More Retreat from Moscow Testing this weekend.

More playtesting has been underway this week, with even more sessions lined up for the weekend and into next week as we hammer out the final refinements to Battle Chronicle: The Retreat from Moscow.  Each game nudges the system a little closer to where we want it. Tight enough to hold together under pressure, but flexible enough to let the story breathe. 

The system will be a co-operative narrative skirmish campaign booklet, built around small groups, hard choices, and consequences that carry forward. Every playtest has thrown up something useful: a rule that needs tightening, a mechanic that sings, a moment of unexpected drama that reminds us why we’re doing this in the first place. That’s the quiet magic of playtesting, because it exposes the cracks and the gold in equal measure.

We’re keeping our powder dry on a release date for now. There’s still work to do, and we’d rather get it right than get it rushed. But with each session, we’re getting closer to a system we genuinely believe people will enjoy putting on their tables. In the meantime, here are a handful of photos from the latest playtest session—small glimpses of a project steadily taking shape.

The 5 Secret Rules of Wargaming

Every hobby has its unspoken codes of conduct, and tabletop wargaming is no different. Sit down at a games table almost anywhere in the world, and you’ll soon pick up on them — those unwritten rules of etiquette that keep play running smoothly. But here’s the question I want to explore in today’s video: do these rules make the hobby more fun, or do they sometimes act as hidden barriers that discourage newcomers from sticking around?

A couple of years ago, I made a video outlining my personal “top five rules of wargaming etiquette.” They were meant as a light-hearted guide to making sure everyone enjoys their time around the table. But on reflection, I realised I never asked whether those rules might also create pressure for new players who don’t yet know the invisible expectations. So in this new video, I go back to those same five rules and weigh up the pros and cons of each.

Courtesy, integrity, honesty, fairness, and conviviality are all good principles in life, but how do they work when applied to tabletop wargaming? Do they make a club more welcoming to outsiders, or can they sometimes feel like gatekeeping? I take a closer look, sharing my own experiences as a social historical wargamer while recognising that competitive players may have a very different perspective.

Most importantly, I want to open the floor to discussion. Do you recognise these rules in your own gaming group? Do you agree that they help the hobby, or have you seen them enforced in ways that drive people away? Whether you’re a veteran historical wargamer, a miniatures painter dipping your toe into gaming, or a complete beginner trying to learn the ropes, this is a conversation worth having.

We Broke our own Ruleset

Designing a new tabletop wargame ruleset sounds exciting, and it is, but the real magic happens during playtesting. In this video, I talk through my recent experiences helping develop The Battle Chronicle, a brand new historical skirmish system set during Napoleon’s Retreat from Moscow. Rather than focusing purely on the finished product, this discussion explores the messy, fascinating stage where ideas are tested, broken, repaired, and slowly shaped into something genuinely fun to play.

Playtesting is where theory meets tabletop reality. Mechanics that look perfectly reasonable on paper can behave very differently once players start experimenting. Balance issues appear, unexpected rule combinations crop up, and the flow of the game becomes much clearer. Some rules turn out to be more complicated than they need to be, while others don’t deliver the tension or decision-making they promised. This process isn’t about chasing perfection; it’s about making sure the game creates an enjoyable experience that feels right for the setting.

Because The Battle Chronicle is rooted in a very specific historical moment, narrative tone matters just as much as mechanics. The retreat from Moscow is defined by hardship, attrition, and desperation, and the rules need to support that atmosphere. Playtesting helps reveal whether those themes come through naturally in play or whether certain elements undermine the intended feel. A good historical game should tell stories that make sense for the period, not just produce balanced dice exchanges.

Another key part of the process is clarity. Designers often know what they meant when writing a rule, but new players only have the text in front of them. Watching others interpret the rules highlights unclear wording, inconsistent terminology, and assumptions that need to be explained. Fixing these issues early makes the finished ruleset far more welcoming and easier to learn. Beyond mechanics and wording, playtesting also reveals practical improvements: when tokens would help, where reference sheets are needed, and which parts of the game benefit from simplification. These small refinements can dramatically improve the overall experience.

In the video, I share why this stage of development is so important, what it has taught me about rules design, and why thorough playtesting builds confidence in a finished product. If you enjoy tabletop wargaming, historical settings, or thoughtful hobby discussion about how games are made, this behind-the-scenes look at the design process should be right up your street.

