Cruel Seas - Soviet Minesweeper "Mina"

I've just about finished painting my Soviet fleet box for Cruel Seas. If you have not seen the fleet boxes and are looking at playing CS they're certainly a good place to start. The Soviet one contains four each of the G5 and D3 MTBs, a pair of Bronnekaters (Project 1124s NOT 1125s as Warlord keep insisting) and the Fugas class Minesweeper. The other nations follow a similar pattern - one "big" ship and a selection of little ones.

I left assembling and painting the Fugas til last. Partly this was a matter of being a bit intimidated by the size of the thing, and partly because it was clear the model was of a very early ship, possibly even pre war. This was quite interesting because the ship data card included in the set didn't match the stats in the rule book, but did match the model. I wanted more guns, particularly AA guns as a mid to late war ship - and it was clear this was not only desirable from a gaming point of view, it was also quite historically correct. (edit - they errata'd the stats in the book). The pic below shows how the ships gained additional firepower as the war progressed. The Warlord model is very close to the original Project 53 design , what I was wanting to try for was something closer to the T407 Mina, which as an up-gunned Project 53

The model itself was quite nice, consisting of a very crisply cast rein hull, and some metal details. The only assembly issue being the lifeboat davits which needed a bit of work to get even close to the right position, but they fitted in the end.

My limited research suggested the best way to up gun the ship was to re-site the aft 45mm (which for whatever reason Warlord insist is a 40mm*) further aft and replace it with a 37mm AA gun, and add a pair of the same behind the bridge. Ideally I should have cut the rear of the bridge with the two DshK HMG mounts away, but it was a hefty piece of metal and I bottled that. The Mina with this configuration can be seen in the pic below nearest to the camera.

Getting the 37mm AA was a royal PITA. Warlord don't include this gun in their accessories set, but initially I thought his would be easy - just pick some up from a 1:300 manufacturer such as Heroics and Ros. This idea came a cropper fast as unlike every other nation Heroics and Ros don't make a 37/40mm AA gun for the Soviets. Scotia do, but it is a strange 2 part model with the gun platform integral to a square of metal to represent the ground and it would be a pain to separate. GHQ DO make a beautiful gun in towed and firing set up, but they're also rather expensive and ordering the three I wanted would have increased the cost of the project by 50%. Similarly the other Warlord guns of about the same style such as the Bofors in the US accessories set wouldn't really be suitable as this has a gunshield. 3d prints to the rescue. Paul Davison printed me out some 37mm he found on Thingyverse (or similar) and they cleaned up well. The first prints were way too fine, so I asked him to artificially scale them up to match the oversized guns Warlord were providing, and after a bit of trial and error Paul delivered as requested (Cheers m8). As the gun mounts included the round platforms they also were easy to fit to the ship abaft the bridge with minimum messing about - I had to file the paravane a bit to get them to sit right but all in all they look quite reasonable. I do fear for their long term survival given the extreme thinness but I can always ask Paul to print some more**.

* Warlord are pretty crap at identifying guns OR maybe they think the punters are so dense they cant handle the info, but they seem to have decided to re-designate quite a few of the Soviet guns - so for instance they refer to the very common 45mm as a "40mm", and the 76.2mm F34 on the Bronekaters as "6 Pdrs" . To a rivet counter like me this is really annoying. I suspect this is because they are shoehorning them into fixed categories, but surely the correct way to do this is to say "treat as" rather than just arbitrarily change the name? 

So there she is. It has to be said the additional AA will make her a tougher opponent for any S Boats she runs into, but she remains a bit lightweight when compared to some of the other larger ships in Cruel Seas. Being classed as a large ship she is very vulnerable to torpedo attacks, and her relatively slow top speed wont help either. All in all a really nice model and well worth picking up if you are planning on playing Soviets in Cruel Seas