Finland has one of the more fascinating national stories to come out of World War II. Talk about being stuck between a rock and a hard place - Stalin on one side, Hitler on the other. There is no good choice there. Yet, somehow they managed to pull it off. Call it sisu, I guess.
From a gaming perspective, the Winter War has great potential. Small, well-trained and motivated units on one side, bigger, poorly equipped and prepared troops on the other. And darn few (expensive) vehicles and aircraft. One of these days I'll put together some games using Skirmish Campaigns' excellent scenario book and Arc of Fire. I played a few solo at one time, but have never put together a "real" game, despite having painted enough troops for both sides. I haven't been able to justify any additional troops or vehicles until I get an opponent. Skirmish WW2 hasn't been a priority, but if anyone's willing, I'll get back at it.
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| Hard to see from this angle, but that's a suomi machine gun at left. |
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| Molotov cocktail! |
So since I don't have any new pictures of what I've been working on, today let's dig into the vault and look at some Finns I painted some time ago. All figures are Battle Honors 25/28 mm, which I actually like rather well, though you don't seem to see them that often. Painted primarily with Vallejo, along with some Testors acrylics. Based on washers. White is tough to pull off; these are simply white washed with light grey. Good enough.
These look great! My father moved to Finland about 10 years ago and I used that as an excuse to learn all about the Winter War. Fascinating conflict..."plucky Finns" indeed!
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