More Soviet Infantry, Tank Hunters and a T26/M1931

I narrowly missed last week’s submission to the Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge, literally by a matter of hours, so this week turned into a bumper offering.  

First up is another twelve-man Light Machine Gun Squad, the nearly finished unit that never quite made it onto the blog last time. All that stood between them and glory was drying basing and a final layer of snow, but time ran out. One of my quietly declared New Year’s resolutions was to stop saying yes to every new project that wanders past. That resolution has already collapsed in a heap, leaving me busier than ever. Not necessarily a bad thing, but it does add another tick to the ever-growing “suspected ADHD” column.

Next on the bench is another tank for my Soviet forces. This time it’s a T-26 Model 1931, the distinctive twin-turret variant armed with machine guns. Unlike my previous T-26 from Rubicon, this one is a 3D print from Danger Close Studio. Aside from some minor clean-up around the tracks where the supports had been, it’s an excellent print and blends in seamlessly with my other vehicles. Historically, the T-26 Model 1931 was heavily influenced by the British Vickers 6-Ton and was intended as an infantry support tank. Its twin turrets, usually mounting DT machine guns, offered impressive firepower on paper, but in practice proved awkward to command. That complexity eventually saw the design abandoned in favour of more practical single-turret models.

Finally, there’s a Tank Hunter team. This unit consists of two men armed with the 7.62mm PPD 1934/38 submachine gun, a design based on the Bergmann MP18/1 and fed by either drum or box magazines. They’re supported by two riflemen, with the NCO hefting a Molotov cocktail. The Molotov was a small conversion, using a plastic piece from the Warlord Games Soviet infantry sprue that recently appeared as a giveaway on the cover of Wargames Illustrated, which couldn’t have been better timed. On the tabletop in Bolt Action, Tank Hunters are nasty little specialists, with rules that allow them to double their attacks in close combat against vehicles, making them a serious threat despite their size.

In short: a delayed update turned into a productive one, with a finished LMG squad, a characterful early-war Soviet tank, and a converted Tank Hunter team all joining the ranks. Progress may be chaotic, but it’s definitely moving forward.

Don't Throw That Away!

Most tabletop wargamers don’t realise they’re throwing away perfectly good terrain every week. In this week's podcast, I dive into one of the oldest and most satisfying traditions in historical wargaming: turning everyday household rubbish into terrain, scenery, and useful hobby tools. Cardboard packaging becomes ruined buildings and bunker walls. Plastic food containers turn into industrial tanks and silos. Bottle tops, jar lids, broken toys, and old electronics quietly transform into battlefield details, objectives, and atmospheric clutter that give a gaming table real character.

This isn’t just about saving money, although that’s certainly a bonus. It’s about creativity, confidence, and learning to see potential instead of products. Scratch-built terrain made from recycled materials often looks more believable than pristine kits because history itself is messy, improvised, and uneven. Real battlefields were full of reused materials, rushed construction, and expedient solutions. Exactly the qualities that rubbish-based terrain naturally captures.

Introducing Battle Chronicle: The Retreat from Moscow

 

Last weekend marked the beginning of a brand-new miniature adventure, and it feels good to finally lift the fog of war just a little.

I’ve been working with Paul from the Pazoot Channel on a project called The Battle Chronicle. Paul has been deep in rules-writing mode, while I’ve been handling playtesting, staging the games, and—alongside my mate Ray—capturing plenty of photos and footage as the project starts to take shape on the tabletop. What you’re seeing in the pictures here is our first big playtesting session, where ideas stopped being theory and started becoming desperate little struggles in the snow.

So what is a Battle Chronicle? Each one is designed as a self-contained narrative skirmish mini-campaign. Inside a single booklet, you’ll find a complete skirmish ruleset, four linked scenarios, and a tightly focused historical theme that drives the action forward. The goal is to create something that feels like a story unfolding, not just a series of disconnected games.

The first Chronicle is set during Napoleon’s retreat from Moscow. The focus is on survival: stragglers clinging together, shattered formations, collapsing morale, and constant hard choices. It’s built as a cooperative experience, with players working together against an automated enemy system. In play, that has already led to some wonderfully tense and unpredictable moments—exactly the kind of drama this period deserves.

For Ray and me, this project has also been the perfect excuse to finally put our Retreat from Moscow collection on the table in a proper, story-driven way. Instead of one-off encounters, we’re seeing units carry their scars from game to game, and decisions in one scenario ripple into the next. It feels closer to history than a casual pick-up game ever could.

