Heavy Weapons in the Karabakh

Well I guess I've been busy with too many projects (including some home improvement ones) as it has been a while since my last post. I've still been painting away though! One additional thing that slowed me down and I'll have to remember this for next year is the humidity. It has been a really humid summer here and the protective clear coats I put on this batch of miniatures took a very long time to dry. Furthermore when I glued the sand mix on the base of these guys the sand stuck on the figures like never before. It took me hours to carefully get the sand off with a hobby knife and pin. Ugh. All of these miniatures are meant to represent Armenians or Azerbaijani's using heavy weapons in a mix of seasons (with two exceptions). The figures with notes ...

RH Models MULT43; MULT20HMG with RB Models 72P10; RUSAGSH

(Left to Right) The first guy is straight out of the bag. The next guy began as loader for a DshK 12.7mm. I carved his ammo box and hands off and replaced them with a RB Models 12.8cm PaK 40 L/61 shell and used green stuff to sculpt new hands. I'll use him for as a Chechen D30 gunner. The last figure is also meant to be a Chechen gunner, this time in a snowsuit for a MT-12 I've been modelling. I rotated the hands on him.

RH Models HDB2644 with WEA42

RH Models MULT*HMG with head swap and Elheim Miniatures GUN19

RH Models EERHMG with head swap and Elheim Miniatures GUN19

(Top to Bottom) For the first figure I sculpted a thick collar and paired him with a RH Models 12.7mm DshK for which I carved off the scenic base and replaced it with some sandbags I made of green stuff. The second and third figures where originally RH Models paired with 12.7mm DshKs on tripods. I hacked off the tripods, fixed up their pants and sculpted new hands for them. One guy got a new head. The second and third figures were mated with Elheim 12.7mm DshK's on wheeled carriages. Such guns seem to have been very popular in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. All have empty shell casings created from cut, thin brass rod.

RH Models MULTBHGUN; MULT*GUN with headswap; WEA40; Black Dog T72026

RH Models URBCIVB; URBCIV* with headswap; Black Dog T72026

(Top to Bottom) Besides head swaps for some of these figures, I created 82mm mortar rounds by rounding out some RH Models RPG rounds. For the last group I cut off one guy's hand and sculpted on a new hand to hold the mortar round. The hand looks a bit big in these pictures because of the camera angle/focus.

RH Models MULT*COM with head swap; EERGUN; MULT*GUN with head swap; WEA?; Black Dog T72026

RH Models MULTBHGUN; MULT*GUN with head swap; WEA?; Black Dog T72026

(Top to Bottom) I didn't think I needed bases of such a big mortar, but then Rolf sent me these for free and I found pictures to inspire me. Thanks! The first base has an AK resting on the boxes that I hacked off another miniature in this group.

Below are some pictures I was looking at while working on this set of figures and their weapons.

Ethnic Armenian fighter, Nagorno-Karabakh, 1992.

Armenian firing DshK in Hadrut (May 22nd, 1992).

Armenian fighters in Mardakert District (July 15th, 1992).

Armenian firing DshK in the Mardakert District (July 15th, 1992).

Azerbaijani forces load mortar (October 7th, 1992).

Armenian mortars (December 21st, 1992).

Armenian fighter? firing DshK (December 21st, 1992).

Armenian mortars the Martakert District, near the Sarsang Reservoir of Nagorno-Karabakh (July, 20th, 1993?).