Skytrex Warsaw Pact Troops

 Some time ago I purchased a large number of Skytrex Firefight 20 figures from the UK. While long out of production these figures still have a great deal of character and their sculpting style lends itself well to my style of painting.

Armed with a mix of AK-47s, SVD-63s, and RPKs

The purchase was made up of from a variety of their modern ranges, including:

• Dogs of War
• Vietnam War (both North Vietnamese and US Forces)
• Cold War East Germans
• Cold War Soviets

I like the look of these larger stands with prone figures.

Unfortunately there wasn't quite enough of the East Germans or the Soviets to make a reasonable stand alone force. So I decided to combine the figures into one force and paint them all in my usual Soviet paint scheme.

Crew served support weapons.

One of the nice things about this selection of figures is the number of support weapons that is present. I was particularly pleased to discover two packs of  AT-3 Sagger ATGMs

Close up of the Sagger stands.

When these figures were produced information on Soviet and Warsaw Pact produced weapon systems was hard to get and was often based on blurry photographs and speculation.As a result the detaails and scaling of some of the weapon systems are a little off.

AGS-17 stands.

The biggest error is in the size of the AGS-17 Automatic Grenade Launcher (AGS). It is rather larger than it should be. I did debate replacing them with a more accurate version, but I decided against it as it would have involved a great deal of effort removing the weapon from the gunner (it is a one piece casting) for ultimately marginal benefit.

82mm Mortar stands.

The mortars are most likely meant to represent the model 82-PM-41 82mm mortar a WW2 era system that soldiered on in the Cold War. While the 2B14 Podnos 82mm mortar had entered service during the 1980s, the bipod for that weapon attaches further down a much longer barrel, so it is very unlikely to be intended to represent that weapon system. 

Other support weapons include a couple of RPG-7s and a pair of SA-7 Grail MANPADS.  The SA-7s are rather chunky and held at an angle suggestive of being an anti tank weapon rather than an anti aircraft weapon.

Also included in the selection were two figures that could be used in Command Decision as command stands, and three figures that could be used as radio stands or as FO/FAC stands.

 

Overall I am very happy with how these figures have turned out. I can only hope the rest of the figures turn out as well.

Making M-113s Part One

I've been quite busy making a variety of bits of pieces of late, but have been rather slack in actually posting anything. A while back, I started work on some cardboard M-113s  (click here if you want to know more)

A mixture of Bravo Team ready mades (at rear), Esci (unpainted front left), and cardboard model M-113s

The Esci kit was missing a few key pieces that I replaced using the usual methods of bodging out of plastic card, or finding something about right in the bits box.

One of those road wheels is not like the others.....

A wheel and tire from a jeep or light truck is given a outer ring of plastic card in order to make a new road wheel.

The green hatch is a spare from the Airfix M-113 Fire Support Vehicle kit.

I still have three more of the Esci kits to build, and I plan to build them as the straight APC version without any additional stowage. With the cardboard models, I have tried to add clutter and stowage to the vehicles in order to try and disguise any shortcomings in the models, and to see if I could pass them off as vehicles used by support elements, rather than teeth elements, while still maintaining flexibility to use them as such as needed.

Esci vs. Cardboard.

I don't think I have really succeeded in doing this - at best I have made three M-113s that have a certain air of clutter to them. I suspect I need to put more stowage on them, and/or items of auxiliary equipment that will earmark the vehicle into a support role.

Needs more stowage.....

And the tracks aren't quite right....

I could have put more effort into the rear doors, but I figured this was good enough...

On the cardboard front I have benefited from the generosity of Paul from Plastic Warriors sending me three rather nice scratch-built APCs (click here for details)

Esci vs Cardboard part II.

Now for my purposes, these M-113s from Paul being a little large is not a problem, as an imagination background allows for the creation of plausible back stories that can explain away a number of sins.

The fact that there existed earlier APCs, such as the M-75 and the M-44 (click here for details). that were somewhat larger than the M-113, makes it easier to declare these to be a hitherto unknown vehicle of a similar ilk.

