Pictures, or it didn't happen...

Reporting is a dangerous business, but not everyone at the scene is shooting bullets. Some of them are shooting frames. Pictures at 11...

Coming live from downtown at the mall, roving reporter Sally Vatin, her trusty cameraman B-roll and some hired 'muscle', Nelson and Natasha  - here's the 'News Team and Minders' from Copplestone Castings. Nice clean sculpts with no over-fussy detail. Great fun to paint. 

Natasha likes to accessorise with an SMG and some bling

Hold up. Is this next guy the odd one out? A robotic 'gentleman's gentleman'? A tin butler? He doesn't look like a member of the press, or a minder for that matter. I always thought his inclusion in the 'News Team and Minders' set was a bit odd. Then it dawned on me. He's not part of the news team or their minders at all. He's the interviewee! Maybe his chinless, well-to-do young master is the victim of the latest salacious society gossip or scandal and the trusty, implacable robot manservant Rutherford has been ordered in front of the cameras to cover for him. What-ho, Rutherford!

"No comment, no comment, no comment - and you can quote me"

Beware the robotic butler. Urbane, dignified, composed.
But who knows what steel fists are hidden inside those white kid gloves.

Till next time.

To Horse!

They've been a long time coming, but the cavalry finally arrived. My Red forces for Red Actions! just received some mounted reinforcements. These are a mix of 'Bolshevik Cavalry' and 'Bolshevik Cavalry in Greatcoats' from Copplestone Castings.

I haven't tackled painting horses for ages. I know a lot of wargamers hate painting horses, but I quite enjoy the process. No speedpaints, oil paint wipe method, or other fancy tricks here. I just paint them the same way I paint any figure; base coat, shading and highlights. It's what I'm used to and works for me. I wanted to get these done quickly, so I've restricted the horse colours to bays and chestnuts. I guess they would have been the most common colours anyway. I make no claim to authenticity of colours or markings. I know, for example, that the manes and tails on chestnut horses aren't dark, but hey, I like that aesthetic and choose to paint as I like. Horse purists be damned!

For ease of handling I prefer to paint the riders and horses separately.  To achieve this, the riders have to suffer the indignity of being temporarily impaled on a length of brass rod set in a weighted base. Once painted, riders are matched to horses and fixed with a blob of two-part epoxy glue, which I find gives a more durable bond than superglue. Any small gaps between rider and horse are filled with modelling putty which, once set, is painted to match.

Cavalry, of course, need leaders. A search through my collection unearthed three likely candidates. I remember these were an eBay purchase from years back when I first became interested in gaming the Russian Civil War. They've been waiting patiently all these years for the chance to saddle up. I think one of the reasons I bought them (apart from being a decent price) is that they fit in well with my own painting style. After re-basing them to match my other figures, I think they work perfectly. I have no idea now which seller I bought them from, or who painted them. If by some unexpected chance you are reading this and recognise these three splendid chaps as your own handiwork, do let me know so I can credit you!

And now,  To Horse, Proletarian!

Back to the Bolsheviks

After a long gap, I have returned to my Russian Civil War forces with a new addition to bolster the Reds. Using my chosen rule-set, Red Actions! by The Perfect Captain, these will represent a company of Red Regulars. I didn't want them to look too uniform since the term 'regular' doesn't really refer to the state of their dress. A mix of Copplestone Castings 'BU03 Elite Bolshevik Infantry' in budenovkas and 'BU01 Bolshevik Infantry' in peaked caps did the job.

I tried something different with the flag this time. My previous flags were simply printed onto plain paper which gives perfectly acceptable results but doesn't reproduced the intensity of the original image colours particularly well. That's fine for representing battle-worn or faded flags, but I wanted something a bit more pristine this time. The answer was to print the flag as before, but then 'paint' it with artists' inks. I printed several copies so I could experiment and practice a bit. It needs a steady hand for some of the finer detail, but I found that with a bit of patience I could achieve an acceptable result. It's really just careful 'coloring in' over the existing printed colours, but the colour saturation is much improved. 

I chose not to represent a specific unit, so the flag is a generic design with slogans and symbols pulled together from various online sources and assembled in Word and Photoshop. I can't vouch for the accuracy of the text, but at this scale and at a distance on the tabletop I think it conveys the right look.

Back of Beyond Misfits

What to do with these guys? They are (mostly) Copplestone Castings 'White Russians in Chinese service'. They're some of the very first figures that I painted from Copplestone's Back of Beyond range at a time when my interest in gaming the Russian Civil War was little more than the germ of an idea. I'm sure Mr Copplestone intended them to be mixed up in some rip-roaring action and adventure in the far east, with the Mad Baron von Ungern-Sternberg, Mongol tribesmen, Chinese Warlords and all that jazz. That's all very well, but my direction of travel pointed more towards Siberia or the Kuban than Mongolia and these chaps look a tad out of place for those theatres of the Russian Civil War. My odd choice of uniform colours doesn't help matters either.