If you’d like a quick glimpse of how it looked in action, I’ve posted a YouTube Short showing moments from this very session. And next week, I’ll be releasing a longer video where I talk in more detail about the playtesting process, what we learned, what broke, what surprised us, and why playtesting is such a crucial part of building any set of rules. There’s plenty more frostbite, panic, and last-stand heroics to come.

Those Wargaming Habits that Drive us Mad (and make us laugh)

Every hobby has its little irritations, and tabletop historical wargaming is no exception. In my latest video, I dive into a viewer question that’s been waiting patiently in the comments for its moment in the spotlight: “What are your pet hates in the hobby?” Now, this isn’t a rant in the angry sense. It’s more of a warm, self-aware chuckle at the small things that make us twitch across the tabletop, even while we’re enjoying the best hobby in the world. Because if we’re honest, most of these “pet hates” are things we’ve all done at some point.

I talk about the sight of unpainted miniatures on the gaming table — especially when they somehow manage to defeat a fully painted army. There’s also the familiar frustration of stunning demo games at wargames shows that have no signs, no labels, and no explanation of what battle or rules you’re looking at. For a hobby built on history and detail, that little missing bit of information can make a big difference.

Then there are the smaller visual things, like plain bases that never quite got finished, or the odd effect of scale creep when miniatures from different manufacturers end up mixed into the same unit. Individually, these are tiny issues, but once you spot them, they can be hard to ignore. Of course, not all pet hates are visual. Some happen mid-game, like players who constantly nudge and re-adjust their units, somehow gaining that mysterious “extra inch” of movement, or the enthusiastic dice throwers whose rolls resemble an artillery barrage more than a game mechanic.

Through it all, the tone stays friendly and self-deprecating. This isn’t about telling anyone they’re doing the hobby wrong. It’s about recognising shared experiences in tabletop wargaming, miniature painting, and historical gaming culture, and having a laugh about them together. If you enjoy hobby discussion, reflections on wargaming culture, and the everyday realities of life with toy soldiers, this video is for you. Watch it, see how many of these pet hates you recognise, and then join the conversation — because every wargamer has at least one!

Do House Rules Ruin Wargames?

One of the most passionate debates in tabletop wargaming isn’t about which tank was best or whether Napoleonic squares are overrated. It’s about house rules — those little tweaks, rewrites, and “we do it this way here” moments that sneak into almost every gaming group sooner or later. In this latest video, I dig into the question that every wargamer eventually faces: do house rules enhance the experience, or do they quietly undermine it?

For many of us, tinkering with rules feels completely natural. We don’t just play historical games — we study history, obsess over specific battles, and get emotionally invested in moments when everything could have gone another way. When a ruleset doesn’t quite allow for that, the temptation to adjust it is almost irresistible. Maybe a unit should be tougher, maybe morale should matter more, or maybe the official army list doesn’t quite reflect what actually fought on that day in 1942 or 1815. So we change things, often with the best of intentions.

But rules aren’t just words on a page. Underneath every good game is a web of probabilities, balance decisions, and design choices that are usually invisible to the player. When we start altering things, even in small ways, we might be tugging at threads we don’t fully understand. A tiny bonus here or a new rule there can slowly warp how a game plays, sometimes without anyone noticing until it’s too late.

The video also examines the individuals behind the rules. Designers bring their own vision of history to the table, based on research, playtesting, and compromise. Changing their work can sometimes sharpen a game, but it can also erase parts of what made it special in the first place. And, just to keep us humble, there’s always the risk that we, as players, might not understand a period quite as well as we think we do.

At the same time, house rules aren’t the villains of this story. They can be powerful tools for learning, creativity, and personalising a game to suit your group. They encourage deeper engagement with both history and game mechanics, and they let us explore those wonderful “what if?” moments that make wargaming so compelling.

This video isn’t about declaring a winner in the house rules war. It’s about exploring the tension between creativity and consistency, between personal vision and shared systems, and how that tension shapes the way we enjoy our hobby. If you’ve ever rewritten a rule, ignored an army list, or argued passionately over a single modifier, this one is for you.

