Holiday notification

Please note that we will be on holiday from today until August 15th. Unfortunately no messages and orders will be answered resp. processed during this time.

Thank you for your understanding! See you soon!

Painted Russian officer

I've received the following photo from the very talented Jan Groß better know as Lt. Hazel on the Lead Adventure Forum (among others):

A gorgeous piece of miniature painting!

If you haven't already done so, please visit Jan's Blog to see more of his exceptional work:
http://www.theleutnantsdiary.blogspot.de/

Sneak peek: Putilov M1902 artillery piece

Ian Crouch (Crouchie), of Chieftain Models and BEF Miniatures fame, has very kindly offered to built the artillery pieces for Tsuba Miniatures. These will be the Type 31 Arisaka field gun for the Japanese and the M1902 Putilov for the Russians.

Here's a sneak peek of the Putilov:

 

A wonderfull job as you'll surely agree. If everything goes according to plan, the artillery pieces will be released later this year along with their respective crews.

Russian Officers and NCOs

Here they are (I received the castings this week from Griffin Moulds):

 

 RJ-R01 Russian Officers & NCOs (4)

 They are equiped and posed to fit right in with the available Russian troopers:

 

 Together with RJ-R02 Russian Troopers advancing I.

 Together with RJ-R03 Russian Troopers firing I.

 These are now available. ;-)

Painted Russians

You may have seen them in a forum already and here they are (also from the back), the first two Russian sets painted by Simon Bradley:

RJ-R02 Russian Troopers advancing I (4)

  

 RJ-R03 Russian Troopers firing I (4)

These are painted as 34th Infantry Regiment "Sevskiy" (the advancing miniatures) and as 36th Infantery Regiment "Orlovskiy" (the firing ones), both part of the 9th Infantery Division taking part in the battle of Liaoyang (August 24th to September 3rd, 1904), among others.

Sadly, the painted regimental number on the shoulder pieces are very hard to see on the photos.

The Russian infantry division consisted of four infantry regiments organised in two brigades and used a system of coloured cap bands and shoulder pieces to determine seniority within the division and belonging to brigade.

Seniority of the regiment within the division indicated by the colour of the cap band:

1^st red

2^nd blue

3^rd white

4^th dark green

Shoulder straps indicated the brigade within the division:

1^st Brigade: scarlet

2^nd Brigade: dark blue

In case of the 9th Infantry Division this meant:

33^rd Regiment "Eletskiy":     cap band: red,                 shoulder straps:  scarlet

34^th Regiment "Sevskiy":     cap band: blue,                shoulder straps:  scarlet

35^th Regiment "Brianskiy":   cap band: white,              shoulder straps:  dark blue

36^th Regiment "Orlovskiy":  cap band: dark green,      shoulder straps:  dark blue

Purely by chance I stumble across the following photo while looking for examples of the style of numerals used on the shoulder pieces ( it has been taken from a Russian book, according to the forum it was posted in):

It shows exactly the colour combinations for the 9th Division I had picked for Simon as painting reference! (Please note the gold on the shoulder pieces indicates that these are officers' pieces, afaik.)

The exact colours of the shirts and cap covers were, more or less, chosen by random. Original these were white but this proofed very dangerous in combat against the Japanese as they were very good shots. So the Russian soldiers were ordered to dye them khaki with whatever means they had at hand or the local shops or laundries could provide. Some books mention that General Kuropatkin even ordered those of his men, that had no possibility to dye their clothes to just stop washing them!

The so achieved colours ranged from a light yellowish khaki tone to a pretty dark green a US Army observer at the scene decribe as a colour very similar to the olive drab used by the US Army with a green hint.

It's official...

... well it basically is official since last November as that's when I registered Tsuba Miniatures as a Kleingewerbe (small business) with the local autorities. But no company is official as long as it hasn't got it's own logo! (At least to me. ;-))

The Tsuba Miniatures logo was done by a young artist named William Kirby, who is also known as Chamonkee. You may have come across his work in Irregular Magazine, that's what I did, especially his 'Tuk Tuk' story and drawings are awesome. You can see more of his work at his web journal or even get a printed copy of 'Tuk Tuk' at his web store.

But back to the logo. Here's the centrepiece, an ornated Tsuba (Japanese sword guard). It's a stylised version Will did after a crude sketch of yours truly not based on any specific historical piece.

Will also did two versions of a possible final logo using this Tsuba, one again based on a sketch of mine and the other one is purely his idea. After having seen them both I'm a little bit torn, which one to use, tbh.

Version 1:

 

 Version 1 (variant):

Version 2:

 

Miniature-wise, I got a message from Stewart Griffin, stating that the castings of the Russian Command set should be despatch early next week, if everything goes well. So I hope to receive them soon and be able to show you some photos here.

Both HMGs should also be done by now (the guns themselve) and Paul has already scheduled the sculpting of the crews for mid/late July.

Russian Comparison photos

Here's a comparison photo of Tsuba Miniatures Russians (and also some Japanese) with a Musketeer Miniatures WWI Scot to show how they scale up with Paul's other work. (No Musketeer Miniatures WWI Russians, I'm afraid, still waiting for a delivery of those.)

Even more interesting, I assume, for most people are the comparions with Marc Copplestone's 'Back of Beyond'-Russians. (The Copplestone Castings' Russians are from the 'BU41 Russian Partisans' set, if I'm not mistaken.)