German Minenwerfer, Canadian Infantry, and Distractions

A few more things over the last week. Not nearly as much as I’d hoped… but, there it is…

(Remember: click on the pictures for a bigger version):

A German Minenwerfer team from Brigade Games that Jonathan Freitag of Palouse Wargaming Journal generously donated to the cause.

A battalion of my own Canadian miniatures (though the lewis gunner and officer are from Renegade Miniatures and were painted previously). Originally I’d intended these to be one of the British battalions attached to the Canadian Corps. But then realized I hadn’t done the 85th Battalion – a labour battalion that was thrown into the attack when the advance on the 4th Division’s front ground to a halt. So I’ll probably use this unit as those. I may replace the lewis gunner with a regular rifleman (not sure if a labour battalion would have been fully kitted out with an infantry battalions compliment of light machine-guns!)

In addition to the Post-Apocalyptic Soviets I finished last week, there were a few other distractions I finished up while waiting for paint to dry, etc…

Post apocalyptic KGB (to go along with the Post-Apocalyptic Soviets) – also from Lead Adventure Miniatures

A pair of Medieval-ish/fantasy warrior women. On the left of the picture is the “Warrior Woman” from Wargames Illustrated – Giants In Miniature and on the right is the Frostgrave Assassin from North Star Figures. They kind of look like they could be sisters… I think I shall make them so!

The painted version of the Frostgrave assassin was all it black, which I thought was a bit odd for Frostgrave. Being all stone and ice, I’d think black would rather stand out – so I’d originally planned to do her cloak in white or a really light grey and all her clothes and armour in light greys.

The greys turned out a little darker than I originally intended and once I got painting the cloak I ended up trying to do a mottled look of light greys and blues and then tried to make it look a bit dirty stained from draggin in the dirt and mud as the ancient city slowly melts… I was totally happy with how it turned out… I actuall think it looks a lot better in this photo somehow? Not about to strip and repaint it. It starting to grow on me…

Copplestone Castings Road Warrior.

Coming soon on Tim’s Miniature Wargaming Blog:

Vimy Update and then MORE GREAT WAR CANADIANS! 

263rd Reserve Infantry Regiment - 79th Reserve Infantry Division

This will likely be the last of the Germans for a while. These, along with the three regiments of Bavarians, should be all I need for the Vimy game in April. There were a few other battalions thrown into the line from the corps reserve on the day, but I figure I can use recycled casualties from the front line battalions to represent the late arriving reinforcements.

(Remember: click on the pictures for a bigger version):

263rd Reserve Infantry Regiment – this unit, as with most of the Germans, is made up of my own figures that I modeled, made moulds of, and cast myself. They’re not particularly pretty, but they are all mine.

3 Machine-gun teams from Irregular Miniatures.

The 79th Reserve Infantry Division including the 261st, 262nd, and 263rd Reserve infantry Regiments.

The division is made up of three regiments (261st, 262nd, and 263rd) of three battalions of ten figures each, plus a command element of three figures. Ideally each regiment would have a machine-gun and mortar element attached, but I don't have quite enough mortars at the moment (painted, that is... I may finish up one or two more, but they're not a priority at the moment) so they are pictured here with extra Machine gun teams.

The battalions are smaller than the Canadian battalions - 10 compared to 15. This was largely a time-saving necessity, but also I figured the German battalions would have been whittled down by the "Week of Suffering" - a week-long campaign of constant harassing artillery and machine-gun barrages. The Canadian battalions, by comparison would have all be brought up to - or beyond - their established strengths with fresh drafts of reinforcements in the days before the attack (my great-uncle Bertram was one of those!), I may, ultimately, cut down the number of Canadians I end up using. With 15 figures per battalion it might get a bit crowded. Also as the Canadians have four divisions of three brigades with FOUR battalions of FIFTEEN figures each... the Canadian figures would outnumber the Germans four to one!!

I will hopefully get a few play-tests in later in March and try out different strengths for the Canadian Battalions.

