28mm Russian Civil War progress

After months of almost complete inactivity on the miniature painting and wargaming front, I found a little time to organise, clean, base and photograph my 28mm RCW figures for The Men Who Would Be Kings. I will be adding a few more figures, especially to the Whites, but the bulk is there.

The figures are mostly  Copplestone but there are some nice sculpts from Studio Siberia too. The White Coloured Regiment privates are Tsuba Russo-Japanese War Russians from Empress Miniatures in peakless caps. The Russian-variant Austin armoured-car is also from Empress.

The Reds: Elite Bolsheviks in Budenovka in lower left corner.
Commisar character in front of armoured-car.

The Whites: Elite Coloured Regiment unit in lower left corner.
The rest will be completed as Don Cossacks.

 

Russian Civil War in 28mm

Copplestone Ragged Whites

Lockdown was to have been a period of consolidation. It started well but there was a hiatus in hobby activity in May followed by the usual Summer distractions. And so my only wargaming-related activity in recent months has been the purchase of some 28mm Bolsheviks and Whites from the Copplestone 'Back of Beyond' range using my Wargames Illustrated/North Star monthly discount and a couple of books. This is another slow-burn project as it will take me over a year to collect the figures before I feel obliged to base or paint anything.

The RCW has long been on my wishlist and I eventually decided to go with the characterful Copplestones and The Men Who Would Be Kings rules. There are many other rule sets I could use but I already know and like these Rampant rules, and extending them to Interwar skirmish ought to be fairly easy. An adaption of TMWWBK to the RCW was discussed here and using them for the Mexican Revolution here. A further mention of using them for interwar colonial skirmish can be found here.

The main issue is how to accommodate vehicles and the most useful inspiration is Pierre Aymeric's WW1 Foch extension. The original version appeared on the Wargames Illustrated website here but a newer, fuller version is available from the author's blog here. I've yet to try these out but I also have ideas of my own having already been thinking of extending TMWWBK to cover shotguns and armoured trucks for the Irish War of Independence.

Anyway, these are just thoughts and I'm in no rush. Winter is coming and it's going to be a long one...

28mm Halfling slingers

I was a bit short of Light Missile figures for my Halfling Dragon Rampant warband so I did some conversions with Greenstuff.

These are Copplestone Adventureres but not very warlike so I changed the staffs into staff-slings. The challenge with Greenstuff is to avoid making the detail too big and clumsy for the scale of the figures, so I've learnt to use as little Greenstuff as possible.

These were two unarmed boys from the Foundry Viking Villagers pack. I needed some wire armatures for the slings but couldn't find any wire thin enough. Eventually I straightened out some 'Bambi' staples. The difficult part was modelling the feet. They do look big in the photo!

These conversions are fairly crude but they're the best I can do and good enough, I hope, for one-off figures. I remain in awe of professional sculptors who achieve such good detail, proportions and a natural look.