Spot the Esci!

That, or field them in force with no other M-113s!

Bergstiger to Gun Tiger

Another partwork magazine I have been collecting is Military Vehicles magazine (Which is rather a plain name, but quite descriptive of the contents). Issue three of the magazine (of which I bought some additional copies) offered a model M1126 Stryker and a model Bergetiger.

And all for under NZ$15 an issue.

Now, while having multiple model Strykers is very useful, having multiple models of a vehicle that most likely only one ever existed of, is somewhat less useful.

Tank and spare parts.

Fortunately, I had spare parts from one of the many different Tiger I kits put out by Hasegawa, and thus I had a solution for one of the extra Bergetigers. (One of the others I sent over to Paul at Plastic Warriors click here to see his post on it).

Useful spares.

The first step was to remove the crane and winch, which according to some (click here for more detail) is too small to use as a recovery vehicle, but was actually designed for use as a demolition charge layer. Other theories are discussed here.

And all gunned up.

I have of course kept one for use as a demolitions tank, or workshop tractor, or even an ARV!

Airfix Amusette - WIP

Not the most common type of skirmisher. 

I have had the idea for some time to make an amusette for my AWI British. (For more information on what an amusette is - click here EDIT Feb 2022 try this link) The idea came to me after reading this thread on TMP, and thinking that I could build one!

The business end of the stand.

The design was inspired by the very nice one produced by the Perrys(click here for link), as well as the Fife and Drum one featured on TMP.

First I needed a larger scale musket, but Ion was kind enough to provide me with one. The wheels and mantlet were from a package of useful stuff that I received from Paul a couple of months ago, while the Airfix figure is one of a number that I had received from Glenn.

One of these flintlocks is not like the other.

At the moment I am thinking of painting up as a Hessian piece, rather than a British one, so I don't have to do any head conversions as a British one should have crew in Light Infantry head gear. I have also mounted it on a skirmisher base for V&B as I intend to treat it as just being a more interesting skirmisher stand with no additional game effect - although I have thought of a number of ways of treating it under the rules.

Airfix Pseudo Spanish and Almost Continentals.

Not the best of  paint jobs,  but a fine basis for refurbishment!

The school I work at recently got a laser cutter, so offered to have it cut some V&B mdf bases as way of testing it was working properly! Naturally since I now had a pile of bases I had to get some troops on them. I wasn't wanting to do any major effort, just wanting to get figures on bases in order to swell the V&B ranks quickly. Fortunately I was able to acquire from Glenn a number of preloved and prepainted Airfix figures from the Washington's Army set (click here for the PSR review) that I was able to refurbish, wash, and base.

More painted figures - more stands of troops!

 Now I have already gone through this process with my AWI French (click here for that post), and my AWI Americans (click here for details), but with those figures had been very nicely painted by the original owner. I wanted to see if I could get useable stands using figures that weren't as well painted.

Spacing out the figures - these look like they might be painted as Hessians of some type? Or are they Americans?

A well painted example found amongst the less well painted.

 Now using prepainted figures does mean that I am guessing as to the intent of the original owner as to what they were meaning to represent. Given that for the longest time this set was the only source of 18th century line infantry, the possibilities are rather large - more so if I add in the strong likelihood that they may have been painted to represent an imaginary or generic regiment, or merely painted using information that was incorrect.

Pseudo Spanish! I can't find a Spanish unit that has that exact colour scheme. 

 First off are the white coated fellows that I am choosing to believe are some type of Spanish troops. The red breeches and black boots are similar to a Spanish soldier depicted here, and another here. A table giving the uniform colours used by Spanish units in the Seven Years War can be found here, but it doesn't give the colour of breeches, leggings or boots worn. So given that they don't fit a known colour scheme I will use them as Spanish until I learn that they aren't.

But still they look nice and can be used as generic Pseudo Spanish

 And incidentally, should you know what these fellows could be, please feel free to let me know in the comments below.

