Finnish Jalkava Joukkue Finished

I finished these last night and varnished them this morning. A Jalkava Joukkue (Platoon) for my Continuation War project in 15mm. It consists of four Ryhmät (Sections) led by a Vänrikki (Lieutenant) and a Kersantti (Sergeant). 

I've replicated the basing style I used for my Soviets since the two forces are meant to face each other. I'll need to knock up some appropriate terrain for Karelia soon to fit the setting. 

Painting these took about three days from the undercoat stage. I did them whilst watching films and generally pottering around the house. The method was a simply block, shade, highlight, using Vallejo model colours, which are a pleasure to work with. 

The next phase will be to bring up the force to Company strength, but that will require some more purchases I am not willing to make at the moment. Suffice to say I shall need a bit of armour for both the Finns and the Russians. One positive is that the armour for both sides is more or less the same, since the bulk of Finnish armour was captured from the Russians throughout the conflict.

A quick comment on the miniatures themselves. They are from Flames of War who are one of the few manufacturers who cater to the Finnish collector, but the sculpts vary in quality from some decent officer types, or tank hunters, to some absolute mutants. Still, altogether they look pretty sharp. 

So, these are my first completed miniatures of 2015. They are based on Flames of War bases, but I'll be using them to play Chain of Command and I Ain't Been Shot Mum.

Painted Soviet Strelkovy Company

The whole company assembled.

I think it was Warfare 2005, or was it 2006? In any event, there has been a set of figures which have sat in various stages of painting on my desk or in boxes for the last decade which are finally done. I finished them on the 30th of December, so they fell into my 2014 painting tally. You can see my handiwork below.

My 15mm stuff is intended for I Ain't Been Shot Mum, another set of excellent rules by TooFatLardies. This means I need to bulk out both the Soviet and Finnish forces available to me with specialists and some armour. I suspect several reviews might be making their way onto the blog in the near future.

For the Finns I am inclined to go with Battlefront's offerings, but with the Soviets I have more choice. I suspect that for armour I might end up getting a veritable smorgasbord of figures from various manufacturers to see what I like and don't like. I am particularly keen on trying the Zvezda 1/100 scale kits that Plastic Soldier Company sell, as well as their own plastic kits. Cost is increasingly a concern for me, and I am prepared to make a compromise between quality and price, provided it is a good balance.

That is all for now, hopefully I shall have more to show soon.

Chain of Command Sale Now On!

TooFatLardies are currently holding a sale on all things Chain of Command. So now is the time to pick up some excellent rules, and the campaign supplement At the Sharp End, at a great price. I bought mine this morning, along with I Ain't Been Shot Mum and the sci-fi rules, Quadrant 13. I am very interested in using these various rules to play with my 15mm World War II stuff, as well as my 40k things. I must admit, I watch some really excellently produced battle reports on YouTube, especially by StrikingScorpion82, but I am convinced that these rules aren't nearly granular enough for me. 

Warhammer 40,000's "I go, you go" mechanism places a premium on gaining the first turn and pounding your opponent with you heavy guns. Winning is therefore a combination of luck and winning the initiative, as the enemy might not have much left after a heavy turn of bombardment. In reality, all action should be near simultaneous, and elements of the enemy force should be firing back or reacting to effective enemy fire by taking cover. If one couples this with the arms race that is Apocalypse, the game becomes horribly one dimensional. In a large Apocalypse game that SS82 recently filmed, a squadron of four Leman Russ battle tanks was destroyed by a single shot. This highlights two things, firstly, weapons can be horrendously powerful, and secondly, the table needs to be larger to allow armoured formations to spread and manoeuvre more effectively, but at 28mm scale the table would need to be far bigger. My advice, just play Epic.

I have said this many times before, but I am a huge fan of the 40k universe. I think it is the most popular Sci-Fi wargames setting for a reason, and as such I am loathe to leave it behind. However, nothing says I have to play using Games Workshop's rules, so I am going to see if I can't utilise the Quadrant 13 rules, and perhaps build my own bastardised ruleset. What I really would like is a more interesting activation sequence, probably card driven, to break the tyranny of the 40k turn sequence. The emphasis that Lardies rules place on "big men" also adds a sort of Rogue Trader-esque role-play element to the game which should make for an interesting narrative campaign.