Last of the 28mm Finnish Infantry

I'm starting to come to the end of my 28mm Finnish Continuation War / Lapland War project. These are the last 'infantry' figures, including the gunners for the captured Russian 45mm AT gun. 

Remaining on the project are four vehicles, a T-34/76, a T-26 and two Komsolets artillery tractors. The latter 3-D reprints to replace the under-scaled ones I've already finished. 

 

This is a captured 45mm Russian AT gun. The Finns received a batch of these from Germany. Ter German designation was PaK 184 (r). Finland also captured several in the continuation war. I've painted this in flat green without the characteristic Finnish camouflage, as a majority of the in-theater historical photos appear to show it being used this way. The gun and crew are by Great Escape Games from their Iron Cross figure range.

Five Finnish combat engineers. These are converted Great Escape Games German engineers. I've done some head swaps and cherry-picked the figures with the least amount of characteristically German kit that wasn't given to the Finns. Helmets of course were donated in huge quantities.  These could also fit in as 'tank hunters' easy enough as most are carrying bundle grenades and panzerfausts. One figure also has an anti-tank mine. These will be augmented by my already painted flamethrower team.

I needed an engineer squad so I can use this army for Chain of Command. The CoC support points include flamethrower teams, engineering squads for tasks such as mine clearing and barbed wire clearing as well as full engineering squads.

 

Finally, the last dregs of the 'dead lead' box. This handful of infantry figures comprises the absolute last of the unpainted Finnish infantry figures I had. I was saving these few in case I needed an odd crew for an AT-gun, etc. While I was painting the AT-gun crew and engineers I figured I'd take advantage of economy of scale and get these finished up.

Total figures for the project - 13 figures and the AT gun.

 

28mm Finnish BT-42 Assault Gun

This is the Warlord resin model for the uniquely Finnish BT-42. This vehicle was made by adapting a captured BT-7 chassis by making a custom box turret large enough to hold a pre-war British 4.5" howitzer. 

Although intimidating in looks, in practice the overloaded chassis proved anemic in power, and the howitzer under performed in it's intended role. Also when pressed by armor, the HE gun was unable to take out enemy armor. Many of these were lost in 1943, with the remainder fighting on to the continuation war in 1944. Eventually all were replaced with German Stug-III and Panzer-IV tanks. 

I know these are of dubious value in a historical force, but I couldn't resist having one of these uniquely Finnish vehicles in my collection. 

 

28mm Finnish Weapons Teams

This is a collection of 28mm Finnish WWII weapons teams I finished up last week. It contains a mix of manufacturers and also includes a 3D printed Pak-40 gun printed by me using my resin 3D printer.

This set will go a big way into getting my Finnish army ready for some Chain of command Lapland War games as it fills out a lot of the support team options for Chain of command.

Left, a Pak-40 anti-tank gun, sold to the Finns by Germany for use during the continuation war against Russia. This was the same gun that the Germans used prolifically during the later years of the war.

On the right a Pak-97/38. This was made by slinging a pre-war French 75mm cannon to ah Pak-38 gun carriage. These bastardizations were an improvisation used during early encounters with T-34 and KV-1/2 tanks. Pulled out of front line service, many where shipped to Finland as a stop-gap solution while Pak-40 guns were manufactured to send there.

Three panzerschreck teams. Armed with the German-provided 88mm shoulder-fired anti-tank rocket system. The Finns used these as one of their primary anti-tank solutions in the Lapland war. 

Maxim medium machine gun and 60mm mortar teams.  The Finns received precious few MG-38/42s from Germany and made do with copious Maxim guns captured from the Russians during the Winter war. 

The 60mm mortar, while not overly plentiful, supplimented 80mm and 120mm mortars, primarily also provided by the Russians during the Winter War as captured trophies. 

Three LMG teams using captured Russian DP-27 'record player' LMG's. Named due to the shape and size of it's round magazine. This gun was similar to the well-known British Lewis gun in how the magazine worked, although the size of the magazine was much more comical in size. Still in use in low numbers in the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022/3, the Finns much preferred this to the domestic Lahti-Saloranta M/26. The latter being available in insufficient quantities.

 

Finally a flamethrower, the Finnish Liekinheitin M/38 was an improvement over Italian and German designs of WWI. It had a rifle stock for the flame projector and was capable of ten 'bursts' with a range of up to 120 feet. This will be used in Chain of Command as part of a 3-man flamethrower pioneer section or as two figures in a full engineer platoon. 

