A War in The East

[commissarmoody]

Nice Monument.

[Rich H]

That looks great!

Needs more Bronekater:

[Wyrmalla]

I did find an old diecast Soviet warship in a flea market yesterday, but it was the wrong scale. If I wasn't working on a tonne of other things I could have bought it, stuck it on a plinth, and had it as being a memorial to some naval battle, or remembering some old shipyards.

...But no, I bought some more 1/50th scale diecasts instead to use as technicals. Because I don't already have enough crap to paint.

I was going to post about the Special forces models I'd bought recently, but ah, no. ...SASM's latest post on their Facebook group may detract from that conversation a little. 

[Wyrmalla]

(The Anthem of the Soviet Union should be in your head whilst you read this post).

So comrades, this one's been a good while in the making. Years in fact.

Once upon a time I had the idea to make some monuments from the old Soviet days to add to my Chernobyl themed miniatures collection. I'd already made similar ones for my Fallout miniatures (some of which are pictured on the board below), and I'd had this image from the James Bond film Goldeneye of the old statue graveyard. That seemed so appropriate for these dilapidated ruins in Ukraine.









What happened though was I wound up becoming distracted by too many other different projects which seemed like a bit more bang for my buck in terms of what I could use them for. Until recently I didn't really have any of these old monuments. On a slow day at the office (or, well, home) the idea resurfaced and I threw together this piece.



I'd bought that set with the intention of making just this, an old monument to WWII (ahem, the Great Patriotic War – keep that Anthem playing folks). Something likely sitting out in some rural town, surrounded by wood cabins and which an old lady would always remember to put some fresh flowers out every other week (ah, that is if all the little old ladies hadn't been chased off by the horrible shooting going on...).

That one was made from Tamiya's 1/35th scale Soviet Tank Rider set, just painted up to look like a corroded bronze and set on a plasticard and foam plinth. Simple enough to do.



Though whilst that had been the idea behind buying that set, in reality I'd set aside my Chernobyl project at the time, and instead used one of the fine fellows in that box to, ah, make a Dwarven statue. ...Perhaps beyond what the original sculptors had imagined the kit ever being used for.





Which brings us to today and my current project.



Since starting my modern miniatures collection I've had a lot more experience with T-34s, after I took a hiatus to ...well go overboard making a World War II tank collection (I think the final count on painted and unpainted tanks was in the 90s). See I'd also gone ahead and bought a KV-1 and a T-34/76 when picking up those Soviet infantrymen. Back in the day when these 1/48th scale Hobbyboss kits went for the princely sum of £9.99 each (now they're more like £20). With pricing like that however, they found themselves thrown on a shelf and forgotten about as I worked on the more expensive stuff.

Over the years I managed to lose the KV-1 in some box, and looted the kits for spare parts. If there's one thing to praise about these kits its the sheer number of spare parts, as both kits come with full interiors. Ah, I also nabbed many of the track links from the kits for adding on as extra armour to my WWII German vehicles.

So I was left with the shell of a T-34/76 kit. The major pieces were there, but I had to leave off a load of the detailing and improvise a few of the parts. Ideally that it has some Tiger roadwheels will go unnoticed, and that its missing a load of its fittings and has one very loose (some would say broken and with half the links stolen!) could be chalked up to poor maintenance by the local town council. A tank's a tank though, and that's all I needed for my purposes (I could have gone ahead and used that spare British Crusader tank ...though I don't think that would be quite so appropriate).

Luckily I found this thing, as otherwise I was eyeing up a lovely Tamiya IS-2 for the same purpose. ...And I don't have the heart to go spending £25 on a tank just to slap it on a plinth.



The plinth here was built in a similar fashion to the one of the above statue. A foam core cladded by plasticard sheets (from Wills Kits scenic line). I was a bit more adventurous when building this one compared to most of the monuments you see mounting these vehicles, and raised it up a bit and added stairs to offer a bit more cover for war gaming pieces too.




As for painting it, well, the town council was really strapped for cash and didn't have the time to go out and give it a new paint job. In fact I think they may have been the ones stealing all the parts to sell as scrap... (you can stop playing that old Soviet Anthem now btw).

I went for a vehicle painted up sort of in its original style (I wasn't too concerned about exactly matching a WWII era paint job, as it would likely have been repainted since then), though with my usual overdoing of all the grime and dirt effects. Looking like its been up there for a good few decades without the locals giving it much care (though didn't go as far as covering it in graffiti; whilst thematic to really grind in people's respect for history, ah, I'll leave that for my other bits).




