20mm Polish Army So Far

I recently finished up the last five of my Polish infantry out of the initial orders I had placed. I figured that rather than show you another 5 Polish infantry, I'd do some group shots of what I have so far. Because everyone loves an army shot right?

It's not a large force yet, maybe a third of a platoon, but its got a good cohesive look and sets a good ground work for whats to come. I intend to make this force my focus over the summer, to try to get it playable. To that end, I've got enough stuff either on the pile or on order to complete a HQ element and everything else I need to make a full infantry platoon along with all the support options. Cavalry, vehicles and other stuff will all come later.

45th (1st Nottinghamshire) Foot Complete

It's been a while coming, what with my hobby butterfly approach, and working on them in batches of 8 models at a time, but my very first 28mm scale Napoleonic battalion is complete! I am very happy about this as Napoleonics has always been near the top of my wish list of things to do, so to finally be making a bit of progress is great.

First up, here a couple of photos of the two command stands:

I think these came out pretty well, the drummer was quite tricky as he has his colours reversed and the flags are my first attempt ever at flags. I had ordered flags from Flags of War but I got impatient and usd the ones that came with the Warlord Games boxed set. I think they came out alright in the end.

On to the main event, heres the whole battalion:

I think they look pretty impressive en-masse. I have gone for a 6 base layout, meaning 24 men per battalion. This is the bottom end of a normal size battalion for black powder but it keeps it more realistic for me in terms of what I can achieve. If it was 9 bases per battation (36 men), I'd never get them done. I can always add more bases at a later date.

Things I have learned from doing these: Napoloenics are daunting at first but once you have a paint scheme down and if you concentrate, you can do them quite quickly. Each pair of bases took on average 8-10 hours, spread out over three or four evenings, and with life distractions. I imagine if left alone, I could knock this out in a week. Just need to quit work and evict the wife and children....

Where will I take this project? I have got a box of Perry British Line, and with the leftovers from the Warlord Games box, I think I can stretch another two battalions just by buying another command set. The Perry set also has four riflemen for a small 95th Rifles detachment. Painting wise I shall be altering things a little bit, mainly by incorporating different trouser colours for a more on campaign feel.

The only bad news is I wouldn't expect to get around to these next few units for a while - too much else on the go. I've got a few more projects to clear off the desk, then I'm going to tackle my 20mm Poles over the summer.

As always, all feedback is appreciated!

Review: First To Fight Polish Wz.34 Armoured Car

One of the few 20mm purchases I managed to get hold of at Salute was the Wz.34 Armoured car for my 1939 Polish Force. I decided to review it as it is from what I think is a fairly new company called First to Fight.

First to Fight are a Polish company and they seem to be concentrating on the 1939 Polish invasion in 20mm scale at the moment. A bit of research on the web shows they do both German and Polish kits, across infantry, vehicles and guns.

Now this pack was a single vehicle, in 1/72 of the WZ.34 armoured car. It came with two options to have a machince gun or a 47mm gun. I wanted it for the bigger gun.

First impressions were good. The box comes cellophaned together with a small A4 magazine. Sadly, this was all in Polish, so what looked like lots of text and background info was lost to me. The only real translation was the painting guide, where the Vallejo paints were named with their English names, so easy to follow:

Having finished looking at the pretty pictures in the magazine and lamented my lack of Polish, I cracked open the box. The kit was split over two sprues, and the instructions were fairly clear on the back of the box - there was no seperate leaflet on how to build it:

I found that the kit went together fairly quickly. It is somewhere between a gaming kit and a model kit it terms of detail. It has some things you don't need on a gaming model - such as suspension modelled underneath etc but goes together easily enough so that you aren't wasting a lot of time building something you want to use.

Once it was done, I was surprised at how tiny it was! Here is a shot next to some 20mm infantry and it's a tiny little vehicle. Still, it was only a two person armoured car, and a lot of ealy war stuff for all nations was tiny compared to what came later, so I won't labour on the scale issue. It will do for my purposes.

Overall, I think this kit is half decent. At £7.50 for a single vehicle it was perhaps a little more expensive than I would like. However, this is balanced with the fact that the company seem to be covering a lot of stuff you can't find elsehwere. There also is never going to be as much competition in this period as say 1944, so perhaps that's a factor. I also found the model a llittle bit flimsy in places, mainly where the wheels attached. I snapped two off during assembly, and whilst this is not a problem as it's a simple fix, it's a tad irrating and something I'll have to try to remember when moving the model around on the table top.

I would certainly consider getting other kits from First to Fight, but I suspect it may be the more obsucre vehicles. The TKS Tankette's for example I shall be looking around for, as at £7.50 each from these guys, and the fact I want four or five, make's those a tad expensive. But it's a company worth looking out for.

The model should be quick and easy to paint - I suspect it's too small to warrant even breaking out the airbrush, but that will be another blog post. 

Polish Footsloggers

I have recently finished up a couple of sqauds of Polish infantry. I have enjoyed painting these, mainly because of the progress I have made. I very quickly realised that I can finish them in one evening if I work on batches of 5 or 6, and being able to see them done so quickly gave me the impetus to keep going.

The squads are configured for Battlegroup Blitzkrieg rules. A Polish platoon in this rule set is 3 squads of ten riflemen along with another 3 squads of 9 containing an LMG (a polish produced copy of the American BAR I believe). There is also the HQ sqaud and the support options.

Here are the pictures of the squads:

The models are a mixture of Capitan Games and Early War Miniatures. Close up the Early War are larger but at gaming distances, they all blend together ok. I will be buying from both companies to have plenty of variety.

For this project, I still have a long way to go. There are a few more infantry to paint, then the armoured car I got from salute but that is all. I do have a shopping list of stuff I need to complete the infantry platoon in full, which will be the next step once funds allow.  I've got plenty of other things to be getting on with in the mean time.