Coming soon on Tim’s Miniature Wargaming Blog:

Canadians! Conveniently the rest of the Canadians I ordered from Irregular Miniatures arrived just this afternoon – so I should be getting those based up pronto and hopefully have a good chunk of the final Brigade of Canadians done by the end of the week! 

Countdown to Vimy – (Less than) 7 weeks to go!

The Plan for this past week was to:

#1 PAINT GERMANS! AS MANY AS POSSIBLE!

CHECK!

Mostly complete 263rd Reserve Infantry Regiment earlier on the weekend. Just need to finish up the bases on these now.

I have finished up the rest of the 263rd Reserve Infantry Regiment – which finishes up the 79th Reserve Infantry Division. I do have three more battalions that were thrown in from the reserves that I COULD finish up… but I think they’ll be last minute items, if I get around to them at all. As they’d show up later, I’m sure there will be enough German casualties by the time I need them that I could just recycle miniatures… I should likely get to posting more pictures of these later today.

This Week:

#1 PAINT BRITISH AND CANADIANS! AS MANY AS POSSIBLE!

Still have 60 Canadians and 30 British to paint. I’d like to finish up as many as possible over the next week. Luckily there’s a school break this week so all the kids regular activities are cancelled which means I basically don’t have to leave the house for a week if I don’t have to… gonna get me some PAINTING done!

March

Build Terrain!

April

Make more wire and barrage markers

Coming soon on Tim’s Miniature Wargaming Blog:

79th Reserve Infantry Division!!

Great War Germans

After a good solid evening of painting I’m feeling back in the saddle and a bit more positive about the prospects of getting all this done one time…

(Remember: click on the pictures for a bigger version):

This is what I managed to finish up last night. Some were worked on over the last week – a bit, here and there…

Command figures from Great War Miniatures - these will make up the command element for the 79th Reserve Infantry Division.

Assorted German casualty markers – also from Great War Miniatures.

A few of my own castings – enough to finish up the 262nd Reserve Infantry Regiment.

262nd Reserve Infantry Regiment – all of my own castings.

79th Reserve Infantry Division so far – including the 261st Reserve Infantry Regiment and 262nd Reserve Infantry Regiment. I still need to finish up three battalions to complete the 263rd Reserve Infantry Regiment. Add in a few machine-guns and mortars and the 79th Reserve Infantry Division will be complete!

I guess I COULD paint up some artillery – the two regiments of the 79th Reserve Field Artillery Brigade… but as they will not be on the table, I likely won’t in time for the BIG GAME! Mind you, The Divisional command will likely not be present on the table either, so….

Coming soon on Tim’s Miniature Wargaming Blog:

MORE Great War Germans!

(or some minor distractions!) 

Bavarians

I was up a bit late last night trying to finish these up – watch (well… listened to, mostly) Contagion and 12 Monkeys – how’s THAT for an evening’s double feature!? Contagion I hadn't seen before and I thought it was pretty good. 12 Monkeys I hadn't seen in years - probably over a decade and it was actually better than I remember it... You wont' read me write this often, but I actually liked Bruce Willis in it. I usually find him pretty dry - but maybe that's all just part of the tough guy part he's always pidgeon-holled into - but I thought he was actually quite good in 12 Monkeys.

Earlier in the week I was doing some assembling and organizing and repainting collars on about 40 others to make them into Bavarians (they had a white and blue lace edging their collars… I could have left it off and no one would have known the difference… but…) – so this isn’t ALL I’ve done so far this week…

Last week I started reorganizing the German forces for Vimy. I found I needed a handful more officers and men to finish up the three regiments of Bavarians and so I set to finishing those up as they seemed like low-hanging fruit. While doing that I also painted up three of the Irregular Miniatures machine-gun teams to go with the Bavarians. I even mixed some paints to try and match the original tunic colour I used 10 years ago when I painted the first batch (a colour that is no longer commercially available and lighter and greener than the one I’m using now)

 (Remember: click on the pictures for a bigger version):

The Spare Infantry

Machine-gun teams from Irregular Miniatures.

