Having really enjoyed Andy and I's Rommel games I thought I'd invest in a 10 mm Mid-War Russian army. The infantry and artillery are all from Minifigs while the vehicles are Pendraken.

A Soviet Rifle Division with supporting artillery and KV-1 tanks:

A small Tank Brigade with T-34's, T-26's and motorised infantry:

A larger Tank Brigade with added T-34's and a couple of SU-152:

A Motor Rifle Brigade supported by more KV-1's:

Finally, army level artillery support in the form of two Katyusha's and four 152 mm Howitzers:

The whole force comes to around 115 points in Rommel which is easily enough for all the scenario based games we play.

I think they will play differently to the Allies or Germans, it is quite hard to combine Russian infantry and armour in the rules due to their organisation and in the Mid-War period the armour have green crews which isn't great. It is also possible to downgrade the infantry to conscript or poor as well.

Where they are strong though is in artillery with a massive 10 elements of guns 6 of which are army level and can support anyone. This gives a huge 32 points of artillery support to throw into combats (the Allies and Germans would do well to have 10 available usually) though it will have to be used carefully as the Soviets can only use most of their artillery support in the first phase of their own move.

Given that I'm not bothered about the difference between the various models of T-34's it will be easy to change the army to Late War (replace the KV-1's with T34/85) or Early War (add a lot more T-26's).

Having finished the Americans in 10 mm and decided I should try being the Germans for a change I ordered an army from Pendraken and Minifigs.

German infantry from Minifigs, largely chosen as they work out a fair bit cheaper than the Pendraken ones:

Everything else was from Pendraken. Artillery support including the Nebelwerfer:

Motorised Infantry and Panzer Grenadiers:

Infantry support from some Stug IV's:

Panzer IV H for the majority of the tanks:

Finally some Panthers to add a cutting edge:

As with all my 10 mm WW2 stuff these didn't take long to paint at all. I've always found it hard trying to paint later war German camouflage schemes, people produce wonderful looking results with an airbrush but a) I don't have an airbrush and b) If I had I'm not sure it would work on 10 mm models.

As a result I went for a relatively simple striped pattern (following 15 minutes 'research' on Google images) which has come out okay and gives me another army to use against Andy and two armies if I want to play solo games or introduce someone else to Rommel.

Some more very old figures finally making it to the painting table in the form of another Galician Fusilier unit and a base of Grenadiers for the Austrians:

They have the apple green facings of the 'Czartoryski' IR#9 and are Minifigs. The Grenadiers will make up the numbers for an old unit which only had three bases painted.

I thought this was all my old Minifigs Austrian infantry painted up then found another two bags in a box so still more work to do!

It's been a while since I added to my 15mm Napoleonic collection to any extent so I thought I'd continue adding some allies to my French army.

This time I chose the Kingdom of Italy and bought the figures from Essex Miniatures (apart from the guns which are from Lancashire Games, the Essex ones being stupidly expensive).

Italian Chasseurs a Cheval:

A heavy artillery battery:

The 5th Infantry Regiment:

The 7th Infantry Regiment:

The final unit is the Italian Guard. These are very old Minifigs figures:

All I need to do now is find a couple of suitable generals.

I ordered some American paratroops from Minifig's ages ago hoping to use them in one of the campaign games against Andy.

Unfortunately they took around five weeks to arrive so I couldn't use them. I did use them as Canadians though in the recent 'Juno' re-fight:

I painted these quickly as I needed them for the refight so they are a little short on detail but still look okay I think.

Having played a couple of games with the 25mm Kushites when I had to order some 10mm WW2 infantry for the Juno game from Minifigs I added a few extra figures for the Kushites.

The army can have an internal Egyptian force which allows some impact heavy chariots but requires you to have single elements of Egyptian swordsmen and bowmen and the option of a single light horse archer. I thought I'd add these to give the army a bit more variety:

I tried to paint them in the same style as Bob's original figures and they do look similar though the bases are a bit different. They probably won't get much use though if I expand them to a Libyan Egyptian ally (which allows some decent foot) they might increase in numbers!

I own very few armies that I didn't paint myself. One such is a 25mm Kushite Egyptian army which I swapped for a Viking army back in the days when I was a regular at the Bun Shop club. The army was painted by Bob who sadly passed away a log time ago.

Bob was a fantastic painter and had a Maccabean Jewish army in 25mm which was one of the best looking armies I've ever seen with lots of individual conversions and so much character. The Kushite army was made up of Minifigs figures and I'd not used it in years.

