Company A, First Regiment, New Vistual Legion Deploys

Well, here's Company A of the First Regiment of the New Vistula Legion, deployed on Smade's World. You see them here with a squadron of the 24th Uhlans, along with the attack component of the regimental air company and a flight of ground support aerospace attack craft.

(Also in the pictures, one can see my first terrain module done up especially for Smade's World. It's based on a 60cm x 30cm pre-framed painter's canvas, with expansion-foam hills and scratch-built buildings. These terrain modules will be the subject of a future post when I get a couple more of them made.)

These troops are 3mm modern and sci-fi figures from a variety of manufacturers, based for playing Future War Commander at platoon scale. FWC players will wonder why each platoon has two stands instead of the one which is the norm for platooon scale. This is due to the fact that the NVLs platoons are heavily over-manned by Human Sphere standards. Most infantry squads have 6-8 ground soldiers, for example, while the NVL's have 12. Likewise, NVL's vehicular platoons contain 5 vehicles instead of the normal 3, while its artillery batteries have 6 btubes instead of 4.

These large units allow the NVL to deploy a combat-capable force off-world for extended periods of time without replacements.

Here's the company, deployed to defend a ridge. The Wolverine II wheeled APCs are stationed behind the ridge, able to offer smart missile support via the target designators mounted in the company's recon drones (seen atop the ridge, left of center).

Alongside the APCs are the 6 tubes of the company's mortar battery. All the troops in this photo come from Oddzial Osmy via Pico Armor in the U.S. The foot soldiers are modern Soviet infantry and the APCs are Polish Rosomak APCs. I added a smart missile launcher to the Rosomak's turret with a bit of PVC tubing I had lying about. The drone, of course, is hand made.

Here's a close-up view of the center of the company's position. Each stand represents about 25 men in 3mm scale and two stands make up a platoon. This shot also shows you the recon drone, with the Wolverine IIs far in the background.

A close-up of the Wolverine II, drone and infantry. As I mentioned above, the APC has been customized by the addition of a smart missile launcher, seen here to the left of its turret.

Here is half the Regiment's air company (the other half is made up of heavy transport helicopters). Yes, I see the little fuzzies stuck to the bottom of those rotor disks. A couple of years ago, O8 moved to  "stick-on" rotors and the residual glue attracts dust. I'm going to need to clean them with a cue-tip. Would alchohol work, though? I don't want to use acetone for fear of desolving the rotors themselves.

The NVL is organized as a light, star-mobile force and thus has no organic heavy armor resources. AFVs are limited to the Wolverine IIs and the armored cars of the Light Attack company (not pictured here - one vehicle still needs to be painted up). Each regiment does have a heavy power armor platoon attached to its headquarters company, however. This can be seen in the picture above.

These figures are 6mm Scotia Power Armor troopers, regonfigured here to be 5 meter tall infantry support walkers.

When circumstances permit, the NVL deploys with units cross-attached from regular military formations. Here we see a squadron of the 24th Uhlans Mecha Regiment holding the infantry company's flank. It is made up of three line troops, a heavy support troop and a headquarters troop (farthest back, on a round base).

The figures here are from Dream Pod 9's "Fleet Scale" line and are Terran Gears (which, unfortunately, don't seem to be available anymore). This figure has a problem in that the barrel of its rifle (the silver bit on the left side of the figure here) is too thin and often snaps off. I "fixed" that by making the support and command mecha carry "carbines". The support mech has a bit attached to its shoulder from a Games Workshop Tau pack. If I ever do the entire 24th Regiment, this unit will probably be remounted as the regimental commander, as I only have the one bit. I'll have to come up with a different solution for the support troops. The command mecha is kitbashed by having an EW dome (a small bead, actually) glued to its right shoulder.

Finally, here's a flight from the attached 8th Tactical Aviation squadron, making a recon run ahead of the task force's position. These are Slayer micro-fighters from Iron Wind Metals. They scale perfectly to 1/600.


So that's it so far. I have most of the Light Attack company and the other two Light Mechanized Infantry companies painted, as well as the supporting units, but I need to kit-bash more drones and a few more mortar vehicles. Hopefully I'll have all of this up soon!

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