From SebastianR: Finnaly Finnished? [Historical Drama] (342)

It’s with an overwhelming feeling of relief that I can finally make these posts. I wasn’t exactly dragging my heels, but last week I did do a quick project management of what I was hoping to achieve and realised that there was no way I was going to make it to the director’s chair. I have no idea where the time has gone. That being said I can still probably make it to my somewhat regretfully cocky points goal.

I think the main drag on my initial posting was choosing to front load this project first. I have finally put the finishing touches on the other half of my Flames of War Finns consisting of:

Reinforcements for two already existing infantry platoons

A full strength pioneer platoon, plus an extra panzershrek if I ever run them as regular infantry

A panzerfaust close defence platoon, armed with all sorts of weapons, including chunky bits of wood to force into the tracks of Russian tanks

A four strong machine-gun platoon

Two pk40’s

Four 76mm howitzers

Three 120mm mortars

Three “Sturmi” StuGs painted in Finland’s 3 tone camo.

I decided to use the three tone for normally acquired vehicles – whether that be purchased from the British or Swedes and lend-leased from the Germans – and the whitewash scheme for armour captured from Russia. I’m quite a fan of the scheme, it’s both quite modern and retro. I initially thought I might have overdone the stone grey on these ones but honestly, now that I've had some time to reflect I think they're slightly better than much darker Landsverk Anti II I painted last year.

This was also my third attempt at the very clean Gloss + Pinwash method allegedly employed by Battlefront, this time with actual gloss varnish and an actual pinwash. It didn’t work; looks mostly ok though.

And two spare miniatures who didn’t make it onto bases.

I went through the best part of 2 bottles of Valhalan Blizzard to base these guys; not sure I did as good a job as the first time round but still. It’s also my first time working with Vallejo Wood Grain, and honestly I’m not sure whether I like it, or I think it just looks like unevenly applied paint.

I may repaint these wooden bits eventually if I can’t make up my mind.

I really pressured the lead pile to come up with the constituent miniatures. Battlefront really doesn’t support some of its ranges particularly well and I had to beg suitable-ish panzershrek teams off of friends, and acquire third party winterised panserfausts from Peter Pig. Thus the suspiciously German greatcoated figures you’ll see scattered throughout. Dans le neige, tout les chat sont blanc. There’s a lot of duplicate models as well, 10 of the same guy kneeling working the bolt on his rifle. I didn’t want to purchase any more minis, so I’m literally down to a handful of Lahti anti-tank riflemen and some models that are very obviously servicing artillery pieces.

That’s 121 15mm infantry at 2 each for 242

+ 2 unbased if you’re feeling generous for 4

13 crew served weapons if you include the MGs for 52

3 tanks for 24

And 20 bonus points for a total of 342

Which by my standards is something of a points bomb!

Here’s the entire – and complete for now – Finnish collection

But wait, that’s not all, please see my following posts for the projects that I worked on to unwind from batch painting 123 Finns, plus armour, all at once/while waiting for texture paint to dry.

Fantastic unit, I do love a Finnish army and these are cracking. I won't comment on the number of posts you have today, but hoarding posts is not a good trait