As for the plinth, its your usual Soviet era affair of slabs of brickwork stacked together in a Brutalist fashion, done up to look like a mix of concrete and locally sourced materials. Again, the grime's maybe a bit overdone as usual, but that's long now seemingly been my trademark. I dunno, maybe I just live in a dump.



The obligatory beer bottles come from Black Cat Bases.




That's one off of the bucket list for this collection now. I've been pining after one of these for years ever since I started on this European stuff, and it should be a crowd pleaser when setting up some city boards.

Now hopefully one day I can put together some nice tall apartment blocks so I have some actual terrain which can see over this thing. Perhaps I'll try and rehabilitate that old 50s office building I built years ago, but did nothing with (if I can work out how to carry it to games). I was considering using it as either a department store, or just an abandoned set of offices from the Soviet era.





And there's always this big head...

[Ultravanillasmurf]

Nice job on the monument.

[Muzfish4]

Nice job on the monument.

Indeed - looks fantastic!

[Dr. Zombie]

Great looking monument. You should paint it partially pink like the similar monument in Prague. That people kept painting pink until it was finally removed.

[Wyrmalla]

If I'd gone ahead and sculpted on one of those brass frescos of soldiers marching then yeah, I would have easily done up one of the soldiers as Super Man.

Here's another post over on that blog of mine, covering SASM's new Special Forces Miniatures. The idea with this lot is to pair them with that BTR-3 and BTR-4 and have them done up as Western equipped Nationalist Spetsnaz. Gone are the days when these guys were using Soviet based equipment nah, they have some new benefactors.

https://thesticks.net/2018/07/23/miniature-review-special-artizan-service-miniatures-seals-grom/



They'll be painted up in a mix of multi-cam and Desert DPM. Ideally most of my Nationalist forces from here on will have more desert pattern uniforms, to show their Western support (surplussed from other wars). Whilst the Seperatists will have more of a mix of Soviet and Russian patterns, mixed in with civilian and hunter's clothing to show their own supply routes. Hopefully SASM will take over from Mike Bravo eventually and release some guys with Tavors so I can have some proper Spetsnaz like I'd originally planned however (I'm going to keep mentioning Mike Bravo going AWOL every chance I get btw...).

[Wyrmalla]

Here's my review of Spectre Miniature's Humvee over on the blog:

https://thesticks.net/2018/07/26/miniatures-review-spectre-miniatures-humvee/

Overall, its a good kit. What you'd expect from a resin cast made for resin, so there's a bit of clean up required.

Having come from Special Artizan Service Miniature's vehicles though, I'm a bit let down with Spectre's offerings. I returned the first order as it had similar defects, and whilst most of the smaller pieces aren't as bad, the main hull still has mould stepping. I can fix that sort of thing, but I wanted rid of those issues as I was intending to write a review where I wouldn't do any prior cleanup (and to sort out those faults I'd need to rebuilt the areas with clay), which is disappointing. In which case I'm taking this is what Spectre consider acceptable and went ahead with the review.

Hopefully it won't rub people up the wrong way. Its from the perspective of providing useful information to the consumer, rather than trying to be nice to the manufacturer, though of course I tried just to be frank, not rude or anything.

[Marine0846]

Excellent review of Spectre's Humvee.
Thanks a lot for the time you took for the write up.

[Ultravanillasmurf]

Interesting and thought provoking review, definitely something to think about.

When you mentioned the issue with stepping, I initially thought you meant a 3d print artifact, but your photographs show how the mould appears not to have been aligned correctly in some places.

I was interested in your mention of Crooked Dice's offering.

I own one (http://ultravanillasmurf.blogspot.com/2018/05/crooked-dice-hmmwvbrave-warrior.html) and it does have the advantage of being substantially cheaper than the other companies' offerings. It is however only vaguely HMMWV shaped (fine for post-apocalyptic use or as a knock-off).

It will make me think about which HMMWVs to get. Thanks.

[Wyrmalla]

Yes, its definitely actual mould stepping, where the mould has slipped during casting. My assumption being that Spectre, now making these in house and promising to have adequate stock, are trying to produce as many as they can. That's resulted in the quality control issues which I mentioned.

