Two MT-LBs and towed 120mm mortars

These Old Glory MT-LBs and mortars have been sat around for a long time, based and undercoated, so I’ve finally got around to painting them. Old Glory UK sell them in sets of three but, as far as I know, Russian mortar platoons operate in pairs so I didn’t need the third MT-LB. The third was missing a turret, which I’m sure Old Glory would replace if I asked, but I’ll probably paint it as a wreck anyway so it’s not required.

I didn’t take many photos of the painting because it’s pretty much the same methods I used with my T-72 tanks (click the tags on the sidebar to see ’em). Here are the MT-LBs, with a wash of my favourite colour (FolkArt’s Dark Grey craft paint) and a little drybrushing along some of the edges.

The stowage is a mixture of generic sacks and boxes from the Ancients ranges of Museum Miniatures and Essex Miniatures that I happened to have lying around, and some mystery World War Two items donated by the humble Shogun Tora Kamikaze.

Here is where it started to go awry! First, I weathered the vehicles with my usual ‘mud mix’ of bicarbonate of soda, thinned PVA glue and paint. However, I forgot to varnish the vehicles before flocking the bases and, as you can see below, most of the mud quickly came off.

Second, for some reason the PVA glue on the bases dried white. I had not had any problems with Wilko’s PVA in the past but the current bottle has been nothing but trouble. Maybe they've changed supplier, or it’s a bad batch? Whatever, this bottle of glue has been relegated to jobs where it won’t be seen. Annoyingly, I have another, huge tube of the stuff and I have no idea if this second batch will be good or bad.

There was nothing else to with the bases except scrape off all the white glue with a scalpel:

These miniatures went on hiatus for a month or so until I had time to visit Wickes to buy their tried and trusted waterproof PVA instead. Serves me right for ditching Wickes for a cheaper brand…

So, with the bases re-flocked, I called time on these vehicles. I couldn’t be bothered to re-do the weathering because the miniatures will not get a lot of use anyway and I was sick of them cluttering my workbench. Here is a rear of the first MT-LB, towing a 120mm 2S12 ‘Sani’ mortar:  

And here is a rear view of the second MT-LB. I put the mortars on separate bases to make the MT-LBs more versatile.

Finally, Here are all vehicles and mortars together:

I’m glad to see the back of these. They were a lot of trouble for the amount of time they’ll spend on the table. Setbacks like this blunt my enthusiasm for a project so I’m taking a break from painting miniatures for the Chechen War for a bit and swapping to scenery or to a different project altogether.