Painting Challenge XVI: 2 Soviet GAZ-AAA Trucks

I have just finished building and painting these two trucks from Rubicon Models, a matched pair of GAZ-AAA 2-tonners, and like the armoured vehicles I showed last week, they are daubed in a hurried whitewash over their standard Soviet green. That slapdash winter camouflage was not about style; it was about survival. When the Red Army crossed into Finland in November 1939, it found itself fighting in a world of blinding snow, black forests and temperatures that could sink past –30°C. Against that backdrop, a green truck might as well have been waving a little flag that read “please shoot me.” The Finns, masters of camouflage and patient marksmanship, took brutal advantage of anything that stood out, so Soviet units did whatever they could with limewash, chalk or even mud to blur their outlines against the frozen landscape.

The GAZ-AAA itself was a workhorse of a very Soviet kind. Based on a Ford design built under licence and then steadily adapted by Soviet engineers, it was a six-wheeled, twin-rear-axle truck intended to haul around two tons of men, ammunition, fuel or food across the vast distances of the USSR. In peacetime, it was everywhere, delivering everything from grain to bricks, and in wartime, it became the backbone of Red Army logistics. During the Winter War, it was often pressed into service far beyond what its designers had imagined, rumbling along narrow forest roads that had been hacked through the snow or driving over frozen lakes that groaned ominously beneath their weight. They were not glamorous machines, but wars are not won by glamour; they are won by whoever can keep rifles fed and soldiers warm.

Those conditions, though, were merciless. On the pls side, the GAZ-AAA was mechanically simple and reasonably tough, which mattered when you were hundreds of kilometres from a proper workshop and your hands were too numb to feel a spanner. The extra rear axle gave it better traction than a simple two-wheel-drive truck, letting it claw its way through packed snow and icy ruts where lesser vehicles would just spin. On the other hand, it was still fundamentally a road truck, not a purpose-built winter vehicle. Deep, powdery snow could swallow it whole, its engines hated the cold, and the Soviet fuel and lubricants of the period were prone to thickening into something closer to porridge than petrol or oil. There are plenty of stories, many apocryphal but all evocative, of crews having to light fires under the engine block just to get the thing to start.

A lumbering convoy of GAZ-AAAs will be a tempting target for Ray’s Finns. Hit the first and last truck, and suddenly you have a frozen traffic jam full of trapped men. I may need more tanks. Maybe the T26 Model 1931 with twin MMG Turrets? Guess I’ll be perusing the Rubicon website again pretty soon.

Incidentally, these models, like many of the Rubicon kits, can be built in different variants. The box contains the parts needed to make the GAZ-AA 1.5Ton single axle truck, and the canvas canopy is optional. There are also components in the kit to convert the model into an Anti-Aircraft truck (with the gun sold separately). All the models come with a driver, and I was surprised to find the figures were almost complete (only the feet are missing) despite the fact that the driver's legs end up essentially invisible, hidden inside the cabin. And that, for me, sums up these models from Rubicon, attention to detail, even the bits that probably can’t be seen once assembled. 

Does accepting free products change how honest a review can be?

One of the quiet but powerful forces shaping modern hobby YouTube is the rise of free review products. Rulebooks, miniatures, paints, tools, and even entire games are regularly sent to content creators in exchange for coverage, often with the promise of an “impartial” review. On the surface, that seems harmless, even helpful. After all, it lets viewers see new products without having to buy them first. But beneath that surface sits a much more complicated question: Does accepting free products change how honest a review can be?

In this video, I explore that tension from the perspective of a historical tabletop wargamer and miniature painter. Over the last few months alone, I’ve received more than a dozen offers of free products to review, including three different 3D printers, despite never having used one on the channel. I turned them all down, not because they weren’t generous offers, but because they would have pushed the channel away from what it’s actually about. Accepting a free product doesn’t just mean opening a box; it means committing time, energy, and creative focus to something that might only be there because it costs nothing.

That’s where the real danger lies. Free products don’t automatically make someone dishonest, but they can quietly distort priorities. They can pull creators toward what is being offered rather than what they genuinely want to explore. In a hobby built on long projects, deep dives, and slow creative work, that shift can be damaging.

The video also looks at the other side of the argument: are reviews of things we buy ourselves really more objective? Paying for a product doesn’t remove bias; it just changes it. We all want our purchases to feel justified, and that can colour how we talk about them. Whether something is free or bought, what really matters is transparency, context, and a willingness to talk about both strengths and weaknesses.

