Glory To The Tiny Soviet Tank Forces

Here’s the first finished work of 2015.  Actually it was finished late in 2014 but I wasn’t able to get it posted on the Analogue Challenge site until New Years Day, and then I got busy with the thesis and other stuff.  So here are five 15mm Soviet T34s, by Plastic Soldier Company, bought from my favourite vendor, J&M Miniatures.  Since James plies me with trifle, it only seems fair.

 

I’ve now got enough of these little guys to give me a company of the Glorious Soviet Tank Forces.   The basing has magnets so i can store them in a cookie tin without rattling around too much. I like this kit because PSC supplies turrets for the early war T34/76 and the later war T34/85.  These fellows were in combat just before New Years, in the battle of Turnipograd, where they were roughly handled by James’ PZ IVs and Marders.   I had never gamed with T34s before using the IABSM rules, and was vaguely hoping they were super uber tanks.  Actually the T34/76 behaves more or less like a midway Sherman in those systems, in terms of armour and gun ratings, but having a company of ten of them might make up for technical deficiencies.

 

Hand painted turret slogans, courtesy of this site.  One of the participants in the Painting Challenge, Alex Sangir, who is I think Russian, had this to say about my illiterate borrowings from that site.

work is very good. inscriptions on the tank turret spelled correctly. but you have mixed the official slogans and that ordinary people wrote. usually wrote something simple, or a place where someone made a tank. for example: НА БЕРЛИН! or БЕЙ ФАШИСТОВ! or КОМСОМОЛЕЦ МОРДОВИИ or write the number of the tank 

particularly interesting so-called "name" tanks, production of which was carried out on a donation to a person or group of persons. Sometimes it happens that these people themselves and fought for these tanks. in any case, they came up with the name of this tank. for example: ЧАПАЕВ, СУВОРОВ, ЧЕЛЯБИНСКИЙ ПИОНЕР, КОЛХОЗНИК, АКТЮБИНСКИЙ ПЕНСИОНЕР

 

Makes more sense than my own efforts, which were intended to be:

“They will not pass!"

 “Fight to the Death!"

 “Glory!"

 “To the West!"

 “Leningrad"

A little bit of pigment and some surplus stowage from an old RAFM stowage pack.  I tend to think Russian tanks carried a lot of stowage - backs of turnips, loot once they got to Germany, etc.

 

These figures bring my 2015 totals to:

28mm 

20mm 

15mm Armour/Vehicles: 5

6mm 

Kilometres Run: 20

Thesis Pages Written:  38