German Police battalion - Schuma

The Schutzmannschaft were German Auxiliary Police battalions use for rear area security and worse in Russia. Given I am painting some partisans I need these to provide some opposition. They were organised by nationality and wore a variety of uniforms, after some debate I decided to use a grey shade for all of them.
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Figures are the Strelets Police Battalion, they depict a variety of different uniforms and I decided that the grey would create a more consistent appearance except for those still in civilian clothes. Normally there would be a forth company with MMGs, but no figures were in the set so when needed I'll just add some from one of my normal German units.

Winter War Russians

In keeping with the weather, here's another winter unit, this time the Strelets Red Army of Winter War I got for Christmas. The figures have lots of character and are much nicer than the Italeri and Pegasus figures I have in my other two battalion.


I'll be using it to accompany the rest of my Russians and I'll use the Zvezda mini-sets to provide the required MMG and mortar to make up a full RF battalion.

Soviet Assault Engineers

A rather unfriendly unit to properly start the years painting. These are the Orion Soviet Assault Group in amoeba camouflage smocks and body armour. Unfortunately the amoeba pattern hasn't shown up too well in the pictures.

I don't expect to use the whole battalion together, but rather have the companies parcelled out to bolster ordinary infantry battalions

I also got a diecast early war FAMO from my daughter, so I quickly drybrushed it while finishing off the engineeers

A few discoveries

These were found hidden away in the back of a cupboard at my parents house, The smaller figures are old 30mm Staddens , which are now the same as a small 28mm. The 54mms are a mix of Airfix, Historex and Tamiya. All were assembled and painted well over 40 years ago.

Now what do I do with them, I don't know anone interested in 54mm?

Also discovered in the bargain bin at "The Works" was this Christmas building for £1.50, it's quite suitable for 15mm or 20mm. But they only had one and I haven't seen any more.

Jacobite Cavalry

First to be finished this year a couple of units for the '45. Prince Charlie's Lifeguard and the Fitz-James Cavalry. The figures for both units come from the old Revell SYW Austrian Cavalry. I've depicted Fitz-James Cavalry as a normal sized unit so I can do a what-if the majority of the unit were not intercepted by the Royal Navy.

The tartan crossbelts on the Lifeguards were difficult to do and I'm not sure whether it was worth the effort.

I'd like to add a unit of Highland Hussars, but I can't think what figures to use!

On the workbench January 2016

An almost clean start, lots of clear space around my painting station, so it would have been off to a cracking start to the new year - except I've been clearing out my mother's house in preparation for her forthcoming move. In particular my late father's sheds which contained anything that might be of possibly use, I've already taken three car loads of steel to the tip so far!. On my return I intend to work on:-

• Completing the Jacobite cavalry, which only need basing
• Work on two units of WW2 Russian partisans, the Strelets winter and summer versions.
• Plus a German police battalion to oppose them
• Create a WW2 Russian Assault Engineer battalion.
• Maybe start a battalion of Romanian infantry if I can gather together all the necessary heavy weapons

Plans for 2016

Another year, another plan. Looking back at last year's and previous years performance, I always over-estimate how many topics I can cover. This is usually because I almost always add extra items in, so although the total items turned out is on plan the number of topics is not. Still I'm not letting that effect this year's plan.

For those interested in my "high" output, this is because I'm retired, my daughters are settled, so I have the time to devote to my hobby.

Onto my plan:

Painting/Modelling (all moderate sized projects)

• Terrain - only a few bits needed like new hedges are needed, but I'm tempted to produce some proper winter terrain to go with my figures
• Saracen cavalry and a few more archers (cf 2015)
• Crusader cavalry (cf 2015)
• HYW/WOTR English add some cavalry and a few more infantry (cf 2015)
• Five Ancient German Warbands (18 strong) (cf 2015)
• Some Assorted Ancient Light Troops to fill in various gaps in my armies (cf 2015)
• Russian Partisans (cf 2015)
• Upgrade my WW1 East African Germans with the new HaT figures (cf 2015) - really must do this!
• Some extra Russians and Romanians for my WW2 winter games
• More woodland Indians so I can fight more French & Indian War games
• Plus a number of bits to fill in gaps in existing armies

Gaming

• It looks like I won't need to produce anything for this years big game and my Lentini terrain will get another outing
• One of the days at Gauntlet will be a Korsun pocket game, so I may need some terrain for this.
• I'll also try and organise a big SYW game for one of the Deeside Defenders gaming weekends

Finally I'll continue the attempt to reduce the size of my stash!