WW2 Soviet Scouts

I realized, recently, that the ONLY Russian models I had that weren't painted were a handful of scouts I picked up from Bad Squiddo Games a few years back and I thought this an excellent opportunity to just finish off all the Russians! This partly came about because I'd been flipping through the Warsaw is Burning - the Poland 1939 campaign book for Five Men at Kursk... which prompted me to look through the Russian collection and realize I had only these left to paint! 

I also got it in my head that it would be interesting to play a little solo Five Men at Kursk campaign following a squad of Scouts that were mostly carrying out sneaky-beaky missions... 

New Minis from Bad Squido Games. 

I'd LOVE to get a pile more of the Soviet women they produce... but I already have SO MANY RUSSIANS!? 

While I was at it, I also carved the sights of these two and repainted them... they were in a brown camouflage and I did not like it... also, I have FAR TOO MANY Russians sniper and next to NO Scouts with Rifles. 

All the Scouts

It's weird that almost all the Russian Scouts I can find have sub-machineguns - I was looking through a book about the organization of the Russian Army in World War Two and it suggested that the scout platoons were only ever armed with rifles. Later in the war there was a Sub-Machinegun Company (I think at the Regimental Level)... but it looked like the scouts were, on paper at least, still just armed with rifles?!

Organizing these for Bolt Action...

Sniper Team

Forward Observer Team (although they really need some method of communicating their observations to the battery - or air wing... probably need a spool of wire and a field telephone...) 

Scout Squad

I could split the squad and add an officer and I'd have a basic  understrength platoon!

I guess I'll have to wait until my rulebook shows up and I can start figuring out how I'll organize all the Soviets... Stay tuned for that!! 

(Okay... If I'm being 100% honest... I also have a little metal Russian tank that isn't painted... I'm not sure where I got it from. I think it's from the old Battle Honors WW2 line (which doesn't seem to be produced anymore)? I don't really count it as I don't think I'm EVER going to assemble and paint it... Maybe I should give it away... Maybe I could melt it down...?)

January Games

 In January, we played games... 

Wednesday, 1 January 2025

Amanda, Finnegan and I  kicked off the year with our first Decapitation Journey in Warhammer Quest: Cursed City. The game took most of the afternoon, so we were glad to have the free day where no one needed to do anything! The scenario is effectively the same as playing TWO journeys... 

First there is a Deliverance Journey, where the heroes have to rush through the city's streets and alleys avoiding a Suffocating Gravetide... 

After that is a special Hunt Journey...

Where they have to hunt down one of the BOSSES - in this case, a Vargskyr! 

It was a LOT of fun! You can read the full game report and see ALL THE PICTURES here:

Warhammer Quest: Cursed City - Session Eight - The Fell Guardian

Thursday, 2 January 2025

While Finnegan was out playing D&D at a friends and Amanda wasn't teaching yoga (which she normally does on Thursdays with one of the Community Associations) we played through ANOTHER  game of Warhammer Quest Cursed City... 

But this time with Grombrindal, The White Dwarf! 

You can read the full game report and see ALL THE PICTURES here:

Warhammer Quest: Cursed City - Session Nine - Grombrindal's Hunt

Friday, 3 January 2025

Friday evening I introduced Amanda to Lost Patrol... 

It was moderately fast and bloody and... she was NOT a fan... 

Afterwards we tried out Crypt Hunters, which is based on the same basic mechanics... but the Stormcast Eternals are MUCH tougher and more survivable. 

She was pretty tired and had a hard time wrapping her head around the geometry of how the tiles appeared and disappeared... 

but very nearly won and said it was a "1000% better game" than Lost Patrol! 

Saturday, 4 January 2025

On Saturday evening, while Finnegan was running his weekly D&D game downstairs, Amanda and I cleared off the dining room table upstairs and played a couple of games of Patchwork... 

The last time we played was a little over 3 years ago... So we actually had to read the rules again!? 

I did okay in the first game. Scored 13 points? Amanda scored zero... which is still pretty good, because i've had more than a few games with NEGATIVE total points.. I feel like I've played games where BOTH players had negative final totals...!? Which seems lame to win a game because you had the least negative number... 

Amanda felt she needed to play again, as the first game she was just remembering how to play, and, indeed, she did better, scoring 7 points. 

But so did I, scoring 17... 

This ended an unofficial 12 days of gaming that started on 24 December 2024! 