Oddly the response on Facebook to the link varied. On the Spectre page it looks like its been shadow blocked - i.e. I can see it, but nobody else can. On another there was an initial comment about being concerned over the quality, then the admin blocked the post (I got an angry face emoji from one of the Spectre guys). I suppose that's to be expected. I have nothing against the company or their products. Its an honest review, and at the most they could take on the concerns I raised (them sending a replacement with the same faults was understood as them saying that's what they consider acceptable, so nobody should take issue with me pointing out those issues, as I had already emailed them pointing them out explicitly with the first one).

Regardless, there's a bit of drama for the week. At this point I certainly will be buying Special Artizan Service Miniature's Humvee and doing a comparison, as there's even more drama over on Social media regarding that company than Spectre. Considering that SASM have a reputation for inferior products (which so far I've not experienced) and Spectre's the one with the best in the market, it'd be interesting if their one has zero imperfections unlike Spectres.

[Ultravanillasmurf]

Not on Facebook, so it is all unknown to me.

Your comments seemed perfectly reasonable, I might have expected a more direct response (either here, by PM or email) if the company thought it was in someway unfair.

I would have assumed that a replacement would be checked for the fault described in the original.

Have other purchasers had similar experiences (asking them, not Wymalia)?

[ChargeDog]

Have other purchasers had similar experiences (asking them, not Wymalia)?

I had some very minor slip on both my chassis under the doors but nothing that I wasn't able to remove with a little bit of work.

[Wyrmalla]

I was curious myself about others experiences. There's not been many images posted online.

When looking at Chargedog's I noticed that as he said, there was a mould slip on one of them, which was in the same area as both of mine. I've seen another two Humvees as well, with worse issues, which again seemed to have the fault in the same place.

As I said though, the issue with a mould slip and bubbles have different fixes. If its bubbles then you either fill them in, or scrape them off. With mould slips though, that's whole areas of detail which are now in the wrong place and need to be removed and rebuilt. Which may be a more involved process in fixing if you want those areas to look accurate. That's the reason why I stressed how much of an issue it could be for customers, as given the comments I see when discussing basic conversion work, repairing that type of issue may be beyond what most modellers would be willing or capable of doing.

Which then had me also wanting to address another point. On the Spectre fan page someone posted the SASM announcement that they were expanding their Humvee line. This was followed by comments blasting SASM for poor quality models (besides the ones saying they were just doing it to follow Spectre). Given my limited experience with both companies, personally my perception is reversed. SASM's kit had next to no flaws (literally two tiny bubbles), whilst it was Spectre's that had all the problems.

In either case though, the faults are stuff which I, and most modellers, are likely used to having dealt with other companies. Which is why I'll still give Spectre's Humvee my approval, as its hardly like finding one with this level of modularity is an easy proposition currently. But that's tempered by me putting forth legitimate concerns over their casting quality, which I don't think Spectre have addressed given that I sent them an email showing every defect in pictures, only for them to send me another with the same faults (and I've seen customers who have received Humvees that don't have these issues...).

I could have emailed them again and asked them for another, but this was already three weeks since the original order, and the expectation was for them to give me a product without faults. That the second one has similar faults instead infers that they're happy with the quality, and so shouldn't have a problem with me using that model for review. If I was a complete git I would have taken the original model and posted my review based on that two weeks ago, not giving them the chance to address quality issues and chalking this up to just a mistake.

One of SASM's Humvees is on my purchasing list for this month. We'll see how that turns out. I didn't signal to SASM that I was going to review any of the products from them and they were able to provide me with a product without any major issues. Neither did I do so initially with Spectre, but one of the owners had been in comment chains on Facebook where I did say that the second Humvee was going to be the one I reviewed. In which case it was SASM who were on the back foot in terms of quality assurance with that order, not Spectre.


Regardless, I'm not biased towards any one company. They're all selling toy soldiers, and I'll go to whomever has what I want. Its not like there's much reason for companies to be selling duplicates of one another's products in such a small market, unless one company thinks they have the edge. I believe that SASM may have made a wry comments regarding Spectre's Humvee's quality prior to me putting up that review, so others must have gone to them inquiring about the possibility for them to expand their Humvee range, rather than SASM themselves originally coming up with that idea. Personally I keep prodding the owner Tim to release more Russian stuff, so its not like I'm all that invested in Western vehicles (I'm currently turning those SEALs/ GROM that I picked up into Ukrainian Special forces in case anyone wonders why I have those... That, and the Flyer's going to be used with a friend's near future British SAS). When Spectre release their Spetsnaz with Spartan belt fed PKMs I'll be buying those as well, something which I haven't seen SASM doing with their's, and so on...