Back of Beyond - Captured tank for the Bolos

  Another new piece to bolster my Bolsheviks, armour in the form of a British Mk V tank . The Brits shipped around 70 as part of their intervention effort to bolster the failing Imperial Russian forces They were used around Archangel and in the Southern front area.  Some were destroyed to stop them falling into enemy hands but some were captured and repurposed. The Brits used them with the Whites in 1919 attacking Tsaritsyn - eg Stalingrad , now Volgograd . Well my Bolos have acquired one .

Some were used in Tallin in 1941 against the Germans and were shipped back to Berlin as prizes , and after 45 ended up back in museums in the Soviet Union .

This is a big old beast . 2 guns 4 MGs . Very useful . Unrealiable as hell   Even more so in the back of beyond . 

This only arrived in the post on Tuesday , so it’s been a quick turn around 

This is a 3d print piece from a eBay offer . I had the rails on the top to stick on and that was it. It was a decent print not too much clean up . A dark olive green Tamiya  rattle can and lighter green olive paint pen for the paint job , Black grey for the track's , then an oil wash and dry brush of beige brown . I added some tubing to carry a flag that can be removed or swapped out   I found some large stars in the decals stash and added these then painted the hammer and plough emblem in the middle . 

I will look out for a suitable figure to use as a commander as one stood out of the  hatch waving a flag would look cool . 

What better than to use the imperials weapons against them . “Workers of the world unite!”

Back of Beyond - Tachankas

 This week sees some more mobile firepower in the form of Tachankas . On the WW1 eastern front , RCW and in the Back of Beyond the roads are often poor quality or virtually non existent. Likewise internal combustion vehicles are likely to have poor maintenance a lack of spares or just fuel . Just the thing to get around these issues of course is a horse drawn carriage - and let’s stick a Maxim on it . High speed manoeuvrability and Dakka Dakka . What’s not to like.

28mm options seem fairly limited or overly expensive. Warbases have filled a nice little niche , offering the Tachanka as an MDF kit for £5  , then crew and horse as seperate items . I am not of fan of the Warbases horses so I have used Pendraken 28mm draft horses , which are nicely proportioned and have correct horse furniture . (link -draught-horses-red-h02) The warbases crew figures are little stumpy , but they work well enough on the carriages.

The MDF kit for the  carriage is neatly designed and goes together well enough in a short time . For the crew I had to take a file and knife to them to scrape off the shoulder boards as my Bolos don’t have those

 

A bit of extra work was done to make some reins from garden twisty wire about 300mm folded in half this is fed  through a hole drilled  through the drivers hand and then the loose end attached with solder to the bridle at each side the the middle horse .The traces from the horse to the carriage are made from thin black card . I had an interesting delve into how the horse furniture and attachment were generally done , and most seemed to have leather rather than rope or chain that I could see so the black card looks to have done a decent job replicating it . 

My storage trays box for these is now completely full . So I guess that’s it for now . I do have a larger boat to complete , but not sure that will be this side of challenge end 

My Bolos army has 3 large battles coming up in our ongoing campaign, so wish em luck.