Spearhead 6mm late war Soviet Tank Brigades

Just to prove that I am still alive having been through a complete house re-carpeting and now working from home for the next few weeks I am posting a few pictures of two Soviet late war tank brigades along with a couple of supporting IS-2 heavy tank regiments that I have recently completed.

The vehicles are all from a large GHQ 6mm lot that I picked up at the Call to Arms 2010 bring and buy for not a lot of money compared to their original value. The Infantry are all H&R Soviets from various different packs.

The T-34/85 brigade along with one of the IS-2 regiments had their baptism of fire at the recent Call to Arms 2021 convention where I ran a "Counterattack at Kustrin" game. Unfortunately the Russians suffered a slight reversal of fortune in that game, true to form like so many other newly finished wargaming armies. You can follow the game on a separate entry once I finish writing it up.

I have not been entirely faithful to the Spearhead listings for the 1944/45 Tank Corps, having also consulted various other sources like Frank Chadwick's well researched "Armies of the Second World War" that he wrote for Command Decision and Dr Leo Niehorster's comprehensive WW2 organisation website at http://niehorster.org/000_admin/000oob.htm.

My investigations revaled that each heavy tank regiment also had a company of SMG armed Tankivoy Desantniki or Tank riders, so I have added a company to each regiment accordingly. There is also mention of AT rifle armed platoons/companies but given the ineffectiveness of these weapons by 1944 the men were instead employed as additional crew members in at least T-34/85 equipped units so I have not depicted them. I did deploy separate AT Rifle stands in the 1943 Kursk game that I ran at Call to Arms in 2020 as there were still many eariler German Pz II and III tanks that could be potentially affected by them.

Anyway....onto the pictures, sorry if the lighting is not 100% as I only use a cellphone camera.

First up the T-34/85 Brigade.....three battalions of tanks on the left, the Brigade HQ units in the middle and a motorised rifle battalion on the right. 

18 stands of T-34/85's make up the main striking power of the Tank Brigade. Though the Spearhead rules call for tanks to be mounted on 30mm x 30mm bases the GHQ models are big 1/285th scale ones. so I choose to use 30mm x 60mm MDF bases from Pendraken Minatures Ltd, who do very well priced bulk packs.

The other Tank Brigade's three Tank Battalions are equipped with older T-34/76's, but otherwise its identical to the T-34/85 Brigade....

18 stands of T-34/76's make up the main striking power of the second Tank Brigade.

The Motorised Rifle Battalion consists of HQ stand, BA-32 armoured car recce, 76mm/41 Field Gun, 82mm Mortar and 2 AAMG stands (which can be replaced with a US supplied Lease-Lend M-16 Quad .50 SPAA half track stand), two rifle companies and a single company of SMG armed Tankivoy Desantniki or Tank riders.

Lastly I have made up two heavy tank regiments equipped with 4 IS-2 stands, a company of SMG armed Tankivoy Desantniki and a engineer platoon (some may be equipped with US M-3 halftracks for transport).

I still have a few smaller Corps Level support units (SU -100's, ISU-152's, etc) plus a whole heep of German opponents to finish. I have since decided to obtain some static grass tufts and other small scenic items to break up the otherwise rather plain  larger 30mm x 60mm bases. 

Overall though I am pretty happy with how these have turned out.