After putting together the winter Finnish army, I decided I needed their Soviet opponent force. In the meantime, I put together a winter German winter infantry company, as I was able to put that together using Gajo painted miniatures. Well, it was time to get to the Russians.
I used a mixed approach on these. First, I bought a few of the Gajo painted MMG teams. This was their only offering in overcoats. I also had a few boxes of the old overcoat early war soviets from the early war FOW days. I also came across some sets of very old soviet winter infantry in helmets. This gave me the troops that I needed for the force.
Truth be told, I was in no mood to paint all these figures myself. So, I painted up a few samples, using the Gajo figures as a guide, wrote up the instructions and sent them off to Fernando in Sri Lanka…. A man needs to know his limitations!
The figures came back and it was time for phase two. I organized the figures and pulled out the FOW bases for the units. I sprayed these all light gray and glued down all the figures. I then went back and did some touch up on some odd color choices, re-did the helmet color and painted the heavy weapons.
Next it was time to go to the pumice basing. I decided to use the same scheme I used on my Germans (which I might go back to my Finns and update). It took a while, but I was able to cover all the bases using the Vallejo winter snow pumice.
At this point, I attached all the laying down figures and heavy weapons. It is much easier to do this after the basing is in, then trying to work around it with a brush. I then touched up all the base boarders with gray. Next was attaching spiky white tufts to each base.
With all that, the troops are ready for the tabletop. I just need some vehicles to go with the troops.
- Manteuffel