Italian Wars: Spanish Units

 So almost a year ago I thought I had wrapped up my Holy Roman Empire army for the late medieval/early renaissance era. But as with a lot of gamers, new toys catch your eye and you find an excuse to add to your army.  For me, I was standardizing the storage boxes for this army from the mishmash I had, and now found myself with additional space in the new box that had to be filled with something.  Finding a few packs of Artizan Spanish on clearance at my local store, I thought they would make a nice addition to the army.  Of course a few packs don't add much, so I ordered two boxes of the Wargames Atlantic conquistadors to fill everything else.

First up is a command stand. Though I know Spain converted over to the Cross of Burgundy banner early in the wars, visually I don't find it very appealing and decided to use the earlier flag. Trying to paint the details in on a flag that size was beyond my aging eyes, so I just used a printed version. The commander and drummer are Wargames Atlantic plastics with a metal Artizan figure holding the banner. I think the two manufactures' figures are very similar in height and heft, so they are very easy to blend together.

Spanish sword and bucklermen from Artizan Designs. For the heart shaped shields, you either had to fit them with the wide edge towards the hands or shoulder; I wasn't sure which would be more proper, but guessed hands.  Hopefully I got it right.

Crossbowmen from the Kingdom of León. These were made form Wargames Atlantic figures with spare pavises from Old Glory. Frustratingly, the WA kit doesn't really include enough crossbow quivers for all the figures; because I wanted more firing/preparing to fire figures rather than loading (the loading hand is sculpted attached to the quiver), I ran short by one, even using two boxes of the kit. And if you go with the arquebus handgun option instead, there are no ammo pouches included at all.  My other major complaint about the kit is that the paired arms aren’t numbered (and they aren’t always close to one another), so it was a bit of an annoying guessing game during assembly. Definitely a poor design choice by WA.

Pikemen. The majority of the figures are WA, with a few Artizan thrown in. As with most of my army units, I made the artistic decision to use a unifying color palate for the unit based on the banner they carry. The WA pike are very short (approximately 50mm) compared to other manufactures, which is a bit disappointing visually.  Again, I'm not sure why WA made that decision.  One thing I will get WA credit for is the wide variety of head options available. I chose to avoid the morion helmets to give the unit an earlier feel, and I still managed to get quiet a bit of diversity of out of what remained.

Despite the shortcomings of the Wargames Atlantic kit mentioned above, I think they are a good value for the money and overall I'm happy the assembled figures. Throwing in the Artizan Design figures also gives you a bit of additional variability that only improves to the look of the units.

Baltic Independence Wars: Final Units and Buildings

Construction for my Baltic Independence Wars project has come to a close with the last few units and bits of terrain.

First up are a unit of Astrakhan Cossacks painted as part of Bułak-Bałachowicz's Mounted Partisan Detachment. These were painted using the plate in Osprey's " Armies of the Baltic Independence Wars 1918-20" as reference.  I really like these Copplestone miniatures, but wish more than two horse poses available.  They are a little larger than my Great War Miniatures German cavalry, but I don't think it looks too egregious on the table.

Next are an Estonian machinegun team and a Latvian medic.  The machinegun team is by Empress and actually comes with four figures. However, all my other machinegun teams for this era have three figures, so I elected to move the fourth figure to my artillery team. The stand for the machinegun was a little challenging to assemble, but I think I was able to hide the worst of my sins in the basing. The medic was assembled from the Wargames Atlantic plastic Great War Russian kit, with the addition of an armband I made from some thin plastic.

Estonian artillery team with spotter. This M1910 Howitzer is by Empress and I've added the standing officer from their machinegun team.   Looking at photos of surviving examples, they have been painted in a variety of greens; not knowing what was period correct, I've gone with just a general drab green.  The observer is another Wargames Atlantic figure.  There are no binoculars in the Russian set, so I used a pair from the WA Germans and created a neck strap from the German gasmask strap.

