Winter War Campaign continues

All quiet on the painting front lately, but I did manage to squeeze in another Winter War game last week. This was originally planned to be played during Christmas holidays, but due to scheduling problems we only got around to it last week.

The scenario was based on a historical battle where a Soviet unit was lost during a night march and bumped into a Finnish unit guarding a crossroads in the rear.

The starting position saw a Finnish LMG squad and an anti-tank gun defending the crossroads, while two Soviet platoons were arriving along the two roads leading to the crossroads. Would Finnish reinforcements arrive in time or will the Soviets overrun the defences.

 The first turn saw some of my reinforcements arrive on the Soviet flank shooting up a truck and killing off a couple of Soviet soldiers. In return the Soviets proceeded to deal a heavy blow to both squads taking out over half of them with some very lucky dice rolling.

On turn three it started to become light enough for troops to see clearly and at this point the Finnish anti-tank gun started to make short work off the Soviet T-26s on the open in the roads. In return my newly arrived machine-gun team got wiped out in another round of  splendid dice rolling.

Meanwhile on the other flank a Veteran Finnish ski squad arrived eager to revenge their comrades. However my dice rolling continued as usual with only a few casualties caused on the Soviets while once again over half the squad got wiped out in return fire.

Things are looking pretty desperate as the Soviets shoot through the single rifle squad at the crossroads in another show of marksmanship. No reserves in sight so it's pretty much over for the Finns.

 

As a desperate last ditch effort the few remaining Skiing riflemen attack the closest Soviet unit and promptly wipe them out. In return the Soviets attempt to counter-attack only to be killed and driven off the table.

A very solid win for the Soviets. I played a bit too rashly with the Finns being quite confident that shooting with 4+ or 5+ and killing with 3+ would be enough to take down enough Soviets while usually being hit with a 6+ or 7+ and being killed with 4+ or 5+ should have kept me quite safe. It was not to be as I was usually only able to take down a couple of Soviets while many times the return fire from a single Soviet squad would easily wipe out half a squad I had. Skilled dice rolling (or nicely weighed dice :) ) with consistent rolls of 6s all around really made me suffer. If Inexperienced units can start causing damage early in the game they can be really strong as most other armies can't afford to lose many units.

Painting Challenge entry 17: Winter War Finns

I just realized I had forgotten to post the final Winter War Finns that I finished from the initial Baker Company set. Here we have 18 men forming a rifle and a LMG squad. Some good sculpts there mixed with some more horrible ones.

My previous bases had somehow gotten "flat" after drying for a few weeks ending up with them looking quite weird. I decided to try using PVA glue as the base for the snow flock instead of Noch's snow paste. Didn't work out that well either. In the photos it looks good as I took them nearly immediately after finishing the minis. However now that they've dried the bases have turned light grey for some weird reason. I don't know if it's because of the PVA glue affecting the flock or if something else is causing it. Anyways now I still have to find a way to do snow that works well and rebase most of the 43 Finns I've painted up until now. Not something I'm really looking forward to doing...

The NCO mini with the scarf was a new pose and actually a pretty nice one. The one on the right was new too, but needed quite a lot of green stuff to fix his arm as it comes separate. In addition to that I had two of these and the other one was missing quite a bit of material from his leg and the rifle due to some casting mishap.

The LMG sculpt was another new one too. To be honest his face looks like it's carved up with a damn blunt axe and doesn't resemble anything human. Won't matter on the gaming table, but still knowing that he has no eyes there isn't any hope for his shots hitting something :)

Painting Challenge entry 9: Finnish automatic rifle squad and platoon command

Next up another squad of Baker Companys Winter War Finns. This time an automatic rifle team with a captured Russian DP-28 'Emma' light machinegun. I also painted up the platoon leader and an NCO figure to act as the command team.

I simplified the paintscheme a bit by removing the darkest shadows that were barely visible and skipped the final highlight of pure white. Speeds up the process a bit and at least I can't really spot the difference especially with the added mud. I'm now halfway through the pile of Finns and should hopefully have them all done within a few weeks so I can get started on the Ruskies (and all the other darn half finished projects).

The officer is actually quite a nice mini with surprisingly good proportions! His gear is maybe a bit too nice for a lowly 2nd Lieutenant, but I guess he can easily stand for a company commander while the guy on the left could be used for a platoon leader.

I was quite surprised how much faster the painting was with the new brushes too. I used to have an issue with my older synthetic brushes with paint drying really fast on the brush. With the same paint mixtures I can paint the whole snow suit with one color for even 2-3 minis without having to "refill" the brush. I guess the amount of paint the brush is holding helps keep it all moist and working. And the nice sharp tip and the good spring of the brush really helps in having better control.

The poses are pretty good here too. The guy on the left is missing the clip and trigger are of his gun. I don't know if this was a miscast or something that was forgotten during sculpting.

I did the dirt by first stipling a light brown colour on the knees, elbows and helm of the jacket followed by a darker brown on the areas which would touch the ground most to simulate more recent dirt or mud accumulating there. Loosely copied from Burkhard at his great blog, but I just switched the colours around. Have to try his way sometime to see if it yields any better results. These were pretty much the first minies that I "muddied" up outside armor so there's still some learning left to do.

 

The 'Emma' gunner has a slightly Elvish look to him

 Mr. Monkeyface has an identical brother joining him at the frontlines.

 These poses are also quite nice. The face on the prone guy is horribly malformed, but luckily it isn't very visible.

Painting Challenge entry 6: Winter War Finns

Here is the first batch of my Finns from the Baker Company Kickstarter. I'll write up a review about them later when I've painted more, but I'll have to rant a bit now too :)

Judging from the quality of these minis it really seems that the guys at Baker Company are a victim of their own success. Some of the sculpts just seem extremely rushed and the quality differences between them are massive. There are actually a few sculpts that are something that you would call medium quality minis. Not nearly as good as something for the Perry Bros for example, but still reasonable proportioned and with good detail. Then there are some with proportions that are totally off, with really skinny ankles being the biggest problem. Looks weird and makes the minis quite fragile.

This might be a bit  finicky, but seriously nearly all of the boots are totally off. Nearly all of them look like modern military boots with their laces etc. and they are too narrow compared to the legs. The proportions kind of make it look even worse. If the boots were actually bigger then it wouldn't looks as funny.

And finally the casting quality was really bad on some of the minis in my batch. I guess I spent about 2 hours removing all the mould lines, ingates and overflow areas. I hope this is just because Gavin has to cast these in a hurry to fulfill all the pledges and the final product will be done better.

Anyway now that I've got that out of my system here's a bit about the painting too :P I started the snowsuit from Khaki and worked through 5 layers finishing with highlights of pure white. I tried to go for a slightly yellowish dirtier looking unit, but I guess I went a bit overboard with the offwhite and white highlights so in the end they look quite clean. Decided against adding mud on the legs and elbows too, so maybe they can just represent a unit at the beginning of the war.

The snow is from Noch and it's a combination of their snow paste and snow flock. Looks good on the minis, but it actually shrunk quite a bit overnight leaving weird holes in some of the bases. I guess I have to fix those and next time remember to apply a smaller layer of it so that it won't happen again.

These are some of the better sculpts from the batch. Nice faces, didn't have much flash and they have nice poses too.

Mr. Monkey Face and the Running Man. Seriously are these two even sculpted by the same guy?