"1/144th scale Ukrainian Infantry stands" Topic

Hi Guys,

It's been a long time since I worked on this Donbas Conflict collection, but in the last week I've completed a Ukrainian infantry company, by green-washing the Pegasus Hobbies figure sets bought for the project (Modern American Desert infantry).

The plan is to get this onto the tabletop within a few months or less.

Here's a couple teaser pics of some rifle squad stands and their RPG sections advancing during the ATO.

The Pegasus figures have a LAW per pack, and I'm using these figs for the RPGs.

Looking good, Dave. When do we see them in action?

V/R,
Jack

Jack, I'm thinking at least a month away, as I'm adapting Tom Jensen's Ukraine 2022 ruleset to the task -

YouTube link

link

Nice!

Love your overgrown tree bases and those BTRs too. Superb work on both!

Who makes the vehicles?

Thanks Thresher!

The BTR-70s were resin model kits by 144Tank, that I bought from a shop on ebay. 144Tank has a Facebook page, and it has a link there to Amazon Japan for ordering some of their current offerings –

facebook.com/144tank

Could you not use a thinner base for the figures The figures look great individually but stood on a 2 to 3 ft plinth ruins the effect. I use bases of about 0.6mm (about 24 thou) still big, 86mm in the real world (about 3 1/2 inch) but does not make the troops look too tall compared to the vehicles. Glad to see you don't base the vehicles.

Hi UshCha,

Well, I think that's about as thin as practical for public playing (but see the 'engineering reason' below).

Now the bases are only around 2.5mm thick, which gives something of an edge for the average Joe to grab without handling the figures.

Funny, but a couple weeks back one of the buds mentioned the beveled edges on FOW stands, which he finds impossible to move around without grabbing the figures.

Hey, but your observation may be spot-on too, because to mount these base-less Pegasus minis, there needs to be enough depth to a stand, to create my "putty wells" for setting the figures into (they don't have normal raised bases, but just a single small peg-leg per) -

Yep if you are playing to the public, not having a proper game than you have to make compromises. If we use standing figures (typically support weapons) we pick them up by the figures. No point having scale figures if they end up massively out of scale on massive bases,and making the battle field look well below par. To be honest plastic figures are far more robust than the old metal stuff so can stand being picked up (not buy Joe Public of course). My perfect solution is very thin clear bases, being thin they for reasons I don't really understand, do not show up anything like as a thick clear base, but the effort is more than I am prepared to make for what is in effect just an artistic playing piece.

What's a proper game?

What's a proper scale of figures for any such game?

Btw, thin bases don't work for all scales of figures, it's just a given something that has to do with basic ergonomics.

I use clear bases with other collections (lots of game pics of those on the forum you check out). That plastic works ok with the smaller scales, where a small unit footprint can allow for a minimal-size base required.

A suggestion – allow your clear bases to see that natural, healthy light of day sometime, that might reflect well on you, or maybe they're just reflect.

I'd like to see some pictures of your proper games too.

Last pic for the thread, some of those Little Green Men.

These are Spetznatz teams, and since they're plastic, are some real disposable heroes (maybe I'll get a game out them).

Infantry builds completed.

to me a proper game is between two folk who have practiced with thew rules so they know them almost be heart or at least the critical bits. They have their own army's and can concentrate exclusively on the tactica and their battle plam.
Few if any drop-ins meet that criteria army dont even own an appropriate army in my experience.

You don't see begginners in a major tennis torniment so why would a you expect a good game between a tennis pro and a begiiner, no contest is not stretching the abilities of anybody. So why would you expect a decent game doing similar with wargames. I teach begginers but it's a diffrent experience and is training not a propper game. This bases make the troops when next to the vehicle "in scale" which to me is as imprtant as anyting. No amount of painting to me works if the troops are wildly out of sacle but thats just my hangup.

Your 'proper' gaming just sounds like a self-fulfilling prophecy, totally protected against change or challenge.

Too bad, because one of the challenges of this hobby is trying new periods, then exploring new scenarios with different weaponry and tactics, and sometimes even meeting new people, or experiencing new rulesets.

Sometimes you're not going to be the expert – and you must learn and adapt with what you think you know, and test that against what actually works in a new change situation.

