HotT Soviets - Part 2

More Soviet HotT elements off the painting blocks. As I mentioned in the initial post, a HotT Soviet armyshould have Hordes - riflemen from a seemingly inexhaustible population stock (we now know of course that this was far from true, but this IS a fantasy game system!). So six elements of Hordes to start with.

I thought that Soviet hordes should have riflement marching forward, being shot away, but with always more ofm them to come. So I dug out of that miraculously little box of bits all of the marching figures I could find, and also those figures you got with men stumbling forward having been shot.. remember the ones in the Airfix boxes?

Now I had also planned the next stand to be a Hero, but Stan's advice that a commissar should be a Cleric, and the fact that the central figure here looked stern and Commissar-like, just seemed too much  like a good idea to pass up. The figure was a head swap I did 35 years ago, putting a Soviet helmeted head onto a general figure from those delightful WW1 Germans. What's with the flag? I know Soviet troops didn't go into battle with flags flying, but.. hey! This is HotT.. I can have a flag if I want one!!!!

So here is the Soviet HotT army so far:

1 x Cleric(Commissar)
1 x God (Artillery barrage)
2 x Knights (T34 Medium tanks)
6 x Shooters (Submachine gunners)
6 x Hordes (Riflemen)

More than enough to be going on with, with a few choices to make up the 24 army points.

I'll potter with a few more ideas (Stan's suggestion that a sniper would make a Hero is too good to pass up!!). I think this will be relatively easy to push up to a double army for some larger battles; I've got the taste for these larger battles after Carruthers' first foray.

HotT Soviets... stage 1 complete

Here is the preliminary Soviet World War 2 HotT army, an exercise in re-using existing figures. The infantry had previously been block painted, so I gave them a couple of coats of the Citadel wash (Badab Black) and based them up.

The composition with these stands is:

1 x God (Artillery bombardment)
2 x Behemoths (T34 tanks)
6 x shooters (Soviet sub machinegunners).

A close-up of the behemoths and the God. The classification of the artillery as a HotT God seemed logical to me. Artillery was mostly controlled at Corps or Army level, and so lacked local command control. It was therefore likely to be hard to get, and as easy to lose (unless being used in the deliberate attack of course, when even then it's use was carefully pre-planned).  This sounds like a HotT God to me.

This initial composition is not quite as I'd envisaged the complete army, and I have enough figures to complete some Horde bases (Soviet Riflemen).

However I'd initially seen the T34s as knights, and they will revert to that classification once I can complete enough additional stands to compose the 24 army points required for game play.

I was also on the look out for a Sturmovik, or a Pe2, in 1/144th scale to use as an airboat, and maybe a Yak 5 or two for flyers. A quick foray today to a local model shop hasn't provided anything suitable, so this may be one of those acquisitions that requires  a little patience. The discovery will be all the sweeter!!!

Imperial Guard in action ...

Dozens of pairs of eyes peered into the dawn gloom, watching nervously for signs of the alien invaders.

"Niner this is 10A, over"  a whispered voice over the vox caster.

"Niner over."

"10A, we have movement to our front over."

"Niner, Roger."

This might have been the opening conversation whispered over the command net as the small Cadian Defence Force unit waited in the dawn for first signs of the Tau forces that had been identified landing on the planet. The Guard forces had stolen the initiative from the Tau forces in a Seize and Control mission, and crept forward to set up a fire base. The Guard commander had deployed a unit of veterans to secure his left while pushing his invaluable unit of stormtroopers out onto his right flank, supported by the solitary Guard Leman Rus available to his small detachment.

The Tau commander  pushed his mobile fiorces forward on his right, while holding centre and left with units of Kroot mercenaries.

Fire from the Leman Rus, and the Storm troopers, eliminated the unit of Kroot that had been holding the Tau left flank. The Tau commmander was left on his own holding the flank, although it was a task he was more than up to.

Initial volleys from the Guard fire base inflicted heavy casualties on the first unit of Fire Warriors to deploy to their front, and these troops fell back.

However the Tau mobility allowed the Tau commander to outflank the Cadian flank guard.

The Cadian left was now the scene of heavy action and the Tau Firewarriors won a vicious fire fight.

As the Cadian firebase was neutralised, so the Kroot warriors positioned in the centre pushed off the central feature and towards the Cadian objective.

The Cadian stormtroopers on the Cadian right pushed forward to outflank the Tau left, but were caught in a hail of fire from the Tau battlesuits.

A vain last attempt to advance and flame the Kroot warriors from their position failed, and more Cadian troopers found themselves exposed in the open.

With just one squad of troopers left to him, supported by the Leman Russ, the Cadian commander could see that his inital defensive line was lost, and he ordered his troops to fall back further.

Adrian, Andy and I were trying out 1000 points of Guard against Adrian's Tau. The force is still very imbalanced, and so Adrian opted to take only lighter forces in order to try to balance the game a little more. As I don't yet have the full complement of Guard forces, I used a couple of Rhinos as proxy chimera to transport two Guard squads.

I clearly have a lot to learn about how to fight with Guard (or any 40K forces for that matter). Next time!!!!

The game was a lot of fun; vicious fire fights meant old fashioned 'tit-for-tat' exchange of units. It was the initial destruction of the las gun heavy weapons squad supporting the Cadian left flak, allowing Adrian to assault the Cadian left with his fire warriors, that was the turning point of the game.

Hidden in a box .... another opportunity!!!

I'm in a tidying mood and that's dangerous. I came across this box of WW2 Rusian infantry in 20mm plastics that a good friend had given to me a number of years ago (his signal that he had foresworn figure 'gaming for the time being). He thought that they might be a good supplement to my own collection (which has since been rebased for the Crossfire rules).

However what I did see was an interesting HotT army (inspired by a WW2 German army that colleague Tony created and used a couple of years ago). It would be different from his Germans though, as the Soviet army created HotT images of shooters, hordes, knights and more. So here is the start.

Sub-machinegunnrs based as shooters, and a couple of old T34s for knights. I also thought that given the image I have of the Soviet army of the time, maybe artillery might best be represented as a God, so there will be a base of shell explosions to represent artillery.

The figures were block painted, so there will be some 'tarting up' with a few washes etc to bring out the detail on the figures and improve their overall appearance on the table (I'm not repainting them though, this is all about re-using what I've got).

And, yes, following on from a post last week, I bought another three of those 15mm buildings. Here they are undercoated black, ready for painting. I just have to get the motivation to finish them, but that's the over-riding theme of this holiday break, finishing up projects, using what I have available, without buying anything new... YET!!!

A few extra Dwarfs ... still finishing projects!

Wow!! am I feeling virtuous.. there's still more 'finishing' going on. I recently bought  a few extra Dwarven warriors with which to fil out the units of warriors in the WFB army - building the warrior units up in size.

Here are the extra boys ....

And the warrior units (with a unit of Longbeards in the middle) looking a little more solid than before.

OK.... what's next???