This adds 25 figures to my 2023 totals. I'm not sure how to count the two AT guns, they're not vehicles or figures, so I'll leave them out for now.

28mm BA-6 Finnish (captured Russian) Armored Car

During the winter war and continuation war the Finnish army captured several BA-series armored cars, among them several BA-6. The Fins, having none of their own, were quick to slap some Finnish markings onto these and press them into service. 

This is the Warlord Games resin model. The BA-6 is essentially a T-26 turret on an armored car chassis. Crew of four with a hull mounted medium machine gun and a 37mm anti-tank gun in the turret.

 

28mm WWII Finnish Weapon Teams & Misc. Infantry

My recent completion of my Crusader army for Saga by painting the last units of crossbows for it has motivated me to return to my Finnish WWII army project to hopefully make a big push towards completion of it as well.  This is a collection of mostly specialty weapons teams but also includes a handful of semi-random infantry figures just to help with economy of scale when painting. I find that I'm most efficient when painting WWII when I'm doing 18-24 figures. 

This tripod-mounted Maxim machine gun and crew are 3-D Printed. I purchased them on-line already printed. I'm assuming that these were sculpted to be able to be used for all three Finnish conflicts: the 1939 Winter War, the Continuation War and the Lalpand war. This assumption is due to the winter coats and mittens. I will mostly be using these as Lapland war troops, so I've based them on some spring ground, but kept my 'dead grass' tufts for a slightly more tundra feel. Finland is cold in the spring even when there isn't snow on the ground.

This 81mm mortar team and forward observer is from the Warlord Games Finnish army box. Looking at their web store, I'm not sure this box is still available. I'm sure you can still buy the team in blisters though.

This Panzershreck team is from a Warlord blister pack. I think they're great sculpts with the loader holding the next rocket and carrying the ammo in a canvas bag. I much prefer this to Warlord's German version of the same team. The Finns re-painted their shreck launchers in Finnish colors. I went for a hasty Finnish green for mine.

Two more snipers. The one on the left is 3-D printed from the same vendor as the Maxim MG, the one on the right is a Warlord figure. I'm not sure if it came in the army box or if I picked it up in a blister. Surprisingly I had previously already painted a sniper and observer using Warlord figures, so this is a second team. I like that the figure on the left has binoculars, but also a scoped rifle making him a perfect spotter for the other sniper. In a pinch I am also happy to use these as standard riflemen.

This is a group of three LMG gunners. The left-most is my favorite and is using a captured Russian Degtyarev DP-28 'record player' LMG. Even at the end of WWII this was the most plentiful LMG in the Finnish army. This resin 3-D printed model is the reason I placed the order for all of the resin figures. The sculpting is excellent and the scale of the weapon is spot on. He even has a captured Russian ammunition case with spare 'record' magazines. The middle figure is from Warlord and has the same DP-28 LMG, although it is barely recognizable as such. This might possibly be one of the worst Warlord models I own. The right figure is also a Warlord figure carrying a German-provided MG-42 and bandolier of rounds. I quite like the sculpting on this figure. 

Here's a close up of this awesome sculpt. With independent sculptors doing this quality of work, I'm very encouraged for the future of our hobby when it comes to 3-D printing. Interesting thing about this photograph. The camera in this extreme close-up can pick out the layers of the 3-D print, but I promise, you cannot see them in person, even under a visor magnifier. When I looked at this photo the first time I was confused to what I was seeing until I remembered this was a 3-D print. 

The last group is a five-man infantry 'section'. The Finns didn't really do infantry sections, but these five figures were tossed in to round the batch of figures up to an efficient number. My next batch will add additional riflemen to go with the other LMGs in this batch and also will round out this squad to the full nine men it should contain. These are all Warlord figures from either their army box or an additional infantry blister. Note the rear right figure carrying another poorly sculpted DP-28, albeit slightly less awful than the prone figure carrying the stupidly short one. He also has an excellently sculpted face and head which partially makes up for the poor sculpt of the weapon.

I'm counting this as 21 figures, counting each of the larger weapons as one figure. This helps me catch up vs. the purchased painted figures for the year. Next up on the table a large group of just Finnish infantry. It may be a while until I finish it as I prepare to travel to Historicon in a week and a half to run a couple of Electronic Brigadier games there.  For fun, the photo on the left is a group shot of my Finnish army so far. 