The final unit is a resin Russian pattern Austin Armored Car from Empress. According to this Russian site, the Latvians received a captured Red Army Austin in 1919 that was renamed "Zemgaleetis."  It went through a few different paint schemes during its service, but I'm hoping I have the correct one for the war. For the logo, I made some decals at home; They aren't the best quality, but still look better than what I could accomplish by hand. The resin casting was pretty good, but the kit arrived with the rear fenders broken. I had to rebuild them from the remaining fragments, some plasticard, and some brass rod for the rivets. The other major challenge with the kit is there are no registration marks for the front fenders and wheels, and the two turrets. I ended up gluing some of the parts into positions that I thought were correct, but didn't fit with the other parts; So had to break them off the kit and rebuild. This resulted in some damage to the car (one of my my turrets is now a little lopsided and I had to remake some of the rivets), but I'm hoping its not too noticeable. 

I also finished up a few more village buildings for the battlefield.  These are MDF kits from Things from the Basement's Russian Village line. Overall, I really like these kits. The MDF for the the main structural elements is thicker than the equivalent Sarissa Precision kits, though I did manage to break a few of the the thinner decorative elements during the building process. My one complaint would be the sizes of the doors on the kits; They come in around 30mm high, so look short with 28mm figures.

The izba log cabins come in a set of two and are very easy to assemble (you can download instructions from the company site).  The only modifications I made to the kits were to add some additional wood strips to the roof peaks in order to hide the gaps.

A dacha cottage house. I added some card strips to the roofline to hide the gaps. No base is included with this kit, so you're limited in how much additional basing detail you can add.

And with that, I just need to talk someone into a game so I can get everything on the table.

 

Into the Wasteland: Cultists and Creatures

So there has been a lot of hype recently about the new Trench Wars game, but I wasn't sure I wanted to jump into another game system.  However, I liked the design of some of the figures and thought they could make some fun cultists for my current Fallout/This is Not A Test post-apocalyptic setting.

While I appreciated the concept of the stigmata nuns, I didn't like the topless figures that were part of the offical figure line.  I was raised Catholic and spent a lot of time around nuns, and that look just didn't make any sense to me in the context of the church. Additionally, I usually play at the local hobby shops where there are lots of kids, and I didn't feel comfortable bringing sexualized miniatures into the store. As such, I went searching for some clothed/armored nuns instead. Luckily I found some Red Pilgrim designed miniatures on Etsy that fit the bill. In the church, the Dominican order was partially founded to help fight heresy and played a significant role in the Inquisition, so I decided to use their robes as the basis on how I painted my nuns. The weapons loadout wasn't fully legal in the offical game, but it was fine for my purposes. The figures came with plain bases, but I opted to buy some bases on Etsy designed by Zabavka Workshop for all the Trench Crusade figures, as I thought they would then better match my Fallout figures.

In addition to the nuns, I also picked up a set of Red Pilgrim's Trench Pilgrims.

Red Pilgrim didn't produce any ecclesiastic prisons, so I found a set  by Black Cobra Miniatures.  I didn't find these to be as well sculpted as the Red Pilgrim miniatures and annoyingly, the figure sizes were inconstant, ranging from 28-32mm to the eye. To help hide this, I put them on bases with elevated rubble piles. I planned to use theses as captured Fallout feral ghouls, so painted them accordingly. 

My Inquisitor and and Trench Prophet, again from Red Pilgrim Miniatures. The Trench Prophet was a little oversized (magnified by her standing partially on a rock) compared to the other Red Pilgrim figures, but still looked ok.  Unfortunately, I broke the handle on her hammer during painting and it flew off into the ether never to be seen again. I ended up building a replacement from a Boys anti-Tank rifle.

The Trench Pilgrim Communicant was another figure by Black Cobra Miniatures. Rather than use the pale skin in the offical Trench Crusade lore, I opted to paint him green to match my other Fallout super mutants.

To get free shipping on my Etsy order, I also ordered a figure from Ethan Savage Studios. It was listed as 32mm and I intended to use him as a human wasteland survivor, but the figure arrived 40mm to the eye. This was way too big for a human, so I was forced to use him as a super mutant. He was shorter than the others in my collection, so I again used a raised base to make him look taller.

A comparison shot with the Communicant and super mutant and human from Vermillion Miniatures.

I like to buy figures form the local shops whenever possible, and I found this zombie grizzly bear from Wizkids that I though made a reasonable proxy for a yao guai mutant bear.  The seams on the figure were fairly very obvious out of the package, so I had to do some filling with greenstuff.

