From Curt: 28mm Spanish Civil War Light Mortar Teams (20 points)

A few more figures to add to the SCW collection. Here are two mortar teams, armed with 50mm 'Valero' light mortars. 

The Valero mortar (designed by infantry Captain Vicente Valero de Bernabé y Casañez) weighted in at about 7 kilos and had a maximum range of around 500 meters - though it could be used at very close quarters if need required. Overall it was a very robust and successful design. In fact the WWII era British 2" mortar was a licensed copy of the Valero  model which remained in service until the late 80s.

While these 28mm Empress models are excellent (Paul Hicks sculpts, I believe) it's interesting to note that the gunners' poses are not entirely accurate. This particular mortar was not fired automatically by dropping the shell down the tube but rather utilized a firing trigger located near its base.

A well preserved example of a Valero 50mm mortar. You can see the curved trigger where the barrel meets the baseplate.

Nonetheless, these quibbles aside they are great figures to work with. This entire range from Empress is just spectacular in my opinion - such great character.

This pack has been purposefully sculpted to be fairly generic so the figures can be used for either Republican or Nationalist. I have grouped them by uniform colour to represent a mortar team from each of the combatants.

These two teams will give me 20 points.