New Russo-Japanese range previews!

[Scott Blair]

Morning Forum!

First off-loved the snowball quip!

I am the mad ( or sad)  man who commissioned this range. It reflects years of interest in this war which some historians are now calling World War Zero. Lots of hints in the conflict of what was to come and it of course laid the way for Pearl Harbour in more ways than one.

It has great scope as a period and when combined with some of the lovely ship models out there from 1/600 Old Glory to 1/6000 Hallmark, and perhaps some of the boardgames out there, you have the makings of great combined arms miniatures campaigns.  I favour 1/2400 War Times Journal models. For land battles I have used Bloody Big Battles inspired by the Two Marshals Blog. Bloody Picnic works and am also looking at WW1 Spearhead.

I am really  excited and really grateful to Techno for sculpting and to Leon for agreeing to this one. 

Ok, some more thoughts.

Can the figures be used for other periods? Definite use for WW1, not least the Russians-and also for RCW. Effectively the same kit and even some of the heavy weapons have later use. For example the M1900 field gun was a reserve weapon in WW1.

Japanese and Russians could see service in the Boxer Rebellion ( and I think that period is on a to do list for Leon somewhere). Japanese could fight Chinese in 1894/95. Russians in what if encounters with Boer War British on the NWF.

And can you use WW1 and other codes to supplement? Yes. The 76.2mm field gun from the Russian WW1 range was the gun which became the main field gun weapon in the RJW and saw a lot of service with the Russians and also, when captured, by the Japanese. So that code can be used with the new range. In addition most of the WW1 and RCW codes are of use.  Not least cavalry and cossacks.

As for extras-well-I am a bit of a sad completist.

Techno is now doing-

1. Russian Frontier Guard gunners and mounted.

2. Russian improvised trench mortar and crew.

3. Japanese improvised trench mortar and crew.

4. Japanese assault engineers ( for those Port Arthur moments).

5. Dismounted cossack Madsen LMG and crew (a Danish weapon and the first LMG to see action ever-and still in use by the Brazilian police on drug cartel raids).

6. Japanese with captured Madsen LMG.

7. Mounted and dismounted Chunchu irregulars.

I am also really stunned at the lovely comments from the Forum for a topic that is so off beat but has such great potential. As ever thanks!

No doubt I will ramble on more in due course.....

Scott 






 

[Lord Kermit of Birkenhead]

Hi Scott. Looks like you got a good one, enjoy em. like I said earlier not my period.

[DecemDave]

I am the mad ( or sad)  man who commissioned this range.

Well thank you for adding this to our ever-growing options   

[Scott Blair]

 Lord Kermit, December Dave! Much appreciated there all round.

 I am also getting some more AWI sculpts done by Clibanarium so maybe temptation lies there....

Cheers
Scott

[paulr]

Many thanks Scott

[fred.]

Hi Scott - thanks for funding the sculpting of this range 

Not sure Russo-Japanese war is for me, but WWI Russians might be a possibility - especially as a mate said he already has Austrians (and Germans).

[Scott Blair]

Cheers Fred, my pleasure.
I have WW1 Turks and can see me doing a Caucasus set up with the Russians. With the RJW and WW1 ranges you can do so much.
Scott

[fred.]

Turks, hmm

We have talked about doing that theatre as well. Frankly we've probably talked about doing most of them!

But hadn't thought of Turks vs Russians

[Scott Blair]

Hi Fred,

Turks would be an interesting opponent for the Russians in Black Sea and Caucasus theatres. You could even involve the British. Dunsterforce is of course post 1917 but no reason why you could not do hypothetical British involvement pre-Revolution.
I am looking to paint up my own Pendraken Turks to oppose the Russians.
As I said, the new RJW releases have great potential.

Scott

[fred.]

Lots of options then! Which doesn't help

Probably need to finish my 4 in-progress WWI armies first. Although 3 of them are very much at the playable stage, and the 4th the early-war British has been on the table too. 

[streetgang]

Scott, thanks for funding the new range. I anticipate I will be one of the beneficiaries of you spearheading this.

This is an absolute stunning range. Many years ago (maybe 20?), I purchased quite a few of the older range and painted up a portion of them. The limits of the range  helped influence my abandonment of the project.

I can already see the sweeping miniature battlefields with these miniatures in my imagination.

[Scott Blair]

Hi Street Gang!

My pleasure, same story here, started with the old RJW range and supplemented with some WW1 and other proxies but decided to go large. I think you will really enjoy this lot when they emerge. Truly comprehensive range and well researched. I think you will find all of the major troop and gun types here as well as some interesting extras.

Out of interest do you plan on using a particular set of rules? I have used Bloody Big Battles with success.

Scott

[mmcv]

Scott, many thanks for this. Definitely one high on my to-do list.

I've never been quite able to settle though on whether it would be better suited to skirmish level actions or bigger battles, there's scope for both! Would be interesting to do a linked series of the smaller battles through Liaodong, or a huge Mukden game.

Rule wise, for really low level skirmish stuff the lardies rules Through the Mud and Blood (and their Chain of Command variant of it) could work quite well. For the larger battles BBB as you say has some interesting scenarios, and Great War Spearhead II could potentially work too.

Definitely one for the future 

[mollinary]

The priest in this range looks useable in any Russian army from the 16th century through to the First World War! Great figure for a command group - just needs another carrying an icon!

[tony of TTT]

Now that we know that Vapnartak is definitely on do you think the new RJW range will be available by then or not ?

No, I'm not starting a new period, just wanting a few packs to add to my RCW units.

While I'm at that subject, can anyone suggest figures to represent the tribal troops that both sides stirred up over in the East ? Usbeks would be one lot but not sure about others until I get back to my references.

[Leon]

Now that we know that Vapnartak is definitely on do you think the new RJW range will be available by then or not ?

I'd hope so, once we get past Battleground next week I can focus on getting the production moulds sorted out.  There's about 40 moulds needed I think so it's a few weeks worth of moulding.

[tony of TTT]

Hi Leon

Sounds brilliant. I'm not exactly short of stuff to paint but I'm still slowly working my way through stuff I bought when we were last in York. For me, that's almost up to date.

Tony

[GrumpyOldMan]

Hello ToTTT

While I'm at that subject, can anyone suggest figures to represent the tribal troops that both sides stirred up over in the East ? Usbeks would be one lot but not sure about others until I get back to my references.

The only ones I can think of for the Uzbeks would be the WW1 Polish with czapka which sort of looks like the Uzbek cap .



Otherwise you could go with the fur hatted dismounted cossacks as generic tribals.  Or use some of the Afghan figures from the Colonial range










Cheers

GrumpyOldMan

[tony of TTT]

Thanks for that GOM. I'm using some of the Afghan troops in woolly hats already and have some of these sets for another project. They may be a bit archaic though - need to dig out some pictorial references again.

Tony of TTT

[FierceKitty]

That priest will do nicely in my Byzantine baggage.