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.

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.

Vexatious Vexilology

In my last post I posed a question about correct flags for my Russian Civil War Izhevsk Rifle Division, having drawn a blank on useful references.

I also posted my question on the Lead Adventure Forum where forum members Mark Plant (of the splendid Pygmy Wars website) and Cuprum (of Studio Siberia) both offered some excellent suggestions and advice. Cheers guys! This included a link to www.kolchakiya.ru. The site is all in Russian, but fairly easy to navigate with the assistance of Google Translate. Here I found a mine of useful information on the histories, uniforms and flags of Admiral Kolchak's White forces in Siberia, including the Izhevsk Rifle Division.

The site describes several banners of the Izhevsk Rifle Division, including two St. George banners. According to the accompanying text only one of these, the "Battle flag of Izhevsk Division", was actually presented to the unit - so this is the one I chose:

'Battle flag of Izhevsk Division'. (source: www.kolchakiya.ru)

'Battle flag of Izhevsk Division'. Photo from the archives of the Museum of Russian Culture in San Francisco. Published in the book Efimov AG Izhevtsy and Votkinsky. The fight against the Bolsheviks1918=1920. M., 2008 (source: www.kolchakiya.ru)

The flag is described as a rectangular panel, divided into two equal parts. The left-hand part is white with a diagonal cross of St. George ribbon. The dates 7/VIII 1918 and 9/IX 1919 in gold are placed in the upper and lower quadrants respectively. The right part is White-Red-Blue (the colours of the Russian flag) with the letters "Izh" in gold on the centre blue band.

Unfortunately, no dimensions are quoted so I resorted to making my version 'wargames scale', i.e. large enough to look good on the wargames table. Using the two pictures for reference, I tinkered around in Photoshop until I had something I was happy with. As there is no description of the reverse side of the flag, I simply used the same design for both sides. I did ponder a bit about the colour of the St. George ribbon. These are usually black and orange stripes, but those in the picture are more of a golden yellow. Even allowing for fading, I doubt the original colour was far from what can be seen in the photo. Perhaps orange cloth was hard to come by! Anyway, here's what I came up with: 

After printing out on plain white paper, I carefully cut out the flag and applied a liberal coat of PVA glue to the reverse. After allowing a few minutes for the glue to soak into the paper, I folded the two halves of the flag together, wrapping the centre portion around a steel rod for the banner pole. The PVA made the paper quite wet and easy to shape into the desired folds, but once dry the shape is set and quite strong; good enough for the rigours of the games table at least. All that remained was to 'present' the banner to its unit by adding it to the standard bearer. 

Ready for action!

Izhevsk Rifle Division

Here are the first completed units for my resurrected Russian Civil War project.

These guys are (loosely) based on troops of the Izhevsk Rifle Division that fought under Admiral Kolchak in Siberia and later as part of the Izhevsk-Votkinsk Brigade of the Far Eastern Army. They are probably a bit too 'clean' and rather more 'uniform' than their historical counterparts and their famous blue shoulder boards are a shade too bright, but I wanted something to make them 'pop' on the wargames table - so I hope I can be excused a bit of artistic licence.

Their banner caused me a bit of a headache as after much searching for references I have drawn a blank. I resorted to using a flag based on a Russian Imperial Regimental design. Flags like these were used by White forces in the RCW, which gave me the excuse to use it - and for no other reason than the blue colour matches well with the shoulder boards! If anyone reading here can point me in the direction of a more accurate flag, I'd be grateful for the advice.

The figures are all Musketeer (now Footsore) Miniatures WWI Russians, now available from Wee Wolf Miniatures, but they serve well as RCW Whites. They are bit slimmer than the Copplestone Castings miniatures that make up the majority of my RCW lead pile but I do like them, especially for the variety of poses which I think works well with my chosen basing style. Their only weakness is the bayonets. These look great, but being very slim and fragile I'm worried they are going to suffer some breakages, even with careful handling.

I mentioned in my previous post that I'll be using Red Actions! by The Perfect Captain for my RCW games. The basic element in Red Actions! is the platoon represented by around three figures, with up to six platoons making up a company. I chose to base my infantry figures in groups of three on 50mm round bases from Renedra, partly for ease of movement and also because I like the look of vignette style basing. Leader figures are individually based on 25mm round bases. In Red Actions! I'll probably use these figures to represent White Volunteers. 

So far, I've completed nine infantry bases which gives enough flexibility to field a couple of companies (one of 4 platoons and another of 5 platoons), or three understrength companies of 3 platoons each - though I'm going to need to paint up some more captains to lead them.

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!