Bavarian Reserve Infantry Regiments Nos. 1 & 3. These were part of the 1st Bavarian Reserve Infantry Division which held the southern end of the ridge. The 2nd Regiment, also part of the Division, held a part of the German line south of the Canadian area of operations during the Arras offensive. (I think it was the 51st Highland Division that was just south of the Canadian Corps, which would have been fighting against the 2nd).

The mortar teams are from Renegade Miniatures, the machine-gun teams are from Irregular Miniatures, the rest are entirely homemade figures.

With the exception of the seven newly painted figures and ten that were reorged from the original 11^th Bavarians, all the other figures in these two regiments had their collars repainted this week as well…

Bavarian Reserve Infantry Regiments No. 1

Bavarian Reserve Infantry Regiments No. 3.

I have a third regiment of Bavarians; the 11^th Bavarian Infantry Regiment, which was part of the 16th Bavarian Infantry Division) held the North end of the Ridge and “The Pimple” which the 10^th Canadian Brigade was scheduled to attack the following day. I was originally going to take pictures of the 11^th as well… but there was nothing newly painted among them (save for one of the machine-gun teams above) and I don’t have a Mortar element for it yet… and… well my fingers were getting cold! (I do most of my photography out of doors where I get better light! And it was chilly this afternoon!)

On the bottoms of all of these Vimy figures I have stickers to indicate which unit each figure is in. Part of the reorganizing of the Germans I’ve been doing over the last week involved tearing the original stickers off and replacing them.

Coming soon on Tim’s Miniature Wargaming Blog:

MORE Germans for the Vimy project. I had hoped to crank out another 45 guys to finish up the 79th Reserve Infantry Division… I probably won’t get them done by Sunday or Monday or whenever I get to the weekly countdown post. Tonight is our biweekly D&D night, but I should get in a couple of solid evenings of paiting Saturday and Sunday… So I should finish up the 262nd Reserve Infantry Regiment and get s good start on the 263rd. Then I have only a few spare battalions that were thrown in from the reserves to finish up for the Germans.

Countdown to Vimy – 9 weeks to go!

Seems I’m posting these things on Mondays…

The Plan for last week was to:

#1 Cast, base, prime and goop remaining Germans.

CHECK!

Monday I cast just over 100 Great War Germans to make up the rest of the Germans I’ll need for the project – plus a few extra, in case I hadn’t counted right or I noticed any terribly miscast figures after the fact.

I thought I’d taken pictures of the workbench during the priming/gooping process… but apparently I didn’t. Anyway, I DID get them all primed and enough of the ones I actually need to do gooped.

#2 Cast, base, prime and goop British 5th Brigade

CHECK! Well... sort of...

I made a couple of realizations this week regarding the 5th. First, I don’t need the ENTIRE 5th Brigade, probably only two battalions. Second, I already HAVE enough of my own British/Canadian figures cast to make 3 Battalions. Unfortunately I realized AFTER I’d don’t the casting of the Germans that those three battalions worth of figures lack Lewis Gunners and Officers!? So I will need to do some casting agains at some point in the next week or so. I didn’t get these based, but I’ll have one more batch of basing to do when the rest of the 6th Brigade arrives anyway, so…

#3 Base, prime and goop remaining 6th Canadian Brigade (miniatures should be arriving on Tuesday)

CHECK! Well... sort of...

They didn’t arrive on Tuesday – some mix up with import papers, sender not assigning broker  or UPS being confused about something... Held up in Winnipeg.

Or Wednesday… Still in Winnipeg.

Finally arrived Thursday morning. (These are from Irregular Miniatures)

Unfortunately it was missing a bag of 16 Advancing British, so I am unable to complete the four units of the 6^th Brigade right now as I have to wait for replacements to arrive…

I also ordered a bunch of Machine guns and mortars and artillery from Irregular Miniatures because… well.. they are cheap – like less than half the cost of the any other mortar or MG teams from any other manufacturer – and I’ve gone WAY over budget for games and toys this past year. You get what you pay for though – the German and British MG teams are basically identical – they just have different helmets (and some minor modifications to the guns, I noticed when I actually assembled them).

