun.

Initial impressions were good - the figures were bigger than I was expecting (a strange thing to say, but mentally I was picturing them as being closer to 15mm than, say, the old Grenadier 25mm 'Secret Agents' range), and there wasn't too much in the way of mould lines (what there was came of quickly and easily).

I based the 3 figures on penny washers (my default basing medium, as I'm not sure what else one could base them on...) got them primed this morning, and once the primer was dry I thought I'd quickly do the basecoat... You can imagine how surprised I was that I had finished 2 of the figures by the time I had to leave for work (25 mins later!).

The Motor-rifleman was based on an illustration from this book:

Far right-hand side in the picture below to be precise. The only problem is, I've never seen that camo being used anywhere else! Hey ho - he looks good, which is the main thing from my perspective!

Whilst the masked (stocking-ed?) gunman is vaguely based on the gunmen from the 'Squeaky clean cleaning company' in Max Payne 2, although he has a different logo on his back, and has turned out more blue than grey... so actually, I guess he's not really based on them at all!

More musings on 20mm vs 28mm...

So, I've been doing some playing around with numbers and order codes, and to get 3 sections of Soviet Motor rifle (taken to maximum size and composition, so that they can be used in all the different scenarios where variants  are required) and a platoon command s, along with 4x BMP-1 mounts and a BRDM-2 scout car comes to ~£70 in 20mm.

This is still (a lot) cheaper than 28mm (where a similar force, albeit with less flexibility in terms of squad composition) comes in at around ~£130... but it isn't as cheap as I had been hoping. Now, that's using resin and metal figures and vehicles. The big savings will come in terms of tanks, and other vehicles which are available as plastic kits or die-cast toys*.

The big problem is that I've been looking at 28mms for so long that I have a, for want of a better phrase, emotional attatchment to them. As an example,  I have recollections of drooling over the Sloppy Jaloppy cold wars vehicles when they were first released, and wondering at the time if I would ever get any. I just don't get that for most 20mm - that might be down to the poor illustrations on various sites though, as I do have recollections of regretting stuff being 'in the wrong scale' when having looked at Elhiem & Platoon 20 in the past (and the same goes for most of the stuff mentioned on the Winter of '79 blog spot, especially regarding scenery)

*Ironically, due to their lack of popularity and scarcity of figures, the cheapest military vehicles have to be 1/48ths... it's just there isn't too much variety, and as I say, scare figures.

Road to Stanleyville: A FoF Photo report...

On Saturday, Steve, John & I got a chance to play the second Congo scenario from the FoF 'Bushwars' book - this time focusing on the Mercenaries advance to Stanleyville, and the Simba rebels various attempts to slow and delay them. The key objective for the Mercenaries was to get off the table ASAP (maximum points for getting off by turn 6), with as many of their vehicle assets and troops intact; whilst the simba were trying to delay them and kill as many as possible.  The mercs were pretty well tooled up - a Ferret AC (here looking remarkably like a Daimler), 2 gun jeeps (1 with a .50 cal, 1 with twin link GPMG) and 3 trucks (each with a 8 man squad with 7x SLR & 1x GPMG); then again the Simbas had an RPG-2 team, a Dshk team  and only 6x 10 man mobs to start with, with up to 2 reinforcement mobs per turn.

At the end of the game, there were 6 dead mercs, 2 badly wounded, and one lightly wounded; for 113 dead, wounded or dying Simba rebels, and the mercs still lost! (A single truck with the wounded in, and the .50 cal jeep with its gun knocked out, were being escorted towards the table end  by 2 depleted sections of infantry when play finished at the end  of turn 8).  Although we (Steve & I - mercs) managed to wipe out more Simba units than last time, we still didn't get enough to make up for our lost vehicles in terms of points...

Scenery is all down to Johnny (with artistic assisstance from Tracey), and the 2 gun jeeps & matching section are also his work (as are a unit of simbas) - we've quite a different style of brush work (John's being the nicer!) so you should be able to spot them. All the other figures and vehicles are my work.

Anyway - here are the pictures! I've got some of the positions of various units at the start and end of the game, as well as most significant changes during each turn. I'll leave out the majority of the narrative as I'm once again pressed for time, but hopefully with what I've written above it should be reasonably clear (If I get chance, I'll try to add a few extra clarifying comments)

So that's how the table looked after set-up. The Unimogs were assumed to have covered backs, so the figures weren't deployed in the rear (yet) to discourage their use as gun-trucks

1 turn in - an a jeep crew is wiped out by a mob of Angry locals

They try to do the same thing to a unimog, but manage to hack away at the canvas and truck sides rather than getting to the crew and passengers..

The convoy has already split into two parts... 

The 2nd truck rolls back the canvas and lets the locals have lead...

The fight around the back unimog intensifies, with the guys in the back fighting back, trying to get the truck free..

Reinforcements!

The squad in the first truck dismounts to move the barricade, after the Ferret driver spots a mine (marked by the tires in the dirt) before having their tires blown out by Simba support weapons fire.

The remaining gun jeep races forwards, pouring .50 fire into the bush where the RPG came from, taking out the weapons team, whilst the other unimog performs a similar manoeuvre on the Dshka team, bringing them perilously close to the edge of the jungle... But not before the ferret crew have had enough and bail out, both with light injurys.

More Simba prepare to charge the rear unimog... Their time looks number in seconds...

The jeep and the 2nd unimog are both charged by mobs of simba which had been lurking in the under growth...

More reinforcements advance...

And even more arrive...

Under supporting fire from the Ferret crew, the 1st section moves up and begins to dismantle the barricade

The rear unimog finally manages to fight free, racing off, only for a quick witted Simba to shoot the tires, bringing the truck to a skidding halt

The second unimog also breaks free..

... and also comes to a grinding halt due to fire from the Simba's. Still, it gives good cover, so the troops are in no rush to disembark!

The troops from the final unimog disembark, pulling back with their casualties, whilst the Simba mob which had been trashing the jeep advance on their position, only to content themselves with pulling the unimog apart after taking a few rounds... 

The medic disembarks the gun jeep, and falls back to support the wounded, whilst the light injured ferret crewman makes his way to there position, along with more casualties from unimog 2...

The wrecking gang...

The barricade is clear!

More reinforcements, including a section of army deserters! (I had run out of militia figures to spawn by this point... that's never happened to me before!)

The troops move up to begin clearing the road...

The vehicles move up, trying to clear a path through ramming, and small arms fire..

Yet more reinforcements!

The section from the second unimog disembark, forming the rear guard, whilst their transport is set upon by an angry mob (who got points for destroying vehicles, hence the trashing...)

That unit refused to move... the vehicles get a little bogged down by the angry mobs, but they didn't hold on too hard... The vehicles broke free, but that was the end of the game. The last couple of pics are just eye-candy, showing where everything else got to...