Stash Update - Finnish Army Armoured Car Company

Seeing as I am a knat's whisker away from finishing my very first Rapid Fire! army unit - my Finnish Air Group (must call it something else, LOL) - I thought I best prepare my next project in this series. I am working on the HQ unit between the major fighting units so I can get onto more exciting AFVs, so next I decided to get on with my Armoured Car Company.

Under the Rapid Fire! ruleset the armoured car company for the Finns is made up of two units each comprising on one vehicle each. There's a HQ unit and the main company unit and these should be made up with one Soviet BA-20 (HQ) and one BA-10.

Left: Soviet BA-20 armored car, in Finnish markings, , displayed in Finnish Tank Museum (Panssarimuseo) in Parola. Source: Wikipedia

You can read all about the historical usage of captured Soviet armoured cars by the Finns here: Jaeger Platoon - Finnish Armoured Cars of WW2

The smaller BA-20 armoured car is a bit of a chew to get hold of in 1/72 plastic (though there are plenty of examples in 20mm resin), and the only one I could find which is readily available here in the UK is the BA-20 Railroad version from Ace. As the name suggests this is a version of the vehicle which comes with railway wheels so that it could ride on the tracks, but it does come with the ordinary road wheels too.

The bigger BA-10 is a lot easier to procure and there are nice versions by Pegasus (lovely 2 vehicle war game quality box set) and, for example, UniModels. It was the Unimodels version I decided to go for after reading a very positive review over at the SquadPainter blog.

Now I really like the look of this pair of armoured cars, they are sort of quaint in their way and yet I can see how in a war game senario they could be very useful despite their somewhat limited armament. Although the BA-10's 45mm gun would be very handy against infantry, light gun positions and soft vehicles it's as reconnaissance vehicles where I see this pair excelling.

Left: Soviet BA-10 armored car, displayed in Finnish Tank Museum (Panssarimuseo) in Parola. Source: Wikipedia

I haven't even opened the boxes yet so the next post will be the unboxing and will be followed by the building of the BA-20 first of all.

The BA20 was bought from Model Hobbies for £10.32 (yikes!) and I got the BA-10 from Hannants for £7.40.