Monday 21 September 2020

Russian Civil War in 28mm

Copplestone Ragged Whites
Lockdown was to have been a period of consolidation. It started well but there was a hiatus in hobby activity in May followed by the usual Summer distractions. And so my only wargaming-related activity in recent months has been the purchase of some 28mm Bolsheviks and Whites from the Copplestone 'Back of Beyond' range using my Wargames Illustrated/North Star monthly discount and a couple of books. This is another slow-burn project as it will take me over a year to collect the figures before I feel obliged to base or paint anything.

The RCW has long been on my wishlist and I eventually decided to go with the characterful Copplestones and The Men Who Would Be Kings rules. There are many other rule sets I could use but I already know and like these Rampant rules, and extending them to Interwar skirmish ought to be fairly easy. An adaption of TMWWBK to the RCW was discussed here and using them for the Mexican Revolution here. A further mention of using them for interwar colonial skirmish can be found here.

The main issue is how to accommodate vehicles and the most useful inspiration is Pierre Aymeric's WW1 Foch extension. The original version appeared on the Wargames Illustrated website here but a newer, fuller version is available from the author's blog here. I've yet to try these out but I also have ideas of my own having already been thinking of extending TMWWBK to cover shotguns and armoured trucks for the Irish War of Independence.

Anyway, these are just thoughts and I'm in no rush. Winter is coming and it's going to be a long one...

11 comments:

  1. RCW will be a good project to follow.

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  2. A nice project - look forward to whatever falls out of it.

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  3. Thanks to all for the positive responses.

    It will be a long time before anything of substance emerges but I may share my plans for additional sources of kit, what I'm actually going to collect and portray, and some thoughts on rules.

    Once the weather turns, and especially if we face restrictions on travel, I will go back to the base texturing and undercoating I committed myself to. This isn't glamorous, but it will give me an excuse to present some of the armies that are in production but have not yet been shown on the blog.

    I'm not suffering the Lockdown ennui that many have reported. I just have other ambitions and distractions on the hobby front, but I inevitably go back to wargaming sooner or later.

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  4. RCW is great - I have about 40 Coppletone plus some Brigade Games and other bits n pieces - a few are even actually from Russia courtesy of Siberia Miniatures! Look forward to seeing your progress on these.

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    1. Just spotted your Border Reivers posts from 18 moths ago - how is that project going? I have just purchased 18 foot from Alan at Hoka Hey (he is great to deal with) and have painted up about half of them so far - lovely figures! A few additions are en route from the UK courtesy of Stuart Armstrong (Good Reiver name) at Col Bills..

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    2. Hello Keith

      The RCW is a very interesting period and will be fun to game. I'll also be adding some Siberia Miniatures.

      The Reiver project is still at the same stage, i.e. based, textured, undercoated and washed.
      This is commensurate with minimal immediate target for all my uncompleted Rampant armies. Once I've got them all to at least that stage, my plan was to slap some more paint on whatever I was going to use next. But at the moment there isn't a 'next'...

      Richard

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    3. Hi Richard - very late response but I dont seem to have been a regular visitor to your blog! The Reivers Project is pretty near completion I think, we have even had a couple of trial games, which is a good sign!

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    4. My Reivers haven't moved forward but I have been adding filler to the RCW bases whenever I get time which is not very often.

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  5. Just found this post. Good links for the TMWWBK variants. Thanks. I'm the opposite to you, having painted my armies but not yet settled on a set of rules. Thankfully the single basing is forgiving and the rag tag nature of the armies makes it easy to reoragnise. We've played TMWWBK for colonial but not tried them for RCW/BoB yet, so that's an interesting option to try. Setting the East Ablaze were okay but the card driven systems always have a lot of dead time between turns. FFOL Bigger Battles works well for small-ish games but is still card driven. TMWWBK might be better. I've PMed Widow's Son on Lead Adventure for the variant files but I'm not sure if they are very active there now. Looking forward to seeing what you do so have followed your blog.

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  6. Hi Trev

    Good to hear from you. I think the Rampant system is readily extensible just by defining a new troop type. Vehicles simply become another form of crewed weapon.

    Richard

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