It was a little bigger than my Vermillion Miniatures yao guai, but still looked good. 

I also picked up some Wizkids giant ants.  They weren't the greatest of sculpts and were cast in a rubbery plastic, but I thought that would actually help prevent breakage of their legs and antennas. 

Lastly, some Fallout centaurs from Vermillion Miniatures. I've heard these are smaller that the offical Fallout centaurs, but they still looked menacing. I was short a few bases for them, so had to use a few Zabavka Workshop bases instead.  Since they weren't flat like the originals, I had to break and reposition some of the arms and hands to make them fit better. I used the grass tufts to hide the worst of my efforts.

There still more warbands and miscellaneous adventurers and creatures to paint (along with more terrain to build), but I'd say I'm near the halfway point by now. Hopefully my "This is Not A Test" rulebook will get here soon and I can start hosting some games for my group.

Baltic Independence Wars: Estonian and Latvian Infantry plus Buildings

There are no dedicated lines of miniatures for Estonian and Latvian troops in the Baltic Independence Wars, so you must use proxies and conversions to represent these soldiers. Looking through the Osprey book, there were a lot of uniform/equipment options depending on the army and timeframe for the war: Russian, German, American, and British kit seemed commonplace. Photos of reenactors from the 100th anniversary of the Battle of Cesis showed them mostly using Russian uniforms with a bit of German equipment mixed in. Based on this, I decided to use Russian figures for my proxies.

My Estonian command was built from Copplestone Casting miniatures.  Two of the figures looked close enough to represent the Estonian M1919 uniform, and I decided to go with the blue dress version rather than the standard grey purely for the aesthetics.  The third figure had a distinctively Russian tunic, but I opted to still give him the dress pants and cap to better match the other officers.    

Creating the Latvian command was a little tricky, as they wore the Balodis cap and a French style tunic as part of their M1919 uniform.  I had one Copplestone figure in a greatcoat hiding his uniform that also had his hatband visible all the way around, so I trimmed his cap back and got a passing approximate. The second figure was created from a Wargames Atlantic Russian officer body. I shaved down the epaulets and tried to make his collar look as French as possible. None of the WA heads were appropriate for conversion, but I found a Warlord WW2 British officer's head in the bits box that I was able to modify into something reasonable. 

The first unit of Estonian infantry was created from the Wargames Atlantic Russian plastic set, with a couple of Empress RCW figures thrown in. When ordering the Empress figures, I didn't notice that this pack had brimless caps, but I don't think the difference will be too obvious on the table. While the WA Germans suffered from bodybuilder proportions in their arms/torsos, WA seemed to have listened to customers' feedback; the Russian are much more naturally proportioned. As such, the thinner Empress figures didn't stand out as much this time.

As with my Germans, I wanted each unit to be slightly different in appearance to help with tracking units on the table.  There again seemed to be a lot of variation in the Russian tunic colors during the conflict, so I embraced that here. I also decided I would use helmets on the veteran units to make their status more obvious. There seemed to be a fair amount of German helmets floating around the Estonian army, so I used leftover heads from my WA Germans, along with some grenades. 

Latvian Infantry. As with the Estonians, these were made from Wargames Atlantic figures with a couple of Empress miniatures thrown in.

Latvian veterans. Based on the Osprey book, M1915 Adrian helmets were very commonly used by this army. The unit was a pretty even mix of WA and Empress figures; the Empress helmets were a bit thinner, but I didn't think it was immediately obvious on the table. 

The last unit represented poorly equipped new recruits and was built from Copplstone Casting's partisans. The mix of figures in the pack was random, but I unfortunately got a poor mix; there were 3 pairs of duplicates and 4 of the figures were built off the same body dolly. I did my best to hide the repetition with the paint schemes, but still wished it had a bit more variation. 

And here you can better see how the figures from the various manufactures sized up. The Wargames Atlantic Russians are thinner in proportions than their Germans (including the heads), and now sit somewhere between Empress and Copplstone. It was also interesting to see a bit of size creep in the Copplestone figures; the Russian officers were a little taller and bulkier than the partisans from the same line. 

Copplestone, Wargames Atlantic, Wargames Atlantic, Empress, Copplestone

I also decided to take a break from painting figures and assembled the first of my new buildings. First up were a couple of Sarissa buildings, with modifications made to their roofing materials. While nice looking, they are actually quite small and at most you'd be able to fit around 2-3 miniatures inside. 