You're probably not alone, but getting very close to losing out on much of what this hobby continues to offer.

If you're in the UK, I'd suggest you reach out to a club. They might seem like beginners to you, but then you'll be a beginner to them.

Lastly, I'm excited to launch this Donbas War project very soon. It's been a challenge to bring together and follow through on, while learning about the conflict, its weaponry, and its warring factions, and finally to be able to offer something new to the area gamers. Certainly old school persistence just applied to a new game period to present.

I think the local guys ought to like it, and might even snag a few of those beginners along the way too.

FlyXwire,
belive it or not I am the chairman of my local club. ;-). It covers Wargames and RPG's, it did cover Board games but are are no borad game players, these things wax and wane.

Too many periods to me is like sports man trying to be good at dozens of diffrent sports, not possibel. My friend Paul used to Play football and trained 3 times a week and playerd often twice a week. If you want to play lots of periods it's your choice but I don't have 10 day weeks needed to study a lot of periods and not just role a few die and hope. Each to their own. We do train begginers but we can only do that in our period. Other members cover other periods. Do I feel I have lost out: no.

We each get out of a game what we want and the time we put into it. Chess players don't play lots of diffrent games but have lots of fun.

It sounds like you're progressing, and don't really know what a proper game means after all, maybe just something handy you picked up as a sports metaphor.

Anyway, this is a thread about little green men. :)))

FlyXwire, Yup mine are Russian Green and NATO green, With a few blotches of brown and Black. Same for the vehicles.

OP, I think you've done a nice job. I am a fan of thicker bases. Some people like them, some people don't. It is personal preference -- not right or wrong.

Absolutely 79th, and these bases here are actually rather thin to start with, almost as thin as typical board game counters. Like I said, with small scale figures, human fingers need to grasp something if the object is not to have gamer hands wiping them out. I figured that was just a known thing here on a wargames forum – now I know different, and a reason I added the 2nd 'handy pic' for scaling reference – these are small, they're not like toy soldiers.

The concern isn't about bases, never was, but some assertion that – if you are playing to the public, not having a proper game than you have to make compromises – huh?

That's a load of crock too deep to ever unpack (the OP).

It'll pass, like a load too. :)))

Thank you for the reply and info on the vehicles. I really appreciate it.

Beautiful stuff!

Thresher, I appreciate your positive attitude.

Hey, I've got a video link here of some current, mechanized training, or combat footage from Ukraine (I hope this YouTube link persists). It's loaded with tactical content I think, taken during a Ukrainian armored raid against an OPFOR trench position sited in those ubiquitous (now) tree lines seen between the crop fields in the Donbas (great use of smoke generation shown as the raiders withdraw).

YouTube link

Having enjoyed many youthful summers on a family farm in Kansas (trips "out West to the open spaces" as we called it), my dad would talk about his times on the farm as a young boy too – like stripping down a Ford Model T for example to make a hot-rod road runner to storm around the fields and farm lanes "back then". Anyway, I remember him talking about his initiative to get the farm fields terraced, and to have trees planted between the fields (for promoting moisture retention, and the tree lines to help prevent wind erosion). This was post-WWII, and he met with some local skepticism about spending such money for all this on what was just a marginal wheat farm "back then", but today it's yields have benefitted from all these land improvements.

Long story short – Ukraine also seems to have been transformed from open "wind" steppes, to prosperous farm lands. We know this to be the case of course, as least with the agricultural yields the country produces and the grain exports of recent years, but I look at these current warfare videos (and Google map aerials), and see these tree lines 'all over'. From my research of the Eastern Front during WWII, I don't recall seeing a countryside so interspersed with intervening tree lines.

Just working up ideas for this Donbas project, but I've been casting an eye to finding that 'typical' terrain to model.

I don't think we're in Kansas anymore (if you catch my drift).

Slava Ukrani

I've been expanding the Separatist OPFOR elements for this Donbas project, and now have a mechanized company (-) ready for the tabletop (two BMP-2 platoons). This will give me a good core IFV maneuver element, along with their carried infantry squads.

These can be reinforced with T-72s, and other models I've yet to complete, but what I have here will give enough for initial games (paint for the scenario). :)

'Cause it is clear that now it's only a game……'

YouTube link