Here come the cossacks

Last night I rebased 4 stands of mounted cossacks, which leaves me 12 stands for my "spring/summer" force. Under the new rules I much prefer to use one smaller mounted platoon (typically 9 stands all up) and one larger dismounted platoon. With the large bases I find that fewer mounted cossacks works better for me. The other thing I do I only base 3 figures per stand for the mounted cossacks, which gives me a couple of extra stands of infantry over a whole box. My cossacks were made from to of the old box sets so I have 4x tankcha to make up at some point as well.

I have another 4 stands I have just undercoated and intend to paint up over the weekend and the mounted component will be ready. I'm going to order a platoon of dismounted cossacks and mix them up with the great coated infantry as the dismounted platoons for this force.

Winter bases
The bases are just permafilla which I then highlighted with a gloss white to brighten the up a bit- the permafilla itself is a bit of a "dull" white so the gloss paint lifts it somewhat.  Usually I cover the bases with a combination Woodlands Scenic Snow/ Baking Soda/ PVA glue and water and may end up going down this route again but the permafilla + gloss paint works quite ell. The trick is to use a damp paintbrush to push down the permafilla and make the "snow" smoothish.

I also rebased the mighty 76mm artillery pieces, very cool models. The gunshields have been given a light white wash to blend in with the scenery. These regimental guns are pretty handy as they can be combat attached (as can the 45mm AT versions) giving me lots of flexibility. Of course this means that I will also need to add some horse limbers as well...

 The sun has finally decided to come out so here are some more shots of the Mixed Tankovy. I used Vallejo Off White, which is almost a very pale grey shade, but might dab them again with their brighter white shade to highlight them a bit more.

 The mighty KV 1E with no tigers or panthers to worry about the Soviets will have the upper hand and for once the Germans will have to try too apply tactics to deal with Soviet heavies- just like they actually had to do (gee, who would have figured?). Its the Soviet heavies like these that forced the Germans to up gun their panzer IIIs and IVs and introduce the marder series, tigers and panthers. Stalingrad and Kharkov '43 were in some ways the last hurrah for the KV series as once the panthers arrived they quickly became obsolete and were replaced the following spring with the new JS series- it always astounds me how much tank development occurred in WWII over such a (relatively) short period of time. From T26s and T60s to JS IIs in but a few short years, it really was a revolution in tank evolution. 

 T34s- there is always one which refuses to line up properly on parade!

 T60s- Being rated as "half tracked" in FoW they will be totally useless in the snow :)

 And finally, the view from where I paint. I look out over a park to the harbour and city, could be worse spots to paint from :)

Craig