Baltic Independence Wars: German Offensive at Cēsis 1919 AAR

So I was finally able to meet up with my friend Art at one of the local hobby shops, where we put my Baltic Independence Wars miniatures through their first battle.  This was a fictional encounter set during the 1919 Battle of Cēsis using the Contemptible Little Armies rules. Estonian and Latvian forces (me) scrambled to prevent German Freikorps and Landwehr (Art) from seizing a critical rail station. The Baltic nationals were ordered to hold on until the last man.

The civilians had already fled ahead of the advancing armies, so the area was quiet other than a few hastily abandoned sheep.

The Estonians and Latvians launched a three prong attack. Two veteran units rushed to the station with an armored car in support. A unit of quickly raised recruits headed for the woods, while heavy machine and artillery teams pushed their equipment into place.

The center prong consisted of two regular infantry units who would work their way through the village and try to slow the German advance before pivoting into the far end of the station.

At the other end of the village, Cossacks galloped at top speed around the pending clash in order to flank the advancing Germans.

The Germans went with a two prong attack. As their Freikorps artillery and heavy machine guns teams maneuvered into place, Landwehr infantry and cavalry advanced through the cemetery and around the woods. A Freikorps stormtrooper squad ran towards the station, with a flamethrower equipped pioneer team in support. 

The second prong consisted of two Freikorps infantry squads who worked their way through the pasture towards the village.

The German stormtroopers managed to reach the station first, and moved into the freight depot area.

The Baltic veterans continued their advance, while the Latvian armored car opened fire on the advancing Landwehr cavalry. Unfortunately, they failed to cause any injuries. 

The other Baltic infantry continued their push through the village, highly aware of the German heavy machinegun being set up at the other end of the station.

The two squads of Freikorps infantry spotted the Cossack cavalry racing towards them and managed to kill two of the riders.

However, the Cossacks quickly closed the distance and slashed one of the infantry squads to ribbons as their Kameraden rushed to help. 

At the station, Baltic infantry exchanged fire with the stormtroopers inside the building. They failed to injury any of the Germans and sadly lost a few of their men.

Landwehr rushed to join the stormtroopers and pioneers in the station, but two members were killed by the Estonian heavy machinegun.

Baltic forces entered the passenger end of the station and contested control of the building.

Fearful of the armored car's twin machineguns, the Landwehr cavalry veered into the woods, where the raw Latvian recruits scrambled to set up a firing line.

The second Friekorps squad joined the melee with the Cossacks, but they also were no match for the slashing sabers and wild horses.

Back in the woods, luck was with the green recruits and they caught the Landwehr cavalry by surprise, killing half the unit. The survivors ran off in a panic.

The Estonian machinegun team also managed to pick off another of the Landwehr infantry before they made it to the safety of cover.

With the German machinegun now assembled and looking for targets, the Estonian infantry took shelter along the station while the Latvians hid behind a cottage.

The Estonian artillery took a shot at the Freikorps troops in the freight depot, but failed to dislodge them.

Just as the German field artillery crew were preparing to launch their attack on the station, the Latvian armored car drove up and gunned them down to the last man.

On the other side of the station, the Freikorps stormtroopers charged out of the station and brutally attacked the Estonians. The Latvians decided to risk machine gunfire and rushed to assist their allies.

At the other end of the village, the bloody battle between the Cossacks and Freikorps raged on.

Meanwhile, Germans and Latvians charged at one another along the station platform. 

The armored car moved up, hoping to support the infantry, but was disabled by the German machinegun.

Though the Latvians managed to join the melee on the other side of the station, neither Baltic unit was a match for the ferocity of the Freikorps stormtroopers.

As the German machinegun team started attacking the Latvian recruits, they were unaware the surviving Cossacks were rushing up behind them.

Back at the station, the German units defeated the Latvian veterans. All that remained were the Estonian veterans holed up in the passenger hall.

The Cossacks reached the machinegun crew and cut them down. The surviving Latvian recruits in the woods were now free to take potshots as the Germans swarming the station.

The stormtroopers began their assault on the passenger hall...

...While the pioneer squad on the other side began stealthily maneuvering their flamethrower into place.

Luckily the Estonians managed to drive off the stormtroopers and launched a successful counter-assault against the pioneers before the flamethrower could be used.

At the same time the remaining Cossacks arrived and finished off the last of the stormtroopers.

With that, there were only a few ragtag German Landwehr and their officers left on the table, and they were forced to flee.  The Estonians and Latvians had succeeded in their mission to hold the station, but at a terrible cost. It was a really close battle that could have gone either way at multiple points, and Art and I were on the edge of seats until the last round. Overall, a really fun and exciting game. 

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 were 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.