With my typical interest in the less well-known, less played wars I decided this summer I would begin a new project, this time out of World War 2. Granted World War 2 is hardly less played - that, Napoleonics, and Civil War are probably among the most popular of the wars played. But I have no desire to do Normandy invasion or the huge Soviet-German clashes on the Eastern Front. Nope, I picked the short but hard fought Winter War of 1939-40 between gallant little Finland and the Soviet Union. My biggest inspiration was a book I had bought called "Frozen Hell" by William R. Trotter, 1991 copyright. He concentrates on the military aspects not the diplomacy, which is exactly the way I like it. I'd recommend the book to anyone with even a passing interest in this war, its available in paperback for about $15. There are a few websites out there too - one especially with some detailed accounts of a few of the battles. Just do a search on Google for 'winter war' or 'Russo-Finnish War'. Once I decided to do this bloody sideshow to the main war (ok so it was center stage for the unfortunate Finns!) I had to decide how to do it. Meaning in what scale? First of all 25mm-28mm are way too big and expensive for what I want, which are battles not skirmishes. I do not care for plastics so they were out, same with 20mm. That left the scale I own the most of in miniatures anyhow - 15mm. Then I took a look at 10mm especially the really nice vehicles that are out in that small scale. I decided to go with Minifigs 12mm WW2 range sold by Tom Dye out of MinifigsUSA in Colorado. The 10-12mm size difference is barely noticeable. Though I've never met Tom, I have exchanged emails with him and talked to him once on the phone, a real gentleman to do business with, full of enthusiasm and knowledgeable. I sent for a hefty hunk of lead, pewter, whatever and I got everything I wanted in good time too. No backorder crap. I'm using the Germans for Finns as the Finnish troops wore German looking fieldcaps and the distinct German helmet. The heavy machine guns aren't right but at this scale, I can live with it. Even the Afrika Corps infantry work well for Finns too as the Germans in field caps are perfect for what I'm looking for. I was worried they would be in shorts but they aren't, regular trousers. The Finns didn't really have any armor (actually they used some old British tanks in one small attack just once but it was a disaster) so no need to buy lots of that. I did purchase a couple of 37mm AT guns to use as the 37mm Bofors AT gun the Finns employed in small numbers. I also bought a couple of the shortbarreled 75mm Infantry guns used to support German infantry. They were able to be manhandled fairly easily. And that was that. For the Russians, I bought a lot more stuff, obviously as they will have to have the big numbers. The Minifig infantry are better suited for WW2 later as most have helmets and in the Winter War the Soviets used furhats or that pointy budovinka hat instead. But again I'm not that picky and I can't expect Minifigs to design specifically for that one front. Then I got a bunch of tanks - mostly T-26s with one big KV-2 (just because I love that huge tank) and an armored car or two. Finally, plenty of trucks too as the Soviets had lots of those to get stuck in easy to destroy road columns. I can't say enough about how good the vehicles look and they are easy to put together too. A pleasure to paint also. I like the final look of the infantry too but I do wish there wasn't so much flash on them. It takes a bunch of cleaning up and at this picky scale its fiddly work. I know that small scales like this don't have to have that much flash either because I own some Pendraken 10mm World War 1 figs and they had virtually NO flash at all, except just a tiny bit under the stands. But again, 12mm is cheap and it looks darn good once painted. Plus the smaller scale makes the battles look more realistic as regards ranges. I have never liked some of those convention games where 25mm guys are facing each other at 16" and still out of range! It just looks wrong! Don't even get me started on those huge model tanks staring at each other in long rows almost barrel to barrel. Goofy looking to my prejudiced way of seeing it. Ok, rant over - now back to the project. I then started working on what I would fight with my toys on - the terrain. I bought some nice white felt as the surface to lay over my table. I know that premade terrain sections look so cool but for me and our local group, felt suffices. We got tan for desert and green for most other things. Now I got snow, one huge white carpet of it! One of our guys is great at making terrain so he made me a couple of hills, snow covered of course with pine trees nestled along the slopes, once more snow covered. They look great! I also purchased two bags of evergreens with snow on them at a model railroader's shop. Roads will be dirt colored strips of felt with some snow sprinkled over them - railroad modeler's snow, which comes in big jars. There were no real city battles so I don't need to worry about lots of small buildings, I did buy some 10mm houses to use as farms etc to dot the rather bleak and primitive Finnish countryside. But where the major battles were it was mostly forest and tundra. Oh, and did I mention snow? After painting the toys I mounted them on rectangles of hard tagboard and painted these bases white. Because these buggers are so small and our groups eyesight ain't getting any better with age - I decided to label the stands with abbreviations such as INF for the grunts, LMG, HMG for the machineguns, etc. That way we all should be able to easier tell what the heck we are pushing around on the table during the games. I numbered all the stands too so, for example, I can have stands 01 to 09 the first company or battalion, 10 to 20 for the second, etc, whatever I need for the game. I'm like many wargamers, never really satisfied with any commercial rules sets - so I am making up my own WinterWar specific set of fast play rules. Even then, I'm sure we will tinker around with those after each game, in that never ending search for the Holy Grail of wargaming, the PERFECT rules set. See some of Sam Mustafa's articles the past year or so in this magazine. (I love Sam's writing, I always enjoy reading his stuff!) To me, what I'm mostly looking forward to in this project is scenario creation - I've got loads of ideas to do battles from that war. The Finns will have the quality (but they were not supermen either) and the major advantages of defending homeground. The Russians will have huge numbers but major problems in everything else from bad leadership, low quality, uneven morale, and having to attack in bad weather over bad terrain. Armor was not much of a war winner for them even as it was often road bound or poorly used. In the end, massed Russian artillery fire and a brutal use of human wave assaults finally shifted the momentum of the war over to them, but at huge cost. As one Soviet general remarked, "We gained about enough territory to bury our dead in." I will try and write up some battle reports once we begin fighting on the tabletop if it turns out we have some interesting battles. I know some wargames magazine readers don't like battle reports but I always enjoy reading about other folks miniatures encounters. In the meantime if any of this has peaked your interest in the Winter War, you could do much worse than a quick trip to your local library and see if you can find a few books on the war to read about more. To me it is both fascinating and sad to read about the hardships men of BOTH sides had to endure in that vicious war. Back to MWAN # 127 Table of Contents Back to MWAN List of Issues Back to MagWeb Magazine List © Copyright 2004 Hal Thinglum This article appears in MagWeb.com (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other articles from military history and related magazines are available at http://www.magweb.com