Building Stalingrad

[Xveers]

Huh... so that's how they got them. I remember getting a lot of stuff from Sosna and I remarked how similar they looked to the Leva stuff. Rather nice to know that's actually because they ARE the same... I was operating under the thought they might have been knockoffs or someodd... which seemed odd because the casts were so well done...

Additionally, Sosna sells the same things in polish wargaming stores. Parental unit was over there and she bought me some instead of cheezy useless knicknacks

[Ritter]

I did some painting for Alan in Canada a few years ago - his schedual and mine didn't really mesh too well as I had many orders to do at thye time. He was acually pondering the sell off of the molds at the time and wasn't sure that he was going to continue.
Leva products are extremely well detailed though I found many parts too weak for wargaming play and the resin could easily break.

Troy

[rct75001]

I was also wondering where the moulds for sosna came from - I had thought they may have been wripped off. So I am glad that it is genuine. I got a few pieces from ebay from him. The resin he uses does not appear as good as the resin used by Leva originally. It does not seem to catch as much sharp detail - or that could be the moulds ageing.

I was lucky - Leva has a distributor in Tasmania for a while and I got a shed load from him. Also got quite a bit from George Nafziger at Historicon a few years ago. I love the bunkers.

[jtompk99]

You can still get a lot of the Leva stuff from the Nafziger website. He also purchased some of the Vac-U-Cast micro line. Not sure if he's started producing any of that yet. He's got a lot of industrial building type stuff that I can't find anywhere else contemporarily in micro scale.

[Matt D]

I placed a large order with Alain last December to which he said I basically cleaned him out. This wasn't the intention but he really didn't have a whole lot left in stock and he wasn't able to complete the order. Then again every time he emailed me on what he did have he most often would find another box of stuff. So it's possible that he might have some more stuff lieing around, but it would probably be pieces of other models.

Alain did sell some of his stuff to Sosna but on a limited basis. All that's left in Poland are part of that deal plus whatever else they create on their own. And they do some really nice stuff. Their graveyard is incredibly detailed and at a good price. He also said that he sold the rights of his molds to a company in western Canada a year ago. I asked him for the name but he didn't remember and said that they no longe return his calls.

So unless Alain has another box hidden someplace on his property he is basically out of business. Which is a shame because he did some really nice stuff and is a nice guy.

[DrBig]

Can anyone recommend a book or web site that has lots of pictures of the main buildings at Stalingrad?

I don't mean to be cute, but every building in Stalingrad was a main building

Unfortunately photos are scattered all over, so there is no single resource.

you could look here http://www.fireonthevolga.com/

In the south city, the dominant building was the grain silo. Not too much around that except small wooden service buildings, a small rail station, lots of RR track.

Going north, there's a pair of large stone commercial structures amid many smaller stone/wood structures. Going north & crossing the Tsaritsa, you're into downtown & Red Square. The department store, museum, main train station, & many other large prominent stone commercial structures are here. Going north you run into the Flour Mill, Pavlov's house, & smaller stone structures. Go north & you get into the tennis racket. Then going north it's 3 large factory complexes & those are your generic manufacturing shops (large)

[Ritter]

Barrikady Factory area (northeastern stalingrad) had some fairly important buildings in the months of October to January; The Kommissaurhaus, the Apotheke, the Red Haus, the P -haped building, The Unfinished Building, The Kindergarten, the L-shaped building, the fuel tanks, the Generator building, and various other large Dom/Haus These were the main focuses of the battles of the Pioneres to take the last holdouts of the city, the 138th Rifle Division.

Each of these buildings are big enough to warrent an individual hex in a battle in this area and the good thing is that they can be used to represent other areas of Stalingrad (Pavlovs haus looks very similar to the apartments found in Barrikady area). Battles fought here are best done on a small scale as the areas fought over were often times, a single building.

Troy

[Doug B]

Don't know if anyone else has suggested this, but you could take advantage of the map from the Advanced Squad Leader series historical module "Red Barricades" to give yourself an idea of what goes where. This is available for free, you can view if you download the VASL game engine at www.vasl.org. The boards available can be viewed at www.vasl.org/boards.htm. They have not only the Red October/Barrikady area, but also separate maps for the Tractor Works, Grain Elevator, etc. Scale is 40m per hex. Some artistic license would have been used to make the map conform to ASL game requirements, but it would beat sitting down with aerial recce photos and a ruler trying to figure out what goes where.

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[Thunder]

Mark,

Last I heard from was that Alain sold his production rights to another company in Canada. I contacted them and they did indeed buy the entire 6mm line and had planned to remaster the molds and build up inventory before reintroducing the products for sale. However, I haven't heard yet that they did anything significant so far. The company in Poland bought casts of his models in bulk legally. However, they should have run out a long time ago so it is very likely they are illegally casting copies.

[ZMONSTER]

Sounds like a whole bunch of Micro-Skirmish Board projects, as scenarios that are apart of a campaign series. Almost a club project if done this way.

I would be awesome to connect all the Micro-Skirmish Boards once completed for a huge campaign.

[DrBig]

Monday Knight Productions has a nice 6mm factory

[Mk 1]

Dr. B:

Our gracious hosts have asked us not to post webstore links here in the GHQ forums. This quote is from the "Registering for the Forum" sticky post at the top of the forum menu:

Because this forum is paid for and maintained by GHQ, we ask that you do not include any website addresses for other companies in your postings.

I expect your postings were meant in a friendly and helpful manner. But unfortunately they were outside of our simple guidelines, and so are subject to snipping. No offense intended. But the posts had to go.

Discussion of other vendors' products are fine. But links are the line we are asked not to cross.

-Mark 1 (MODERATOR)

[DrBig]

Yeah, that's a hard one to remember because it defies common sense. It is a legal reason? I recall someone trying to add links under the copyright umbrella

[Donald M. Scheef]

If not for legal reasons only, it's a matter of curtesy to the hosts of this forum. Free speech, including mentioning the names of competitors, is fine. Facilitating the transfer to a competitor's site is a challenge to the economic viability of GHQ.

Don S.

[DrBig]

That's the part that defies common sense. GHQ has no competition. All of the other companies merely offer supporting materials which can only benefit GHQ popularity & sales