But never mind. Never let historical accuracy get in the way of a good game, to paraphrase some wit called Twain (no, that's Mark not Shania, you philistine!)

Lets face it, there are plenty of examples of 'fantasy' RCW wargame armies with over-represented ''colourful' units, tanks, or elite 'cheka' and the like. Don't sweat it. It's a game.

And I haven't completely abandoned historical accuracy. If you know your Copplestone ranges and look closely, I've painted up a couple of 'Ragged White Russians' and mixed them in to give enough figures for four bases. So then, another unit completed for my RCW forces.

The coat is quite new comrade, only the holes are old.

More Bolsheviks. This time in greatcoats. I had to have a little rethink about these guys. When I first started collecting figures for Red Actions, my purchases were quite haphazard. Nothing was planned out and I just picked up packs of figures as my fancy took me. It was only later, when I started doing a bit of planning that I realised I had an odd mix of figures in summer and winter dress. My original solution was to paint two forces, one for summer and one in greatcoats with snowy bases for winter. What was I thinking?!!! At the speed I paint, that was never going to happen.

I could just have sold the figures, but I like them too much. So, they join the ranks of their lighter clad comrades - a bit over-dressed for the season perhaps, but let's suppose the air is still damp with the Spring rain, or the first chill of early Autumn. I'm not going to be too fussy about it anyway and they are a handy addition to my RCW forces.

Bolshevik Commanders

Another small addition to my Russian Civil War collection. I resolved to pick some small, easily achievable goals to get my painting back up to speed. These chaps fitted the bill perfectly. Copplestone Castings miniatures are always a joy to paint and with their greatcoats providing some large areas and minimal additional detail I got them finished and based in double-quick time.

A Couple of Commissars

I was supposed to be painting Star Wars: Legion figures. That was the plan anyway. There are a couple of squads of Rebel Troopers assembled and primed, waiting on the painting desk.

Alongside them were these two gents, part-painted from my last brush with my Russian Civil War project. I was going to set them aside to finish another time but, well they shoot stragglers don't they?

Ragged White Russians

My Russian Civil War project has been suffering from neglect of late, so I thought I'd better put that right.

Here are the latest recruits. A bunch of Ragged White Russians from Copplestone Castings.

They have a suitably battle-worn and irregular look about them with plenty of patched and torn clothes, worn-out boots and improvised footwear.

They're not intended to represent any particular unit so I've kept them fairly generic. That goes for the flag too. It started out looking far too pristine for such a ragged unit, so I distressed it a bit until I was happy with the look.

For some unexplained reason the bases gave me a headache and I struggled to achieve the effect I was after. This should have been the easy bit, but even following my tried and tested paint recipe I couldn't get a good match with my existing units. Much cursing and several repaints later, I finally got them looking how I wanted.

White Metal - Red Lead

Welcome to Mother Russia. In this episode, tea will be served from a samovar and caviar will replace butter on our toast...

Stop! Enough of this bourgeoise nonsense comrade! Tea? Caviar? Don't you know there's a civil war on?

My inspiration for a new gaming period can come from many sources. Sometimes its a film, a book, or a new range of figures. In the case of the Russian Civil War it was a set of rules; Red Actions! by The Perfect Captain. That was in 2006. At the time, I knew very little about the RCW, but soon found it has plenty to recommend itself to the wargamer. This is a conflict with WWI era weapons but with none of the trench-bound immobility of the Western Front. Here are troops of frankly dubious quality and even more dubious ideology engaged in sweeping actions from snow-bound Siberia to the Steppes of Central Asia. Here are units of every stripe from Reds and Whites, Nationalists, Makhnovist anarchists, Cossacks, Partisans, Interventionists and Czech legionaries; uniforms from the drab to the colourful; flags and slogans; armoured cars, biplanes, river gunboats, tanks and armoured trains. What's not to like!

When I started collecting miniatures suitable for the RCW the choice in 28mm was fairly limited, Copplestone Castings Back of Beyond range being the obvious choice. I amassed a nice little pile of lead that I have added to occasionally over the years. 

I hesitate to call this lead pile a project, since that would imply a degree of planning and forethought. I'm a bit more organised nowadays,  but back then my collection grew in quite a haphazard way. Some of it even got painted, but never sufficient to complete a single unit. That's something I aim to rectify now. 

My first step is to review and rationalise my collection of miniatures - and to get sufficient miniatures painted to fill the gaps in my part-completed units. That should give me some incentive to move things along. The longer-term aim is to complete sufficient figures to field around four infantry units, MG support, a unit of cavalry and a unit of artillery per side; around 150 figures. 

Okay, comrades. Forward!