The Long March Begins...

Patience, Courageous Comrades!  The rumble of the tracks can be heard as our Brave Armoured Forces begin their trek from the factories in the Urals, fresh from the labours of the Diligent Soviet Worker!

This has been a very productive week- finished models!  The monotony of gluing on the road wheels is paying off, models are  either done or nearing completion, and the First Battalion of the 220th Independent Tank Brigade is just one command tank away from being combat-ready.  All are itching to teach the Fascists a lesson they won't forget.

Three of the tanks are completely finished.  Here's #12.  I had fun removing mud guards, adding such things as tarps, extra spare tracks, and other assorted doohickeys typical of WW2 tanks and beloved of modellers.

 

 

And here is the whole brigade so far.

The two grey beasties in the background are commanders tanks, one for the battalion and the other is the brigade commanders tank.  I spray them with a  rough primer that provides a good "key" for the paint, resulting in a finish that gives the turrets that typical rough-cast look.

Behind them can be seen the second battalion in progress- hulls and turrets nearing completion, blemishes and gaps filled with putty and sanded off, and three of them awaiting the addition of road wheels and external fuel tanks.  The third battalion will join later, after I work on some infantry.  I also want to get working on a Recce motorcycle battalion as well. (I'll most likely be needing a break from T-34's for a while!)

Note the vehicle numbers. I most likely will be playing two rule sets, both Flames of War and Blitzkrieg Commander (there seems to be a lot of interest at our club for the latter).  FoW has a one model = one vehicle ratio, while for BKC I want to game at a higher level of representation- one model or stand equals a platoon.  

Therefore after some pondering I came up with the following numbering systems. (You can click on each picture to enlarge).

This is the organization for games of BKC, and represents all the tanks of the brigade.  

For FoW,  the brigade commander's tank becomes a company commanders, I don't use the battalion command tanks, and voila, I have a tank company;

The only hitch is that I need to get a few more KV-2 kits from Fujimi.  I don't really need the vehicles themselves, but the kit comes with a great decal sheet with the numbers I need to complete the tank numbering. I did a bit of number crunching, and buying the kits still works out as being cheaper than ordering the decals I need from a specialist supplier.

I can always mount the big KV-2 turrets with their 152mm howitzers on fortifications or river monitors, so nothing will be wasted.