AAR: The Russian Revolution in Central Asia

My miniature voyage to the Transcaspian Oblast has finally arrived! Ziggy and I put Setting the East Ablaze on the tabletop yesterday afternoon for a first run. I've been collecting and painting 28mm minis for this project for most of 2025. It was nice to see it pay off with an enjoyable first outing. Of course, where the minis have gotten loads of attention, Transcaspian-specific terrain was less of a focus so I suppose that'll be a 2026 agenda item. 

The Reds (me) were defending a rail + road crossroads from Basmachi and British troops (Ziggy). The Russians started the battle with just an infantry squad and field gun on the table. All other resources would arrive later from reserves.

Basmachi infantry off to the far right and British Indian troops in the center.

More Basmachis on the left and a Godforsaken armored car. The A/C makes a risky move crossing the railroad tracks but didn't get stuck.

Ziggy chose to flank march the Bamachi cavalry which of course showed up immediately on my right flank. Well, the artillery was fun for about a second!

My infantry take a big chunk out of the Indians with a remarkable round of shooting, but that A/C fires back and suppresses the brave comrades.

The inevitable. Ah well, whatcha gonna do?

But when the right hand takes, the left hand gives. I get my first reserve unit, the FT. In an encounter like this, even the dink little FT can be the queen of battle!

The British car forces my brave soldiers to shift as the flip to the other side of the wall. The car gives my tank a wide berth. 

A truck carrying a machinegun team arrives. They set up overlooking the objective. Things really starting to look up!

Pepper gets some measure of revenge on the horsemen, blasting two of them!

And then another unit of Infantry arrives. Finally, a fair fight. The machine gun goes "Low Ammo" on it's first shot of the game. Dear God, did they really show up with just a 50-round drum?

Pepper's reign of terror continues, taking out four Basmachis. My initial squad is done and start heading home.

Heh heh. My cavalry arrives! My plan was to simply slow down the enemy cavalry and keep them from adding their weight to the firefight at the crossroad.

The first round of melee goes remarkably well for me, taking out two tribesmen to no losses! We're even now.

Yes. Three shots in and it's out of ammo. Maybe this whole Bolshevism thing has some unforeseen problems? 

My cavalry continues their remarkable success against the tribesmen!

While Pepper takes out another four enemy infantry.

But at the end of the day, the crossing had been lost and the Red troops had to fall back. Both my infantry squads were spent and I only had a tank and two horsemen left against the AC and at least 30 remaining infantry. 

Well that was a lot of fun! The game itself runs really smoothly and simply. There is pretty much no room for argument or confusion. The scenario worked really well to, considering my total lack of familiarity with the rules. I guess it says a lot about the rules that a real-world scenario can be planned out and happily played through with results that are not just insane. I need to pick up some reinforcements for both sides, both sides could use something capable of killing vehicles and the Russians wouldn't hate some additional troops and another leader-type.

Z and I are both ready for another go at this for sure and I know the other guys are as well. I'm not sure if I'll get any more games in before New Year, so if this is the last game of 2025 for me, at least it was a great one!

Tanksgiving 2025

 Last Sunday, November 23rd, the Space Cadets and some of the Savannah area HMGS members got together at Savannah Lions game store for a Tanksgiving game day. The group hosted games of Bolt Action, Team Yankee, Battletech Alpha Strike and What A Cowboy!I played in the Alpha Strike game while hosting / GMing the WAC scenario.

Wayne hosted the AS game. David and I took command of Clan Hell's Horses units and were tasked with keeping a Steiner force at bay. 

Our tabletop and deployment:

That's James, Ziggy and Wayne, left to right. David commanded the Stone Rhino and I think it was a Gargoyle. I had two squadrons of three very heavy tanks, each composed of two MBTs and the third vehicle being a multi-role AAA / Artillery vehicle. We needed to keep the IS forces away from the buildings circled in red.

I smoked one of Ziggy's Atlases early by simply combining a lot of fire on it. Three to go! Ugh... that won't be quite as easy next time.

I wasn't taking a lot of pictures. By the time I killed a second Atlas (and the Archer in the center), I had lost a whole squadron. David was working the artillery and other vehicles on the left.

There's David. Stomp that tank! Stomp that tank!

I ended up getting tabled but we did a fine job of keeping the enemy away from their objective. Not a bad job at all!

The other Tanksgiving table.

Say hi, Mark!

Next up was What a Cowboy. I set the game up for 5 players each with three characters.

Our game area. 3' x 4' is plenty for WAC. My water tank by the train tracks checks the "Tank" box. Each crew had an objective, three were trying to secure the lady int he center of town (Millie Mae) and two had to get to the cemetery and locate hidden loot.

Millie Mae was a slippery one. There was a lot of shooting each other from behind in this encounter. Just mean and nasty!

Just look at that! 

Mark's leader locates the treasure! Now, four inches to the edge of town and get the win!

James caught up with him before he made it away and the scenario ended with the loot being unsecured and Millie Mae sneaking off unattended. Mark and Wayne both made the most progress to victory so they shared a positive result. 

After playing the scenario, I should have started it with Millie already with the group her pappy sent to find her and they should have been closer to the train station. That gang had the most difficult objective and I should have given them some advantage by some other means.

Everyone had a good time and it was a great afternoon of toy soldiers. Be well and good gaming!

More New Completed Painting

 I finished up a handful of other models that have been hanging out on my painting table for months, halfway done. Some Brigade Games Pulp minis:

And a Reaper Bones witch of sorts and a fox familiar that come with another model but was easy to finish up.