Sunday, 5 January 2025

Every year around his birthday, Finnegan runs a one-shot role-playing game adventure that starts around noon and ends later in the evening - with a brief break for pizza and cake. This year there were EIGHT PLAYERS  in attendance (in addition to Finnegan the Dungeon Master)! (one doesn't like being in pictures and is hiding)

This year they played D&D. There was a Hydra involved... it was slain before pizza and were consumed! 

Tuesday, 7 January 2025

Tuesday evening Nick and Orion joined us to play our first game of Soulbound for the year. Still working their way through Crash and Burn. I'd given up on getting the goblins painted for the goblin encounters and just threw a bunch of extra Nighthaunts their was (since I have a bunch painted!?) 

Thursday, 9 January 2025

Orion was looking for a game in the local Path to Glory league... and I figured it was about time I actually PLAYED with some of these miniatures I've painted... So we decided to meet up at the Warhammer Store to play (as, at one point, it had been suggested that only games played there officially count towards the league...? and also there was a new Free Miniature-of-the-Month to pick up!). The weather has been warmer this week, so I enjoyed my hour-long ride to get there... but was a little disappointed to discover the store was CLOSED when I got there!?

The silly thing is, I'd thought of shooting the manager a note the night before to check and make sure it would be open (because sometimes they have training session on Thursdays)... but then got distracted and forgot...  and then in the morning, at one point, I'd though of doing the same, or at least checking the Facebook page (because they always post there if the store's closed for any reason).. but in my panic to get things together, I completely forgot AGAIN... 

Ah, well... it was a nice enough ride and I needed some exercise after not getting out so much over the holidaze... 

Luckily, Orion only lives a few blocks away, so we wandered over there to play a game!

It was an absolute disaster for Bob Bloodblob's Bloodbound Brotherhood of Blood... You can read all about it here: 

Age of Sigmar - Path to Glory - The Ruined Settlement

Saturday, 11 January 2025

Played another session of the Online Soulbound campaign. Tethas and Kugraz got in a fight with a BUNCH of Bloodreavers! They survived... 

Sunday, 12 January 2025

We had to shift to Sundays for playing Warhammer Quest, because Finnegan has a night class on Wednesdays... 

Warhammer Quest: Cursed City - Session Ten - Another Disastrous Scavenge Journey!

Tuesday, 14 January 2025

Tuesday we played Warhammer Age of Sigmar: Soulbound - the Role-playing Game. Our Heroes were fleeing through some caves to escape a massive Nighthaunt horde... 

This post will bring you up to date with what had been going on in the campaign to that point... 

Soulbound - Flight Through the Caves

Wednesday, 22 January 2025

We kind of moved back to Wednesdays for Warhammer Quest as Finnegan ultimately dropped the Wednesday evening class... and sort of skipped a week as there was a cold making it's way through the house and everyone was sick... 

You can read about the disastrous Journey here:

Warhammer Quest: Cursed City - Session Eleven - Hunters Become the Hunted

Saturday, 25 Januar 2025

On Saturday morning, I FINALY got around to playing a second session in my Solo Five Men in Normandy campaign with the Canadian Paratroopers in Normandy. This was mostly to remind myself of how the rules worked before running Orion through a game on Sunday. You can read about the action here:

Five Men in Normandy - Holding at Varaville

Afterwards I ended up reading the Five Men at Kursk rules and decided that might work better... 

Sunday, 26 January 2025

Sunday I started playing a new campaign with Orion using the Five Men at Kursk rules. She's playing her newly painted WW2 Americans and I'm playing Japanese on a fictional island in the Solomons. The American Patrol was tasked with capturing a prisoner for interrogation. They were unsuccessful in this task as every Japanese soldier they encountered fought to the death! 

You can read about the adventures here: 

Fourteen Men in the Solomon Islands

Tuesday, 28 January 2025

Tuesday we were back to playing Soulbound... I forgot to take a picture DURING the game. The group gained passage on a new ship - The Grund - and made their way to Brightspear and were given a new mission but the Lord Celestant of the Stormcast Eternals there.

Wednesday, 29 January 2025

In the afternoon I rode out to the Warhammer store. 

There I played Crypt Hunter with John and then bought some stuff... you can read about that here:

Crypt Hunters at the Warhammer Store (and Some NEW STUFF!)

later in the evening, we played our weekly Warhammer Quest adventure. This week wasn't quite so deadly - for the Heroes! You can read about it here: 

Warhammer Quest: Cursed City - Session Twelve - Scavenging Again

And that was it for January! 

That's a fair few game we played! 

