28mm Russian Civil War progress

After months of almost complete inactivity on the miniature painting and wargaming front, I found a little time to organise, clean, base and photograph my 28mm RCW figures for The Men Who Would Be Kings. I will be adding a few more figures, especially to the Whites, but the bulk is there.

The figures are mostly  Copplestone but there are some nice sculpts from Studio Siberia too. The White Coloured Regiment privates are Tsuba Russo-Japanese War Russians from Empress Miniatures in peakless caps. The Russian-variant Austin armoured-car is also from Empress.

The Reds: Elite Bolsheviks in Budenovka in lower left corner.
Commisar character in front of armoured-car.

The Whites: Elite Coloured Regiment unit in lower left corner.
The rest will be completed as Don Cossacks.

 

28mm Abyssinians: just looking (for now)

Empress Miniatures Ethiopians

I'm grateful to the A Grab Bag Of Games blog for refreshing my interest in fielding a 19thC Abyssinian/Ethiopian Army for The Men Who Would Be Kings. The Egyptian-Ethiopian War of  1874-1876 is just the sort of thing to appeal to my taste for the obscure. As I already have a Colonial Egyptian army, an Abyssinian force would be an obvious extension.

Empress Miniatures do a range of Ethiopians for the 1930s but the irregular figures should be perfectly useable for the later part of the Egyptian-Ethiopian War following the Ethiopians’ capture of Remington rifles from the Egyptians at the Battle of Gundet in 1875.

Additional figures are available from Askari Miniatures in the USA but postage to the UK is incredibly steep. Some US companies just don't seem able to sort out reasonable international postal rates, though others clearly have no such problems.

28mm IWI conversions with Greenstuff

When I first started collecting 28mm miniatures for my Irish War of Independence project I didn't have enough figures for the Republican side so I pressed these Empress Miniatures Spanish Civil War Assaltos to which I added overcoats and bandoliers using Greenstuff. I wouldn't want to model hundreds of figures in this way, but it's certainly an option for 'skirmish level' forces.