The Mortar teams were the same – these they didn’t even cast separate crew with different helmets – they just have a generic crew with separate heads! That doesn’t matter so much – they’re in shirtsleeves and puttees and minimal equipment – the crew will probably look alright when they’re done – what was really disappointing (which any of you that know anything about Great War Equipment will have no doubt already noticed…) was these mortars they have come equipped with. The German trench mortars of the Great War ( the Minenwerfer did not look anything like Stokes mortar or any of the tripod mortars used by most nations by the Second World War…. I know, both sides made use of captured equipment, but I don’t think it was done on a large enough scale that it would be reasonable to produce this as the only option for the Germans… I’m not sure if I’m even going to use these. I do have four Mortar teams… I’m not really sure how many I was thinking I needed? One per regiment, is that what I was going for?! They’re not going to be a priority - I have four other much nicer ones, three of which are complete.

Even crazier is the Artillery crews – I ordered a British 18 poinder, a French 75 and two German Krupp 7.7 field guns. The guns are okay-ish, if on the small side. But the “crews” are two sets of machine-gun crews (two kneeling with hand out to fire gun and two prone looking like they want to feed belts of bullets into a machine-gun) and an infantry officer with his pistol out!? I would have much rather had more of the generic MORTAR crews – thwy would have worked much better!? Ah well… I’m probably not going to get to the guns for this project…

And then there’s the Turkish Cavalry I ordered… oh, don’t get me started about them.

I did get them based and primed – but ran out of goop before getting to them the evening I was doing all the base gooping… Though I did manage to get all the Boxers gooped (which I also ordered from Irregular) I think the justification was that I knew I’d have to do some more basing priming and gooping to finish this brigade of Canadians, so I could do these ones at that time – the Boxers ended upbeign higher priority as now that they are gooped I can squirrel them away in their storage box and not have them haunting the painting table… tempting me…

(pay no attention to the jet bikes in the back ground I TOTALLY wasn’t working on those… okay maybe I was… just a bit… I ordered them from North Star Figures as they were blowing out some Warzone stuff and these were 50% off and I’m planning on doing a jet bike racing game for ToonCon  and… well.. it’s a long story… never mind…)

I did get the Machine-gun teams assembled and based yesterday. Hopefully I’ll get to the Mortar teams today.

#4 Finalize Terrain Plans

I did a bit of work here – thinking about things and trying to redraw old sketch plans, but I can’t say they are “finalized” just yet…

#5 Reorganize Germans – repaint collars on old 261 Reserve Infantry Regiment to match collars on 11th Bavarian Infantry Regiment reorganize those two regiments to form 11th Bavarian Infantry Regiment, Bavarian Reserve Infantry Regiment No. 1, and Bavarian Reserve Infantry Regiment No. 3.

I did start reorganizing them. This is the first part of that.

On the left we have three regiments of Bavarians – they are not all part of the same Division. In the front is the 11th Bavarian Infantry Regiment (part of the 16th Bavarian Reserve Infantry Division), which held the north end of the Ridge and “The Pimple” just to the north. The other two Bavarian regiments (Bavarian Reserve Infantry Regiments No. 1 and No. 3) were part of the 1st Bavarian Reserve Infantry Division which held the area at the south of the ridge.

In the center are Reserve Infantry Regiments No. 261, No. 262, and No. 263, which were all part of the 79th Reserve infantry Division which held the center of the ridge.

On the right are a bunch of extra regiments I cast, primed and (mostly) gooped to field as a few of the reinforcement battalions that appeared on the day – I actually only need four of them.

In front are a few casualty/morale failure markers, in the back are an assortment of achine-gun and mortar teams, field guns and higher command figures all in varying states of completion.