Throughout the discussion, I argue that trust in the tabletop and miniature painting community doesn’t come from pretending money and freebies don’t exist. It comes from being honest about them. Viewers deserve to know whether something was bought, gifted, or part of a larger collaboration so they can judge the opinion for themselves.

If you care about historical wargaming, hobby YouTube, and the future of honest reviews in our niche, this video digs into a topic that affects us all, whether we realise it or not.

Painting Challenge XVI: Soviet BA10 Armoured Car & T26 tank

This week I present a couple of armoured vehicles for my Winter War Soviets, both finished with a rough, field-applied whitewash over the standard Soviet green. This was very much a leap of faith for me. After assembly, I got the models fully painted, decaled, and weathered to the point where they looked “done”… and then deliberately smeared white paint all over them like a vandal. 

There are plenty of established whitewash techniques out there, but I ended up bodging together my own. I mixed white acrylic paint, distilled water, and airbrush flow improver in roughly equal parts. The flow improver is the unsung hero here: it reduces surface tension and stops the paint from pooling or beading. What you get is a milky glaze that needs two or three coats, depending on how heavy you want the finish. I hand-brushed it panel by panel, deliberately avoiding raised edges and high-wear areas like hatches and crew access points. The aim was that hurried, uneven, already-wearing-off look you see in historical photos. 

 

The BA-10 armoured car was developed in 1938 and produced until 1941, making it the most numerous Soviet heavy armoured car of the pre-war period, with over 3,300 built. This is the earlier BA-10 variant, descended from the BA-3 and BA-6, using the GAZ-AAA chassis and sporting improved armour up to 15mm on the front and turret. It was meant to be replaced by the BA-11 in 1941, which would have had a diesel engine and a more advanced armour layout, but the war rather rudely intervened. The BA-10 soldiered on in Red Army service until 1945, and a number were captured and pressed into Finnish service during the Winter War (at least 24 that are known of).

The T-26light infantry tank needs little introduction. Developed from the British Vickers 6-Ton, it became one of the most prolific tank designs of the interwar years. More than 11,000 were built across an eye-watering 50-plus variants, including flamethrowers, engineering vehicles, self-propelled guns, artillery tractors, and armoured carriers. Early versions had twin turrets with machine guns in each, but this is the 1939 single-turret model with the 45mm main gun, a coaxial machine gun, and an additional rear turret MG. By 1939, its armour was already starting to look thin against modern anti-tank weapons, but sheer numbers kept it relevant and deadly through the Winter War. Once again, captured vehicles were hastily repainted and used by the Finns to defend their homeland, many in service right through to the end of WWII. 

Both models are from Rubicon, and they were a pleasure to build. The BA-10 can be assembled with or without the over-tire tracks, while the T-26 kit gives you enough parts to build one of several variants on the same chassis. The instructions for each kit are very clear, but as with any plastic kit, patience is the key to success. I enjoyed making these so much that I have now bought a couple of GAZ-AA trucks from Rubicon to carry my infantry in. Gotta give Ray’s Finns something to shoot at during his Motti attacks after all. 

Why I still Blog after 16 years

This Blog, BigLee’s Miniature Adventures, recently turned sixteen years old, which is a slightly alarming number when you realise it means I’ve been writing about toy soldiers on the internet for well over a decade and a half. In that time, almost everything about how we use the internet has changed, and so has how we share our hobbies. I now spend far more of my creative energy making YouTube videos than writing long blog posts, yet the blog is still here, quietly ticking over in the background. That isn’t an accident. It’s a choice, and one I’ve become more certain about as the years go by.

When I first started blogging in 2009, it felt like everyone in the hobby had their own site. You could bounce from one wargaming blog to another for hours, discovering new projects, painting styles, obscure rule sets, and historical periods you’d never considered before. At its height, my own blogroll listed more than six hundred other wargaming blogs. It felt like a vast, friendly convention hall, where everyone had set up a table to show off what they were working on. There was a real sense of continuity too; you could follow someone’s hobby journey for years, watching their skills grow and their interests shift.

That world has undeniably thinned out. Many of those blogs have fallen silent, some have vanished entirely, and others are frozen in time, their last post dated years ago. Part of that is simply life getting in the way. Blogging takes time and energy, and hobbies are often the first thing to be squeezed when work, family, and other commitments pile up. But it’s also about the wider changes in how we use the internet. Social media and video platforms offer faster, easier ways to share content. You can post a picture to Facebook or Instagram and get instant feedback with almost no effort. Compared to that, writing, formatting, and maintaining a blog can feel like hard work. So why bother?