After our last 25mm game Ted was keen to play again so I suggested the Biblical period so I could use the Kushites. Ted used the contemporary Middle Assyrian army.

When the army was first pained under 6th Edition WRG rules it was an interesting one in that the army list allowed you to upgrade all the troops in the army to 'Irregular A' religious fanatics who charged into combat at the drop of a hat (which was not necessarily great as many of them were bowmen and light infantry!).

Under ADLG however the fanatic option isn't there and they are a rather vanilla Biblical army mostly of archers with a few medium swordsmen. chariots and cavalry. Middle Assyrian has large numbers of elite impact swordsmen which are ideal against the Kushite foot and elite impact heavy chariots which are ideal against pretty much anything in the Kushite army so to have any chance of winning the Kushites would have to take advantage of their greater numbers.

The Assyrians elected to defend in the plains and most of the terrain fell on the Kushite left. Initial moves saw a strong Kushite cavalry force move forward on the left flank to attack the undefended Assyrian camp and the Kushite chariots, cavalry and light horse moving forward on the right. The Assyrians totally ignored their right flank relying on the terrain to protect them and advanced in the centre and on the right :

Kushite slingers move up to slow the Assyrian foot in the plantation:

The slingers are driven out of the plantation and the Assyrian heavy chariots split into two groups, one to support the infantry and one the light chariots:

Two Assyrian infantry rashly charge into the Kushite light chariots on the left. One infantry is destroyed and the other badly damaged:

On the left the Kushite cavalry are returning from looting the Assyrian camp and have managed to pick off a lone Assyrian mixed swordsmen and bowmen unit. In the centre however, things have gone unsurprisingly badly for the Kushite foot with one medium swordsman being killed at contact and the rest of the foot taken down two levels each:

On the right the Kushite archers have inflicted some hits on the Assyrian heavy chariots weakening their charge. The Kushite chariots and cavalry have contacted the Assyrian light chariots but done badly:

The Assyrian heavy chariots charge home destroying one base of Kushite archers. The other base of archers holds on though:

In the centre the Kushite foot has been wiped out:

On the right the Kushite cavalry and chariots finally make some inroads into the Assyrian light chariots while the Kushite archers hold on:

The Assyrians start to collapse on the right. With the loss of the camp the small Assyrian army is close to defeat. The Kushites are better off but their own camp is at risk and the Kushite infantry continues to be slaughtered:

In a flurry of charges and combats the Assyrians take the Kushite camp and finish off most of the remaining Kushite infantry. On the right the Assyrians lose more light chariots though:

A count of losses at this point shows that the Assyrian army has broken while the Kushites have lost 25 out of 26 break points! A hard-fought win for the Mighty Men of Kush!

It was great to get Bob's army out of the box and onto the table again. The game was an exciting and close one, for a while I thought I would win easily (as did Ted) but as I suspected the Assyrian foot and heavy chariots made short work of the Kushite foot who are pretty hopeless against them.

Having enjoyed the recent 10mm Late War game of Rommel Andy and I played I remembered that I had some 10mm WW2 Americans and Japanese I'd painted a long time ago for Peter Pig's PBI.

A short search uncovered a box file with some painted Japanese and Americans together with a few bags of unpainted US Infantry, all from Minifigs if I remember rightly.

Looking through what was usable for a Late War American force in Rommel there were enough infantry figures and four Shermans so with some additions it would make a viable army.

Having initially forgotten that the ones I had were from Minifigs I ordered the rest of the force from Pendraken, adding two more Shermans, 3 M18 Hellcats, 6 M3 Halftracks and some artillery.

One of the joys of WW2 at the smaller scales is that they don't take much effort to paint up so once the reinforcements arrived they were quickly painted and based on a 4cm frontage. The stars were transfers from Pendraken which seem a bit small to me while the serial numbers for the Shermans came from some transfers I got with my 28mm Bren Carrier.

First up are the M18 Hellcats:
 The Infantry with a couple of 105mm Howitzers as support:
 Armoured Infantry in M3 Half Tracks:
 The four old Shermans rebased with the two new ones:
 A Priest to provide artillery support to the Shermans:

All I need to do now is make some labels up for them. While the magnetic ones I used for the 3mm desert armies worked well I think I will just use paper ones and blu tack for these as, unlike the desert armies, I won't want to change them between Early War and Mid War.

I also picked up a gridded fields cloth so our next battle won't have to be played out on the desert mat unlike last time!