I do have a few more Germans for the Great War – early war cavalry and a Jäger battalion

Distractions!

There were a few…

One thing I’ve been meaning to do for a LONG time once I got the table cleared off was to make a star field battle board for various spaceship battle games. This didn’t take a LOT of time 15 minutes per coat of black (x2) and about 20 minutes to do all the stars. Then board itself was one of the DBA Game Boards I made five years ago. I think I made four of them for use during campaigns, but in all the HOTT and DBA campaigns I ran I don’t think we EVER used all the boards in one campaign turn, so one is beign repurposed for battles among the stars!

Did I overdo it on the stars…? I’m not sure.

My local game store (Dragon’s Den Games) is having a 50% off sale on Reaper Miniatures metal miniatures. So I went and picked up a few weird things – mostly anthropomorphic animals and plants to use as mutant plants and animals in Mutants and Death Ray Guns  (which I have become a bit obsessed with lately…) plus a pack of familiars and halflings and such.

I even started basing and assembling/converting some of them last night (as a “treat” for getting all the German infantry based and primed and machine-guns based…) - there is also a pair of old RAFM REptiliads and an old Citadel Firmir I assembled along with them. 

This Week:

#1 Paint ~45 Great War Germans to add to those painted last week and reorganize into 10 figure battalions to form the 3 regiments of the 79th Infantry Division.

#2 Repaint collars on old 261 Reserve Infantry Regiment to match collars on 11th Bavarian Infantry Regiment reorganize those two regiments to form 11th Bavarian Infantry Regiment, Bavarian Reserve Infantry Regiment No. 1, and Bavarian Reserve Infantry Regiment No. 3.

#3 Work on (and maybe try to Finalize!?) Terrain Plans

#4 Begin refurbishing rest of 4th Division’s Terrain…?

Rest of February

Finish Germans – 4 more (10-man) battalions of units in reserve plus machine Guns and mortars

Build Terrain for 3rd Division.

March

Finish British and Canadians 2 battalions

Build Terrain for 1st and 2^nd Divison

April (one last week!) 

Make more wire and barrage markers

Coming soon on Tim’s Miniature Wargaming Blog:

Hopefully some painted Great War Germans!!

262 Reserve Infantry Regiment

As promised a German regiment, all painted in one week- Whew! Well.. the infantry, at least. I will have mortars and machine-guns to add at some point. I’m not sure I can keep this pace up for too much longer! Luckily I don’t have too many more weeks like this planned.

This is the second regiment in the 79th Reserve Infantry Division. I have already completed one of the other regiments in the division: 261st Reserve Infantry Regiment.

All of the figures used in this regiment were homemade. I madolled the masters, made moulds, and cast them myself – and, of course, painted them! (at least all the infantry figures presented here – the Mortars and Machine guns I will add will be commercially produced minis).

(Remember: click on the pictures for a bigger version):

262 Reserve Infantry Regiment – 79th Reserve Infantry Division.

262 Reserve Infantry Regiment Headquarters

I/262 Reserve Infantry Regiment

II/262 Reserve Infantry Regiment

III/262 Reserve Infantry Regiment

Coming soon on Tim’s Miniature Wargaming Blog:

Vimy Countdown and some other odd and assorted things… 

Street Zulus (and ONE BIG GERMAN!)

I finished a second battalion of Great War Germans the other night and while I was apinting for finish layers of base colours to dry, I knocked off these “Street Zulus”

(Remember: click on the pictures for a bigger version):

“Street Zulus” from Casting Room Miniatures.

I picked these up some time last year thinking they might be fun to throw into a unit of regular Zulus (for the Anglo-Zulu war of 1879) just to see if anyone notices… or possibly use them in with  my modern African Militia or use them as a group of survivors in Mutants and Death Ray Guns or in some other sci-fi/timetravelling adventure…

I originally started painting these back in October when I was finishing up Zulu units to hopefully play The Men Who Would Be Kings. They were about 90% completed when I lost interest in them/go busy with other things – but they were so close to being complete I couldn’t bring myself to put them back into storage any time I was clearing off the workbench.