For me, the answer lies in what blogs offer that those faster platforms don’t. A blog is a personal space. It’s one person’s voice, one person’s journey, laid out over time. It allows for depth and reflection in a way that short posts and scrolling feeds rarely encourage. When I write a long article about a project, a rule set, or even the hobby itself, I know that anyone who reads it has chosen to slow down and engage with what I’m saying. The audience might be smaller, but it’s often more invested.

There’s also the matter of permanence. Social media is designed to move on quickly. Yesterday’s post is buried by today’s, and within a week it might as well not exist. A blog, on the other hand, builds an archive. Articles written years ago can still be found, read, and used. I regularly hear from people who’ve discovered an old tutorial, battle report, or opinion piece of mine and found it helpful long after it was written. That kind of longevity is something I value deeply. It feels like leaving behind a trail of breadcrumbs for fellow hobbyists to follow.

The blog is also a record of my own hobby life. When I look back through the archives, I see not just finished projects but abandoned ones, experiments that didn’t quite work, and ideas that evolved over time. I can watch my painting improve, my interests shift, and my understanding of the hobby deepen. It’s a bit like an old campaign journal: sometimes cringeworthy, often messy, but full of stories and memories that would otherwise be lost.

That doesn’t mean I’m stuck in the past. Moving into video creation has been a hugely positive change for me. It allows me to reach more people and have more immediate conversations. But the blog still plays a role in that wider creative ecosystem. It gives me space to expand on ideas, share extra images and resources, and host the kind of long-form writing that doesn’t always fit neatly into a video format. In that sense, it isn’t competing with YouTube; it’s complementing it.

Blogs may no longer be the fashionable centre of the internet, but they are far from obsolete. They’ve simply found a quieter, steadier place. For hobbyists who care about recording their work, sharing knowledge, and building something that lasts, blogging remains a powerful tool. Sixteen years on, BigLee’s Miniature Adventures is still doing exactly what I hoped it would when I first started: capturing my miniature adventures as they happen, one post at a time.

And as long as I’m painting, gaming, and thinking about this strange, wonderful hobby of ours, I don’t see any reason to stop.

Painting Challenge XVI: Winter War Soviet MMG's & Mortar Teams

Fresh off the painting desk are two new Medium Machine Gun teams for my Winter War Soviets, and they’re wonderfully chunky little beasts. Each team is manning the PM M1910/30, the Russian take on Hiram Maxim’s immortal design, mounted on the distinctive wheeled Sokolov carriage. With its broad stance, solid shield, and unapologetic industrial look, this is a weapon that doesn’t mess around and dares the enemy to disagree.

The story of the gun itself is a fine example of Russian pragmatism. The Maxim had already proven its lethality across the world, but the Soviets refined it into something brutally reliable. The M1910/30 update improved sights, strengthened components, and standardised production for a Red Army that expected to fight in appalling conditions. The Sokolov mount, complete with gun shield, reflected lessons learned the hard way: crews needed mobility, stability, and at least a sporting chance of not being immediately shot while doing their job.

Then came the Winter War, where theory met the indomitable Finns. In the forests and frozen lakes of the Karelian Isthmus, these Maxims were often dug in low, their wheels partially buried or removed altogether to reduce silhouettes. Crews camouflaged shields with whitewash or snow-covered cloth, and firing positions were carefully sited to dominate narrow approaches through woods and villages. Ammunition had to be kept warm to prevent stoppages, and gunners learned to balance sustained fire with the brutal reality of freezing metal and exhausted men.

Also completed this week is a Soviet light mortar team. The main Soviet 50mm mortars used in the 1939/40 Winter War were the RM-38, RM-39, and the more common RM-40, all part of a series developed for infantry support, though they were complex and proved underpowered because the shell contained less high explosive than some hand grenades. They had a maximum range of around 800 meters, but the effective range was much shorter, generally around 100-400 meters. Later in WWII the 50mm was phased out in favour of heavier models such as the 82mm, which had a much more useful maximum range of 3000 meters. 

Painting these teams really drove home how central weapons like this were to Soviet tactics during the conflict. They’re not flashy units, but they’re the backbone: defensive anchors, ambush enablers, and morale breakers all rolled into one oil-soaked package. On the tabletop, they’ll do exactly what the real ones did, lock down ground and punish movement.