28mm Soviet Project Progress (Part 1)

Shades of GW Space Marines "snipping" body parts and various things or rather pieces of equipment off numerous plastic sprues. They are very nice, have lots of character but my fingers do ache after many hours snipping. Interestingly this lot was all put together with one tube of Airfix (Humbrol) poly glue 'liberated'from an Airfix starter kit I picked up from Aldi in the £5 bargain bucket. Anyhow I now have the beginnings of a Soviet Rifle Platoon '1942 Stalingrad Era', my first squad is seen below (see below):

Some time later (bleeding hands not visible in this photo but please remember I was also on Xmas washing up duty too). 37 figures required for the basic platoon although I had to borrow one additional LMG from a fellow Soviet player (he had the bigger Soviet Starter Box). We ended up swapping a couple sprues, his troops were Summer mine Winter. The aesthetic mix of uniforms seemed well worth it. I suppose that is my only complaint that Warlord were generous (5sprues of infantry) slightly miserly (3 sprues with one LMG per sprue but the Platoon needs 4) with LMGs. In fact in the later 1942 Orbats a Soviet Rifle Platoon is short on manpower but upped on LMGs from "four" to "six". It is as if the recruits and reinforcements were asked to take an extra LMG with them. My basic platoon plus three extras [see bottom right in photograph]: a PTRD shooter, a pistol carrying officer and a "Crazy Ivan" SMG with a flaming "Molotov cocktail"(see below):

In close-up you can see the character of the figures coming through quite well (see below):

The next phase is to prime everything in Airfix (01) Grey Primer, them Vallejo Brown Wash them before looking out my Russian paints from my 20mm painting days.