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 gun 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. 

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.

 

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.