 

I'll post Sunday's games recaps later today or tomorrow.

Wow - Some Finished Painting!

 I has time and space to get some additions to the What A Cowboy collection finished up this week. I've volunteered to run a game at our annual TanksGiving get together the Sunday before Thanksgiving so I had to make it fit. Mike has been increasingly bothersome about tanks being featured in the games. Now I like a tank game, but there can only be so many. I told him I'd run WAC and feature a water tank / tower on the table. He wasn't entirely pleased but it'll break up the WW2 tank monotony, of which there are already 2 games planned. 

Of course that meant I had to get a water tower and some railroad track. I also put together a paper train station platform for the game. In an effort to pretty-up the table I also got some cheap decorative cacti on Amazon to break up the tan and brown theme. 

So what did I do? Well first I completed some Mexicans I had picked up from Old Glory as new additions to the collection. 

Five fightin' women.

And ten tough hombres.

Next up, the water tower. It was a 3d print I picked up on Etsy. The vendor was Guardian Hobbies. Very quick shipping and very competitive pricing.

It painted up easily and adds a lot of character to a game table.

And finally, the cacti. The pieces are colored hard acrylic and I felt they were OK to use as-is without fiddling about with painting them. I just based them up for stability and to create "cover areas."

I didn't take a picture of the train platform but it is Finger and Toes models Lincoln, NM Train Station. You'll see it in the bat rep in a just over a week. Feels good to be productive again!

Pico-Scale Lego Flying Stands

 I mentioned that I'd try to post details on my Lego flight-stands I put together for my 1/600 scale Pico Armor aircraft. Now I've done just that!

Ingredients : Lego parts from their website. 

                    1.25" clear hex bases

                    1" (25mm) metal fender washers

Step 1 : Attach the round flats to the undercarriage of your planes. This could be done before or after painting. I did mine first since it gave me a nice area to hold the models while painting.

Step 2: Superglue a 1x1 clear cylinder underneath the painted plane. The superglue will cause the clear peg to fog. You might want to consider using Gorilla Glue or similar which won't fog. All planes will be at a minimum of altitude 1 so this permanent peg does serve a game function!

Step 3 : Assemble Bases. This is a combination of the hex bases, washers and Lego rounds that are perfectly 25mm in diameter.

Step 4 : Just put them together! I picked up colored discs to add to bottoms of the flight peg stands to easily differentiate planes during a game. 

Voila!

I'll still mark aircraft speed with a small 6-sider of a color that matches the ID disc. Clear pegs can easily be removed as the plane changes altitude. No fiddly and frustrating magnets. I love it!

October Catch-Up Just Checking In

 October has been a very very slow month for gaming. The primary reason is that my father-in-law has been staying with us off and on (mostly on) for much of the month (read: last 3 months). My painting office is his bedroom when he's here. His wife (my step-mother-in-law) had been terribly sick for a long time and just passed away last Friday the 24th. Given that, my opportunities for painting and hobbying have been very few and quite far between.

 First up are some 1/600 scale WW2 PTO aircraft. I've been wanting to do some Pacific War Check Your 6 and Pico Armor was the way to go. I've put together flight stands using Lego for these and I think it's going to work quite well. For a change, I'll be able to show planes' altitude visually instead of with dice. I need to do a full photo spread of how I did those.

I did some painting on the Trench Crusade stuff. Still very much a WIP.

I picked up some Mexicans from Old Glory 25s for What A Cowboy. Those will be fun additions to the collection.

I did also complete two more old west paper buildings for WAC. I need to hit the exposed white bits with colored Sharpies and put sand on the bases. They're the Casa del Rico set from Finger and Toe Models, available on WargameVault. Not bad for $3.00 + printing on 110 lb card stock.

 And lastly, I got a new ride! I bought it a few weeks ago.

It's a 2020 Volvo Wagon. I'm quite happy with it and I do hope it holds up. Have a great November everyone!

 

The Next Big Thing

 Good morning. If you haven't heard of it or seen the stuff, Trench Crusade has been been getting some good run lately and to be fair, it does look rather interesting. If nothing else, the 3rd party miniatures and aesthetic have grabbed my attention from a painting perspective. After a good real through of the MRB and army lists, I plunked down some cash with an Etsy vendor for a Cult of the Black Grail force. It's one of the forces of hell, closely aligned to Beelzebub. Think Nurgle, but without the carnival atmosphere. I was home, sick for a couple days last month, which might have influenced my decision. 

I was a good boy and finished those Afghan Cavalry minis before even touching these. I spent a few hours on Saturday working on bases for the models, decorating , puttying, etc. You've seen my models... you know that a pretty base is important to me. After a long period of letting glue set, this is the result.

 

 There are two large models I haven't based yet, the Amalgam and the Lord of Tumors. They'll require a bit more delicacy and/or focus. I'm pretty sure I'm going to treat this collection with the very heavy black oil paint wash and scrub technique I used on many Infinity models and some fantasy models in the past. See here and here for examples. Hooray new projects!

Completed Afghan Cavalry

 Greetings and happy October! I completed my most recent painting project last evening and have taken some pictures of my work. These are Wargames Atlantic Afghan Cavalry mounted on 2" x 1.25" MDFF bases. They'll be slashing and smashing with my Bolsheviks soon enough. Though I was slow to get them painted, they were a blast to work on and in all fairness, the slowdown was due to events out of my control.

The whole troop

Rifle / musket-armed horsemen

And sword-armed cavalry