The colour scheme is rather nice though.

I am quite pleased with how well these three stands turned out given the state of the source material.

 The other two stands that I have finished also lack a colour scheme that I can definitively say is one thing or another. They could be meant to represent american forces, either state or even Continental troops, but equally they may be meant to represent German troops of some type - assuming that they are meant to represent troops from the AWI!

Two stands of blue coated rebels - again the colour scheme doesn't seem to match anything I can find.

 Still the end result is quite pleasing, and I know that I will be able to find use for them, either as Americans or Germans!

Again I am rather pleased with them, although I am tempted to put a small amount of Fall leaves on the bases.

The wash brings out the detail in the figure extremely well. Airfix did a good job designing these figures!

So far I have finished five stands, with six more ready to go. I am finding the process of recycling these figures quite fun, and a good way to ease me into painting up the legions of bare plastic AWI figures that I have waiting for me.

More tanks from the Wife.

A couple of weeks ago I mentioned in passing to Katherine that I had seen some useful looking Matchbox Battle Kings for sale on a local auction website. So being the nice, supportive and lovely wife that she is - she went and purchased them for me!

Wrap these in bubble wrap, then in the cardboard shown - and that was the way these were carefully packaged!

A rather dirty and dusty K-107 155mm SPG.

 Today they arrived in the mail, in all their dirty and play worn glory. Two of them are types that I am already happily using for my Haradi forces - The K-107 155mm SPG (which I went into great detail here), and the K-102 M48A2 Tank (which I haven't mentioned in the blog yet).

A K-102 from the first run of Battle Kings - and the commander still has his head!

 The other two toys consisted of a K-117 SP "Hawk" Launcher, which despite missing one of it's three missiles was still able to launch them - much to Katherine's delight as she shot one at me!  I believe that it is a rather large box scale M727  Hawk Launcher.( a picture of one on display in Israel is here)

The diecast toy is huge, but the hatch on the cover looks about  right....

Clearly, either more research, fudging, or creative license is required before I can start to field this plane killing beast......

Speaking of beasts, the final battle king is this K-104 King Tiger, which nicely scales out at around 1/76 scale. I am considering repainting it and adding it into the box of not to be fielded King Tigers, or putting it into a batch of surplus Battle Kings and Super Kings and selling it on a local auction site.  Should I choose to dispose of it, I would consider items in trade......

Unfortunately, the commander on this one has lost his head!

By the time I post this, I will have already cleaned these tanks off, and will be preparing the M48, and the 155mm SPG for an undercoat of grey spray primer - should tomorrow bring good weather and no call outs!

Finished Flakpanzer.

 So here a few pictures to show off the finished Wirbelwind. It was given the usual paint job for my Late War Germans, and seems to blend in quite well.

The rebuild Wibelwind next to a Mobelwagen, and a T-34/76.

Looks ok here, even better at three plus feet....

Just the thing to deal to Jabos! Oh wait... shouldn't that be Fat Herman's job?

Esci T-34/76 kit repainted as a German vehicle. Still have to put on the large national markings to show new ownership.

 And as I go through another box, I discover another Eidai Mk IV hull needing work....

The paint seems thicker on this one, and more of the tools have been hacked off.

Yay! the muffler/exhaust thingy is there - but it's upside down...

I'm hoping to find a suitable subject to rebuild this kit into, as I suspect that it was also a bad conversion of a Brumbar. I'm tempted to make another Mobelwagen if I can find a suitable 37mm gun, but the sides will be interesting to make well. In the mean time a soak in Simple Green will do it some good, or I could use it as a testbed for other methods.

Late War German Motorcycles.

Some of you may, much like myself, have first hand experience with the ability of earthquakes to damage wargaming armies. While on the grand scale of things, a damaged toy army is not the most pressing of problems, it does limit the amount of gaming that you can use it for. One of the most heavily hit units of my wargaming horde was my WW2 German Motorcycle units. Pre-earthquake they were a mix of paint schemes, largely unbased, and not the best. But what they lacked in quality, they had in quantity. For these toys, the earthquake presented an opportunity to rebuild, and possibly expand the size of the units.

