Yesterday morning I woke early and finished the last bits of my Polish force for the Cold Wars LSNC-aganza. I had ordered some Pithead C2P artillery tractors. I also needed to paint and mount Ursus trucks.
Pithead doesn’t make the horse-drawn machine gun wagons, but I wanted them for my cavalry units. I found Russian ones from Pendraken at The War Store. Though the machine guns are wrong, in 10mm they are close enough. At this scale, any uniform differences are completely indiscernible. I don’t believe the Polish had machine guns with wheels on them as shown on these wagons, but again, they are close enough.
Mounting the wagons onto bases presented a bit of a challenge. With the horses, the wagons were too long for the standard 1.5″ deep LSNC bases. I’ve had this trouble with larger German tanks as well. I mounted the wagons on 2″ deep bases. Also, there was the question of what is the “front.” I decided that when the the muzzles represented the “front” of the unit. This means that when moving, it will look like the wagons are backing around the battlefield, but they’ll look correct when they are firing at the Germans.
Note that the axles were not quite long enough on many of the wagons, which is why they look a little “bowlegged” in these pictures. Again at 10mm they are okay.
To finish off the bases, I like to add some tiny gravel and also the “tufts.” These come in sheets of static grass glued in clumps to waxed paper. I get them from International Models (www.internationalmodels.net). Though they are in England, they arrive about a week after I order them. You pick the tuft off the waxed paper with tweezers. Then I use a dab of white glue and stick them down to the flocked base. After I spray dull cote over the entire base, they stick well. I think I may have lost one in the past three years.
The Poles are now fully equipped and ready for action!