I also decided to try out the offerings from Things from the Basement. This house was much larger in size and could hold quite a few figures.

I still have a few more units to paint and some additional buildings to assemble, but the finish line is in sight and I can't wait for an opportunity to finally get a game in.

Baltic Independence Wars: German Freikorps and Landeswehr

A few years back, our local gaming shop franchise went through a reorganization that caused them to clear out their shared warehouse. They were offering non-GW plastics at steep discounts and I was able to obtain a box of Wargames Atlantic Great War Germans for only $5 US. I wasn't sure what I'd do with them at that time (my existing Great War collection was for East Africa), but I couldn't resist the deal and added the figures to the pile. Fast forward to 2024 and I decided I'd combine them with the Empress Miniatures Freikorps figures I'd been admiring to create a skirmish force for the Baltic Independence Wars 1918-1920.

Now I was no expert on this force and their uniforms and equipment; my knowledge didn't extend too far beyond the relevant Osprey Publishing titles. However, I did my best to paint something that will pass casual inspection. My reading indicated there was a fair amount of variation in the feldgrau and steingrau uniform fabrics due to material shortages and varying quality of fabric dyes, so I intentionally incorporated that into my painting to help differentiate the various squads.

Command Group: I really liked the character of the Copplestone German Mercenaries from their Back of Beyond range, so opted to use them as my command.  I painted one as a Freikorps commander and the other as a Landeswehr commander.  They were joined by an Empress medic and an artillery observer from Great War Miniatures' artillery crew pack.

Freikorps Infantry Squads: These were predominately created from Wargames Atlantic plastics, with a few metal Empress figures thrown in. The WA figures were sculpted in a heroic 28mm format with very bulky bodybuilder style arms that often stuck out at strange angles (other hobbyists have commented on this previously). This was particularly noticeable with the MG08/15 arms. As such, there was a significant style difference with the Empress figures, which were slighter and sculpted with thinner proportions. While a bit obvious at table level (at least to me), I think they blended in well enough when observed from above.

Freikorps Pionieren Squad:  Again, these were WA figures with the exception of the Empress flamethrower team. I added the skulls and crossbones to the helmets to help flag that they were an elite squad.

Freikorps Stosstruppen Squad: WA figures with a single Empress grenadier figure. The MG08/15 was removed from the squad and more Bergmann MP18s added for close assaults.

MG08 Team: Another set from Empress. I really had difficulty getting the machine gun handles to fit properly in the gunner's hands and overall found the gun fiddley to assemble. As a result, the gunners feet didn't set properly on the ground, so I did my best to hide it with rocks and grass.  

FK96 Field Gun: This artillery piece and its crew were from Great War Miniatures. The crew pack came with 6 figures, but as Wikipedia says it used a 5-man crew, I used the extra figure as the observer with my command group. There were no assembly instructions provided with the gun, but I was able to eventually figure things out with reference photos.   

Baltic Landeswehr Infantry:  This unit was created from Empress miniatures.  To help differentiate them from the Freikorps units, I used the Vallejo German Uniform color to give their feldgrau a bit more of a blueish hue. I also painted the Baltic blue and white pipping onto their shoulders; the pattern wasn't as fine as I hoped, but was the best I was able to create.

Baltic Landeswehr Cavalry: Great War Miniatures. I didn't find a good reference for the uniform these miniatures were wearing, so I did my best to make them look reasonable.

And here is a close up of the figures to allow a size comparison (L-R): Wargames Atlantic, Empress, Copplestone. The WA figures were the bulkiest, but didn't stand out too badly when compared to Copplestone. The Empress figures were definitely in a style of their own. I think they would likley fit in more with the Great War figures, but I didn't have a standing GW figure for the comparison shot. One interesting bit was that while the rifles were similar in size across WA and Empress, the WA MP18s were much smaller when compared to the other manufacturers.

With that, this half of the project was finished and I was was happy with the results.  In the future, I'll be working on a joint Latvian/Estonian force that will either oppose my Freikorps when I need to supply both armies for a game, or can be combined with them if I find an opponent with a Bolshevik force.