28mm Iberian Infantry for Saga

I've had these Warlord 28mm Iberian infantry on my painting table for over a year. Early on in the project I had the figures painted up but the shields were not painted. I took a swing at hand painting the shields, but that was a disaster. I made homemade shield transfers, but those proved impossible to cut-in to the shields that had molded in spines and bosses. Finally I broke down, pried the shields off the figures, filed off the raised detail and applied the homemade transfers. Bob's your uncle. 

These will form two eight figure warrior units in my Iberian army for Saga Age of Hannibal, or two units for Clash of Spears.

These will count as 16 figures for my 2022 painting totals even though they were mostly painted in 2021. I count them only when they're finished, based, and ready for the tabletop! Next up on the painting table are some 28mm crusades era crossbowmen, some AWI figures I'm re-basing and some terrain.

Battlefield Debris by Warlord Games

Here are some of the pieces from Warlord Games 'Battlefield Debris' set that I've recently painted up. This is a fantastic set of miscellaneous detritus to scatter among your battlefields. The items shown in the photo to the left are what I've painted to date from this set. The paints used are a combination of Army Painter SpeedPaint, Citadel Contrast paint and traditional acrylics and washes. There's really nothing 'useless' in this box, and eventually I hope to paint it all up. It's all sized appropriately for Warlord Games Bolt Action line, but is also mostly usable for earlier periods with a few exceptions (oil drums, motorcycle, telephone pole). 

These items, the sofa, chair, table barricade, oil drums, motorcycle and the fantastically sculpted wicker chair barricade were painted a while ago, but never photographed and included in the blog, although they did make an appearance in a couple game reports for 1-48 tactic games I ran last year.

Reverse view of the sand bag emplacements, barricade of crates and the stone building fragment. The barricade of crates could also easily double as an objective for a scenario as a 'supply dump' with or without the oil drums shown above.

Group shot of the items painted this week. The wooden furniture is particularly fun. I might actually put a piece or two of that permanently inside one of my ruined buildings. I like that there are still dishes on the shelves. That's a nice detail, but also makes that piece not suitable for 'in the street' placement. I'm sure if that cupboard was moved to the street, the dishes would remain in pieces on the floor of whatever room it was removed from.

There are four all-brick ruined pieces, which could be put in a base as a single ruined building. I'm still deciding if I'll do that or keep the flexibility of having them individually mounted. There are also two other pieces with brick coated with plaster that obviously go together. 

The only regret I have about this set is that it doesn't include the ubiquitous stand-up piano you invariably see in nearly every WWII film with an urban theme. I still need to find one of those for my tabletop.  Maybe I can get a friend with a resin printer to print one up for me?

I'll be counting these as 20 'terrain/misc' pieces painted this year in my annual totals.

28mm Gaul Archers

These are twelve Gaul 'Tribal Archers' figures from Warlord Games SPQR range of figures. They're resin figures. I tend to be a 'lead snob' but so far I've been quite happy with all of the SPQR range of resin figures. These are no exception. I've painted these up to be my 'levy archers' for my Carthaginian army for Saga Age of Hannibal. Once I get my wargaming room finished and my laser back on-line I'll cut up some bases for them. The basing will be 1" circular bases made from 3mm arctic birch plywood per my usual for Saga infantry figures.

Twelve figures added to the 2021 painting totals. Until I get my laser back on-line I'm counting figures as they are finished in ready-to-base condition. This is not my usual, but desperate times call for desperate measures.

28mm Baleric Slingers for Saga Age of Hannibal

Another unit of mercenaries for Saga Age of Hannibal. These are eight Baleric slingers. They're from Warlord Games Hail Cesar line. I tried experimenting with mixing the brighter colored GW contrast paints with some of the light browns to make some of the colors more muted to represent ancient plant-based dyes. I think they came out well. 

I still need to base them but I'm under four hours for the eight figures, and I'm happy with how they came out. Eight more figures added to my annual painting totals.

28mm WWII Finnish Infantry

 These are twelve 28mm WWII Finnish infantry that I recently completed painting and are ready to base up. They are a mix of Artisan and Warlord figures. The SMG-armed figures are Artisan while the others are Warlord figures. I painted these in two two-hour streams on my Twitch.tv channel. Total time four hours, or 20 minutes per figure. 

These figures will be used for both Continuation War and Lapland war using Iron Cross, Chain of Command or Bolt Action rules. I'm still unpacking from moving this summer, so my laser engraver is still out of commission. As soon as it's back on-line I'll be cutting up bases for everything that I've been painting recently and I'll have a giant basing party for all of these recent projects.

Next up on the painting table will be some Lugurian ancient infantry for Saga "Age of Hannibal"