Actually when I grabbed these and decided to finish them up I realized one (the crouching fellow) was actually DONE – except for his base – I just hadn’t put on finish or did his base because I was waiting to do it along with the others. The others simply needed a feather or an ammo pouch to be finished up.

This is a 40mm Great War German that my firend John made. He was casting a bunch at my place as he’s in gypsy mode as all his casting supplies are locked away in a container somewhere and left a few for me to paint.

Backside of German.

I probably should have put a 28mm figure in there for size comparison... 

Maybe someday I should get back to finishing MY OWN 40mm figures!

Coming soon on Tim’s Miniature Wargaming Blog:

I hope I’ll get to finish up the 3rd battalion of (28mm) Great War Germans this evening… or maybe tomorrow… 

German Trench Mortar

I haven't been terribly productive this past week for… reasons… Largely I spent a couple evenings just taking stock. I’ve been getting distracted thinking about future projects. NEW future projects and I thought perhaps it was time to do a little stocktaking – mostly to shame myself into not considering any new projects for the next year or so… but more on that in another post….

I DID manage, in the meantime, to finish up this little German trench mortar team from Great War Miniatures.

(Remember: click on the pictures for a bigger version):

Lovely little kit. Very easy to put together.

I particularly appreciate the little details GWM throws in with these kits – the case with mortar bombs and rifle, etc.

Coming soon on Tim’s Miniature Wargaming Blog:

Perhaps another battalion of Great War Canadians…

Or perhaps a bit about the stock-taking I did over the last week. honestly I’m a little embarrassed to post the figures…

Anyone care to guess at how many 28mm figures I have and what portion of them are actually painted?

I tell you what - if I get at least six guesses I'll post the results.  

Machine-guns and Mortars

Back to the Great War stuff that I’ll actually be making use of in the Vimy game…

(Remember: click on the pictures for a bigger version):

Two German machine-gun teams from Great War Miniatures. Have I mentioned lately that I love Great War Miniatures. I do. They are lovely models with such fun details. the team on the right must be veterans as they still have their older uniforms that still have piping. 

Canadian trench mortar team that seems to be in some disagreement on where they should be firing…? Model is from 1st Corps.

Coming soon on Tim’s Miniature Wargaming Blog:

1st (Western Ontario) Battalion, Canadian Expeditionary Force. 

Great War Germans Snipers and Colonial British Artillerymen

Just clearing a few things off my workbench that were mostly done before taking stock of where things were at for the Vimy Project the other day.

Since then I’ve decided I’m going to hold off on working on the terrain for a few weeks to do a bit more research. But I do have the next Canadian battalion on the workbench – they will be the 1st (Western Ontario) Battalion. The whole of the First Brigade were from Ontario – the other battalions being from Eastern Ontario, Central Ontario, and Toronto. All of the figures are form Wargames Foundry.

(Remember: click on the pictures for a bigger version):

A German Sniper and Stormtrooper from Great War Miniatures.

Back of the sniper – to show off his camouflaged cape.

Two more snipers – also from Great War Miniatures.

Detail of their other sides.

While at least being Great War subjects, I’m not sure I’ll actually make use of these in the Vimy game…

Two colonial British artillerymen. I think the chap carrying the ammo crate is from Wargames Foundry the officer is from Black Tree Design.

I painted these to add to some existing (previously painted) gun crews as the number of dice rolled for guns in The Men Who Would Be Kings is based on how many figures are left in the unit. Technically, if I’m increasing all the unit sizes by 25% (as I was planning to do), I should have FIVE gunners… I guess I’ll have to find another I can add to the team!

Coming soon on Tim’s Miniature Wargaming Blog:

1st (Western Ontario) Battalion, Canadian Expeditionary Force. 

(And, hopefully, a game of The Men Who Would Be Kings - before I forget the rules and have to read them all over again!)