My 1/48 collection

I decided to make all my german vehicles in 1/48. They are better in scale wrt to 28mm infantry. The big pity is that the ranges are quite limited and in practice the only army that is possible to make is
the german one that has a decent range. Here is a sa set of samples of y german army.






In total I have

100/17 battery

Here is the big gun of the italian army.... the 100/17. Actually my grandpa was an artillery officer an fought as a leutenant commanding a mixed 75/18 and 100/17 battery in the 1936 Abyssinian war, where he got a silver medal during a big fight against natives at the Uarieu Pass. Later he returned to Italy and was assigned to territorial duties. Fortunately he was not sent neither to north Africa nor to Russia (so i was able to see him...) and after September 8 joined the partisans in Piemonte and Veneto. He left the army after the war as Lt. Colonel.
I ideally think one of the men we painted is my granpa ("Nonno Leo").

Italian support teams

The support is made up by the solothurn anti-tank rifle and by an 81mm mortar.

Italian Command

The third item in the production line is the command team of the platoon. It includes two officers and an artillery observer (actually from the 100/17 gun). The infantryman of the command is yet to be painted.

Officers have the khaki sahariana jacket with the markings. Artillery officers have black pipings.

Bersaglieri II - second squad of the commission

Following the good results obtained with the first squad we produced the second squad. This one has helmets with the typical bersaglieri feather plumes. We kept the same color scheme and basing to keep homogeneity of the army.

More photos below.

The first commission of the Gargas & sons

Tired of fighting against iron-colored armies I was convinced by my friend Max "Pollo" (chicken) to paint his Italians... I started this project since my oldest son Filo decided to help me attracted by an easy flow of fresh money in his pockets. We setup a nice collaboration: I take care of preparing and priming the figures; he paints all the main colors; I wash them with army painter dark tone and then do the refining touches... We used a speed painting technique that is suited for wargame standard quality but I must say that the final result is quite good given that we can do 8-10 items in one evening each... and most importantly Pollo is very satisfied by the result !

Here is a sample of the work done: a squad of Bersaglieri with sun hat.

A nice completion of the bases is an autarchic set of tufts I made with my self constructed flocking dispenser... I'll devote a separate post to that...

Any comment and suggestion is more than welcome !

German Vehicles 1/48

A couple of transport from my collection of German 1/48 vehicles:
A Steyr Heavy Car and an Hanomag, both from tamyia.

Painted with airbrush.

It is easily seen that 1/48 is the right scale for heroic 28mm ! Unfortunately the vehicles available in this scale are not many and for many reasons is much better to use 1/56... sob !

Terrain put pourri !

Here is some terrain complements I prepared some time ago after Fede The Young gifted it to me... they are basically Italeri sets of road signals, walls and anti tank defences... they make a nice addition to our tables....

Winter war BTD reinforcements 6: The high command

Final addition to the army is a fat officer with Nagant gun. It comes from the pack with the other officer that I used for the cavalry squad.

I also bought the Gaz jeep. It is all lead and not fantastic but with the 50% discount it makes an optimal compromise between price and quality. I mounted it on a base since i feel it more fragile than the resin ones.

Winter war BTD reinforcements 5: The heavy mortar

Warlord stuffs are great but often out of stock !

BTD is then ready to fill the ranks with this awesome 120mm mortar including the transport (horrible to assemble but looking nice when finished...).

Unfortunately the crew is of only 3 people  but the seated guy is really great !

Winter war BTD reinforcements 4: The infantry

I could not resist buying a squad of infantry in summer uniform.

Great poses, excellent sculpting and low price are fantastic arguments.

The squad is made up by 10 men with a LMG.

Winter war BTD reinforcements 3: The scouts

I find the BTD scouts are really better with respect to the warlord ones.
I am not very happy about my painting job since the camo blotches do not came out from the rest of the uniform. I should have used a much lighter background since it darkens a lot with the army painter dipping that I use to shade and protect the figures.

Anyway scouts are fearsome with the ability to deploy together with snipers and observers...

Winter war BTD reinforcements 2: The cavalry

The next unit is a superb squad of dismounted cavalry. To make them I used the NKVD men that are really appropriate and painted with the colorful blue trousers. Perhaps they were not that used
in campaign but add a lot of effect to the army.


Again an excellent squad of veterans to field besides the inexperienced rabble... these will arrive to finish the work !

Winter war BTD reinforcements 1: The naval squad

Exploiting the big end of the year 50% sale from BTD I bought a lot of Russians to complement my winter war baker figures.

The first great addendum is a squad of naval figures with winter jackets...

I painted them with the black baltic fleet uniform and they will make a great regular though fighter unit.

The only pity is that they almost all come with SMGs and they miss the typical crossed baldrics.

Anyway I love them and in a couple of fighting they covered themselves with glory. thus justifying the many medals in the chest of the fantastic all-black officer !

Winter war Russian, first wave

In a few months i finished the Russians in the first wave of the kickstarter from backer company.
I am amazed by the variety of the poses and on the fina outcome of the army.

I tried various shade of grey, green and brown for the overcoats and this also increase the variety.

FIrst Winter War figures

These are the first winter war figures I painted.

SAGA !!!! my first vikings

We started playing SAGA and after few initial battles using lord of the rings miniatures I could not resist buying the gripping beast plastics. I prefer them quite a lot compared to the lead ones and I split two boxes with another fellow.

I have chosen vikings as initial force. I think they are an easy start and anyway the figures can be used for many other armies.

I like these figures very much... they are easy to paint and with lots of bits in the box it is possible to assemble lots of variations in the figures.

Here is my warlord that looks very viking and  powerful

The (exciting) Unboxing of Winter war pack #1

Before Xmas I received the long awaited pack containing my two platoons from the winter war kickstarter.

Here is the report of my Unboxing and in following posts I will report painting progress...

 The package is excellent (and heavy)

The box contains 4 Russian lmg squads with 10 men each !

and 4 Finnish squads (2 mg and 2 normal) with the platoon command 

Finally a new camera!

Last Xmas I gifted my wife a reflex camera (canon 600d) and finally had the chance of taking decent photos. I also suddenly bought a tripod and this enabled me to make a set of trial pictures of some old  warhammer lizardmen I wish to sell on ebay. Here are the results

 

Wild West terrain

here is the terrain board 90x90 cm that I prepared to play with our west miniatures. 

the polistirene glued together

the sand glued on the board 

the board painted with some Rocky Mountains pieces. 

the board ready for playing 

Tombstone

A little diversion from Bolt action... we started playing Wild West skirmish with an Italian rule set. we use the fantastic miniatures from black scorpion. I painted tonight a first set of my Texas rangers. 

These are all from Tombstone 3 set.