I got in games of Warhammer Quest: Cursed City (five of them!), and Warhammer Age of Sigmar: Soulbound (four of them - three in person, one online), and one game of Warhammer Age of Sigmar... and I even got in some games of Five Men in Normandy'Five Men at Kursk (one solo, one not-so-solo) - all things I'd hoped to do in the Game Plan 2025 - Q1

I have not, yet, played any games of Warhammer Quest... Not being able to access the Warbands of Embergard card pack means a bunch of my warbands are still not playable... which has been a bit of a downer... I haven't managed to motivate myself to set up a game... but also... there have been a LOT OF OTHER GAMES going on! 

I kept the purchases and acquisitions to a minimum. I did acquire a pile of Disciples of Tzeentch part way through the month, but I traded away over twice as many WW2 Americans I knew I'd never get around to painting up! 

Near the end of the month I did pick up a few things; the Ravaged Coast Path to Glory book, the big box of Endless Spells, and the Soulbound Starter Kit

Next Month...?

Hope to continue with Warhammer Quest and the Soulbound games. Maybe get in a few more Five Core WW2 games and get a Warhammer Age of Sigmar Path to Glory campaign started! 

There will be the Codex: Aeldari that I'll be picking up and I have ordered a few metal Harlequins and a Swooping Hawk to finish up a few units. (I also ordered a Japanese tank! DON'T TELL ORION!!!) 

I don't know that there will be many more purchases... Unless the new Soulblight Gravelords battletome is realeased later in the month...? or the Emperor's Children...? Part of me feels like I'd like to pick up the release box - to get some of those new units for a little less dollars... but part of me just wants to focus on the Aeldari and just finish up some of the units I've got!

What did YOU get up to in January!? 

tell me all about it in the comments below!

Fourteen Men in the Solomon Islands

Thursday, 17 June 1943

Earlier in the month, the men of 25th regiment of the 93rd Infantry Division landed in New Galloway. After some initial setbacks (and personnel losses!) involving a new tropical disease and a Japanese air attack on their camp, the First Platoon of  Company J finally saw some action. 

They were tasked with snatching a prisoner for interrogation. In the initial month the were on the island, the men of the platoon made some good friends among some of the local villagers and rather than mounting an attack on the Japanese front lines to grab their prisoner, they enlisted the help of some of the locals who were able to lead them on some local pathways through the dense jungle around the Japanese front like to a small village in the mountains that were a much smaller force of Japanese were billeted. 

The village. 

The men of First Platoon, Company J, 25th Regiment, 93rd Infantry Division making their way through the jungle as they approached the village as the trail would certainly be watched! 

Another group of men on the other side of the trail 

The platoon approaching the village. 

One of the BAR gunners - PFC Gonzalez - snuck up to the edge of the Jungle, and spotted the Japanese guard in entrenchments before the village and fired off an extended burst at the machine-gun team, causing the gunner considerable distress! 

Private Jackson was the next to open fire, putting a bullet through the neck of one of the other guards!?

Other Japanese rushed from the buildings and dove into the trenches, returning fire!

One gunner on the machine-gun was killed, taking a bullet through the head as he looked up to fire his gun. The loader took over firing and one of the newly arrived riflemen aided the loader. 

Another rifleman was hit and went down before he even made it to a trench! 

Flanking Americans made it into the trenches on the extreme of the Japanese right flank. 

A burst of machine-gun fire took down Platoon Sergeant "Hard" Avery Jackson! 

Another of the machine-gun crew was killed, with a bulled in the shoulder that blew out his back as they swivelled to fire upon the Americans rushing the trench immediately to their right. 

A burst from the machine-gun knocked down one of the Americans in the trench. 

The commander of the Japanese forces leapt out of his trench to run and check on the downed soldier. 

A grenade was tossed at the Americans at the edge of the jungle, but it bounced off a tree and fell behind them, startling and lightly wounding Private Masters who was still behind the front line! 

After squad-mates lay down some suppressing fire, one of the Americans rushed the nearest trench and fought the Japanese soldier therein in hand-to-hand combat. They fought viciously and it was clear there was no stopping or subduing the Japanese soldier short of killing them, and so that is what he did... 

More Americans moving up and preparing to rush the Japanese position! 

The Japanese commander got to the downed soldier and got them up and moving again. 

But they were about to be overrun! 

The Japanese commander was shot. A trooper rushed the other one in the open and stabbed him through with a bayonet. 

The machine-gun position was finally rushed. 

Checking the Japanese casualties, two weren't yet dead... but severely injured and, lacking medical personnel, they did not survive the trip back to the American's positions... 

How This All Came to Be....

