12 January 2017

AHPC VII 'Armour' Bonus Round: Soviet Spider Mecha

Presenting a pair of Spider Mechs from the Soviet 1st Guards Mecha Division, as seen on the Eastern front in late 1947 while operating with the 3rd Shock Army, 1st Belorussian Front.  

Russian doctrine is to field Light, Medium and Heavy Spider Mechs within a Mecha Division, deploying them in role oriented pairs to work in close cooperation for shock effect. This is a heavy "Hunting Pair”.  



The Hammerjaw class Medium Mech, while well able to take care of itself with it short barrelled 90mm, flushes big game for the larger and less mobile Nayk class Heavy Mech asks flanks the enemy while the bigger duel is underway.  With accompanying infantry support, this has been found to be highly effective in difficult environments such as urban/rubble, marsh and mountainous terrain not well suited to tracked and wheeled vehicles.
Hammerjaw Medium Mech


The Mecha pilots are dressed in distinctive uniforms with cooled padding, chest plate armour and communications equipment.  Shown dismounted is the famed Soviet Mecha Ace Konstantin Samokhin, Hero of the Soviet Union (limited edition figure)

Nayk Heavy Mech 



Characteristically, this Bonus round became quite an enjoyable distraction from my intended main push, but I’m very happy with the Result. All models by WestWind from their Secrets of the Third Reich range.  Putting these mocha beasties together was extremely challenging and they are probably the most frustrating things I’ve ever built, though it is nice to have them done after a few years of languishing in the garage.  Perhaps I need another Hammerjaw mech (which was my favourite) to complete the platoon though.  Maybe one transferred from the Naval Infantry bridge, all decked out in black and with Soviet Marines as Tank riders.  Thats would be cool...

I’ve swapped the crewmen around because, well I think they look better this way. All painting and weathering was by hand, including the turret markings which say “Crush the Facists!” (on the Nayk Heavy mecha) and “For the Motherland!” (on the Hammerjaw Medium).  If that’s not what they say…I don’t want to know :-) 

To Berlin Comrades!

This AHPC entry can be found here:

7 comments:

  1. Truly stunning Paul, what an awesome piece of kit.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Nice weathering. Love the rust effect! Fantastic. cheers

    ReplyDelete
  3. Cracking stuff! Westwind really makes some amazing Weird War minis (and other as well). I've been thinking about collecting some Weird War stuff to add to regular WW2 gaming and seeing stuff like this definitely doesn't help in trying to resist the urge

    ReplyDelete
  4. Incredible work Paul, particularly the weathering and those turret slogans look like transfers.

    I remember by instructors using photos of T34s with painted slogans to teach us about the animate accusative. For some reason that made it stick in my head much better.

    ReplyDelete
  5. These are really fantastic Paul!

    ReplyDelete
  6. Outstanding work POG! I can see you time away from the brush last year has re-invigorated you!

    ReplyDelete