Late War German Motorcycle Stands based for CD3.

The expansion came about as, due to a number of factors, I had lost a number of riders for the motorcycles. The solution, and more motorcycles, came in the form of the Italeri German Motorcycles set. ( PSR review here) The set contained some spare riders and gunners, so the extra bits could be used to fill the missing bits on my existing motorcycles. I purchased two packets, and started the rebuild. Broken fiddly bits like handlebars were not replaced, as these are gaming pieces and any replacement would most likely not last through the handling received in a normal game.

Where there are Recon stands, Patrol stands may appear.

 One of the first things I wanted to make were Patrol stands. in Command Decision stands designated as Recon have the ability to split into two smaller Patrol stands. In addition these stands could also serve as markers, akin to horse holder stands, should someone wish to dismount their troops from their motorcycles.

Unknown Metal figure and M/C. Possibly SHQ?

Unknown Metal figure. Micro Machines BMW. Totally legit....

 It also gave me a way of using some single bikes, and some of the metal standing bike riders that I had acquired in the distant past. The inclusion of the Micro Machines BMW is a joke to see if anyone notices a modern German bike in the mix. Previously I had used this model with a different paint job, and a British Para rider, without comment in a British armoured force during the late 1990s.

Unknown Plastic. They came with horrible sidecars. Bikes look great, Riders are naft.

 I have no idea of the maker of  these two plastic figures. They are cast as one piece with the motorcycle, and were a dark grey plastic. I acquired them second hand years ago when at least one of them had a crude combination car attached. I liked the bike so painted them up as patrol stands.

Front on they look worse. But the actual motorcycle is great.

The painting and rebuilding of this unit was halted for quite some time, as I was reluctant to paint any camouflage on the motorcycles as I didn't want to ruin my efforts with a bad job.  So for about a year the whole unit sat with nice dark yellow ( actually Vallejo German Camouflage Orange Ochre 70824) motorcycles. Then I saw the recent postings from Paul at Plastic Warriors, showing how good his guys looked with camouflaged motorcycles, and I took inspiration from his efforts. A chat with the Archduke also helped to make up my mind about posting my efforts, so I added on my standard camo colurs, and then gave them all a wash of GW Devlan Mud to help hide my sins....

Hasegawa M/C and rider with metal figure. I use this as a joint Command stand in CD.

Motorcycle MMG or Weapon stands. All bikes are Hasegawa. Riders LtR are: Italeri, Hasegawa, Hasegawa, Italeri. Passengers LtR: Standing unknown metal, converted Hasegawa, Italeri, converted Hasegawa.

 The Hasegawa motorcycle comes as part of a kit with a Kubelwagen, and is quite a pleasant kit to put together. It does suffer from the omission of  a passenger for the sidecar, although one can be converted from those provided for the Kubelwagen. It has also been one of the more numerous plastic German WW2 motorcycle kits I have seen on gaming tables over the last ten years, most likely due to the fact that it was readily available when the Fujimi and Matchbox ones were not.

F

German Motorcycle SMG stands. Bikes LtR: Hasegawa, Hasegawa Fujimi, Hasegawa. Riders LtR: Hasegawa, Italeri, Italeri, Hasegawa. Passengers including standing figure are all Italeri.

German Motorcycle SMG stands. Figures and motorcycles are all from Italeri.

Motorcycle stand painted by my friend Andy. Motorcycle and rider are Hasegawa, but passenger is from the Revell German Artillery set.

Readers will note that I have not presented these stands as being part of any particular  unit organisation. This is because that I will use these stands to represent motorcycle elements of various German
 formations from 1943 onwards and as such tried to keep them as generic as possible. The early war, and Afrika Korps motorcycle stands I am also working on are going to be more closely tied to an appropriate  table of organisation.