I recently traded away a bunch of American World War Two forces to my friend Orion (like, last week!?). She wanted to try out Bolt Action that weekend - which we could have done, I have no shortage of forces that could be fought against each other... but she was getting a few of the Americans painted, very quickly, and I suggested trying out Five Men in Normandy, as only a handful of miniatures are required to play... 

Five Men in Normany (.30 Calibre Edition) and Five Men at Kursk are from Nordic Weasel Games and written by the same designer as Five Parsecs from Home and Five Leagues from the Borderlands. The games are modular and can be played as a solo game, a competitive game (where both players have their own squad rolled up and face off against each other) or as a player versus Game Master. We did the latter. 

Initially we planned to use Five Men at Normandy and she rolled up a force and ended up needing FOURTEEN!? She was painting them up as African-Americans of one of the segregated divisions and decided we'd play a WHAT IF scenario - What If the 93rd Division saw considerably more action than they did?! (Historically the division was mostly used for labour and guard duty and saw very little action) (also, historically, they would have been wearing tropical fatigues... alas...) 

Orion rolled for backgrounds and motivations for two of the figures... 

Background - Drifter - On the fringe of society, doing odd jobs and staying alive. At least the meals are regular now.

Motivation - Survival - You've known a lot of brave men who won't be coming home. You intend to make it.

Maybe that's the sarge...?

Rolling for the next character.. 

Background - Criminal - Small time crook, hardened gangster or an enemy of the state. Out here, no one cares. Roll a negative morale die.

Motivation - Political - You're a model democratic citizen/communist/fascist willing to die for freedom and the cause. If group morale is currently 0 or positive, roll a positive morale die.

Yikes! 

I mean...  a "criminal" with political motivations in the United States at the time, could simply be someone with socialist leanings that joined the army to escape prosecution. So we decided the officer could have been a Lawyer with the NAACP with associations with socialists and communists, that stirred up too much trouble and was falsely accused of some sort of treason or other trumped up charges and told; "hey why don't you join the army and go fight Japs or we gonna throw you in jail for a long, long time..."

So the Sergeant was the drifter that signed up for three square meals a day! 

Initially, with the negative morale dice roll and he size of the force, we decided the force was what was left of a platoon. Fourteen of the original forty surviving (not ALL battlefield casualties, a fair amount of attrition could be due to sickness - put a large group of malnourished men in close proximity in less than entirely sanitary conditions and so many tropical diseases...  PUBLIC HEALTH NIGHTMARE!) Some of those would have been battlefield casualties and maybe that was because higher-ups kept demanding that the Lieutenants platoon be assigned the lead platoon for ALL the actions and given the most dangerous missions... in an attempt to make sure he doesn't come home from the war!? 

Rolling for the mission and enemy force, I got:

Mission type - Military mission - Your group is assigned a mission intended to further the war effort in some way.

Location - Urban area - A small hamlet, the outskirts of a village or the suburbs of a larger city.

Mission - CAPTURE - An enemy soldier needs to be captured to get information and intelligence. (good luck with THAT!) 

Enemy Forces - Defensive Position

• 1x Machine-gun Team - two soldiers 
• 4x Soldiers with bolt-action rifles
• 1x Commander with pistol and sword!

If I hadn't rolled a soldier with a sword, I totally would have put one in anyway... just... because...  

It's a very small force... I rolled three times, I swapped one of the rolls (single rifleman) out for the Machine-gun team (which you are supposed to do for a Defensive Position if you have not ROLLED a Machine-gun of any type) and then, because I had significantly fewer than the attacking force, I rolled AGAIN... and STILL ended up with a total force of seven!? 

Despite generating all this with Five Men in Normandy, we ended up using the Five Men at Kursk rules. 

Normally taking prisoners can happen in melee combat, if you win and would normally kill the enemy, a player can decide to capture them instead. I suggested that, because the Japanese were notoriously hard to capture and more often than not would fight to the death, if a Japanese soldier was potentially captured due to a hand-to-hand combat result, I'd roll a d6 and on a 1 or 6 the soldier could not be captured alive and was immediately taken out of action. 

In the end I was sick the weekend we were originally planning to play, so we played the following Sunday. In the interim, however, I had played another game of Five Men in Normandy and then read the rules for Five Men at Kursk, and decided to use the latter to play this game... 

Seems like we'll probably be playing again this Sunday! 

I've started a Campaign Page - that I will update with status of current members of the unit and links to all the actions so far:

Fourteen Men in the Solomons Campaign and Characters

Of course, this all got me excited enough that I started rebasing the small force of Marine Raiders I have!