From DallasE: Keep on Truckin' (Fraud)(235 points)

So this week's submission is trucks. Lots of trucks. These were in a bag behind my stairs for a year or two but the current winter Russians project added some impetus to get them painted.

I undercoated them black, then sprayed them with a great paint - Krylon camouflage green. It's a light olive-y green but comes down nicely when washed with Agrax Earthshade. I love this colour for Russian vehicles, especially Cold War and modern stuff. But I thought it would be a suitable colour for "generic" WW2 truckin'. I washed the models with Agrax Earthshade AND Nuln Oil before sponging on the Corax White winter camo.

The trucks are perfect transport for the Soviet infantry, especially these ones based on 20mm squares. Six of 'em fit perfectly in the bed of the trucks.

While I was painting the trucks I snuck in another Maxim gun and crew for the winter Soviets.

Nice metal models, from Warlord Games of course.

While I was painting the winter trucks I thought I would also do the rest of the ones I had left to do. The great thing about these trucks is that they're so generic looking they could really pass for use in most WW2 forces, as long as you squint a bit. So I painted these up in camo green washed with AE and NO so they can be used in a Soviet WW2 force, as well as for Americans or Brits in a pinch. I painted a bunch a couple years ago in a desert tan for NW Africa usage on either side.

This is where we get to the Circle theme: Fraud. The models look pretty good in the pictures right? Like they were built from a kit? Or maybe cast in resin? But flip 'em over and you see the real deal. These are basically dollar-store toys, flimsy plastic junk. But when you paint them I think they look OK. And they're trucks, after all... they are never going to be the focus of anyone's wargames table. So I figure saving a bit on these makes sense.

They do look decent though I think!

Here's one of them with the Bad Squiddo Soviet traffic controllers.

Points:

10x 28mm vehicles        200

3x 28mm infantry            15

Fraud Circle bonus          20

Total                               235 points
 

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Fabulous lorry borne troopers Dallas! Your winter effects are fabulous - frosty but not overburdened by ice and snow. Dollar store or no, its very effective indeed! They might be soft skinned vehicles but anyone is going to be challenged to shoot 10 of them off the table before they can unload. Great job!

- Paul

From DallasE: Bolt Action Soviet Weapons Teams and Support Group (Violence)(70 points)

Continuing with the winter WW2 Soviets project, I just finished the Winter Weapons Teams from Bolt Action. The box contains six models - a sniper team, a flamethrower team, and a light mortar team. 

Last up first, here's the mortar team. Warlord says this is the 50mm mortar but there's no bipod as you'd usually see. Hmmm.

There's a sniper team in the pack. The models are the new Warlord Resin (tm?) and are actually pretty good. No warping or flexibility to speak of, fortunately.

The team includes a sniper with an M1891/30 scoped rifle and a spotter with a PPsH-41 submachinegun.

Lastly we've got a flamethrower team, just the thing to stay toasty on a cold snowy battlefield! The uniforms on these guys are Vallejo Model Color 70.988 Khaki, pretty much an exact match to GW Zandri Dust. They were washed with good old Agrax Earthshade and re-highlighted Khaki.

Nice detail on the flamethrower. All of the models are one-piece with "puddle" bases - but I cut the base off the flamethrower operator.

From the Support Group there's the 82mm mortar team. Not enough room for 'em all on the round base so I put one on the square.

These models are metal of course and are quite nice.

Lastly I painted the radio operator from the Support Group, also metal.

As for the Circles, I'm gonna grab the low-hanging 20 points bonus for "Violence". Pretty self-explanatory I guess, all of these models are pretty much violence-oriented!

Points:

10x 28mm infantry = 50 points

Violence Circle = 20 points

Total = 70 points

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Your Rooskies are really coming along Dallas! Yhey will be a force to be reckoned with when completed. Looking forward to seeing what comes next (I have some small side bets with myself going....hope I win!)

- Paul

 

From JeremyM 15mm Winter War Russians [Limbo] [130 points]

Hi all, I am starting off the challenge this year by going back to a stalled project from several years ago. I had painted up a whole whack of 15mm Winter War Finns several years ago but have no Russians to face off against them.

This is a Strelkovy Company from Flames of War for early war Russians that fought against the Finns in the Winter War. I struggled to figure out what colour to paint them. I’ve seen photos mostly of re-enactors and drawings from various books  as well as the box art for the figures that use 3 different colours, a dark grey, a khaki, and a light green. Unfortunately, those black and white photos of the war, don’t shed much light on which one to pick! For now this company will have light green as the predominant colour but I may decide to mix it up for future infantry which is always a nice way to help differentiate different formations. I’ve never been one to focus too heavily on historical accuracy when painting anyway, as long as its playable all I care about. And since in various theatres of this war the Russians had a massive numerical superiority (12 to 1 in some cases) I got a lot more of these fellows to paint up in the future.

15mm Winter War Soviets

For the photos you primarily see flames of war stands with 4-5 infantry with rifles, complete with those great early war hats with the nice big red star on them. There are also a couple of command stands with flags, a mortar stand and a lmg stand. Decent variety to make up the company.

I really got inspired to undertake this after living in Thunder Bay Canada. There is a large population of Finnish immigrants and I was actually a member of their historical society when I lived there a decade ago. I heard a few stories of Finnish history and the winter war ‘david and goliath’ fight was pretty inspiring how so few could hold out against so many. The other really interesting thing about the Finns during this period was how they went from being beloved by the western allies, to a hated opponent as they later joined with Germany against the Russians. Very interesting reading some of the accounts of Finns in Thunder Bay during this period and how public opinion swung so quickly against them after all the support.

I can’t wait to tackle some of the whacky Russian tanks from this period next. And we wonder were 40k got its inspiration from!

55 15mm figures 110 points + 20 points for Limbo = 130 points

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Hi Jeremy

Welcome back to the Challenge! I'm to see you  post before the "dreaded cull" 

As you know, since I'm not really a gamer, the nuances of uniforms  are lost on me BUT I can comment on how f@#$% cold the soviets look and the snow bases do 'look' like snow.

Congrats on 110 points of mini guys and 20 points for Limbo

Looking forward to your next post!

Sarah

From DallasE: More Winter Soviets and Cyberskulls! (Heresy) (75 points)

Continuing on with the Winter Soviets theme I'll start the post with one from Warlord Games and two from Bad Squiddo.

This is the "company commander" from Warlord's Winter Soviet support pack. It's an OK model but pretty lightly armed with only a pistol, seems to run counter to the current Bolt Action meta where command squads are used like fighting units and are pretty heavily armed. But I'm not one for "metas" in historical games (or any games really) so it's OK by me. 

(Paul - as a Soviet Officer, he only needs a pistol anyway, a key part of his mandated 'reinforcement by example' leadership style...)

The sculpt is nice but scales somewhat larger than the Warlord plastic infantry. It's no problem if your command squad is all metal, but once you add in the plastics it can get a little weird.

 

Bad Squiddo is of course well-known for their ranges of female figures and they have some cracking Soviets on offer. The last time I was in Fargo I picked up a pack of their excellent Traffic Controllers from FLGS Little Big Wars. LBW carries lots of Annie's stuff but unfortunately they didn't have the winter snipers or Lyudmila Pavlichenko packs in stock. But these are very nice models too.

 

This traffic controller carries a Mosin-Nagant.

Her companion is flagging traffic. These are very well-sculpted models, just full of character. They're somewhat larger than the Warlord plastic infantry too, though.

Anyway she's flagging us on to the Sixth Circle: Heresy.

For that Circle I've painted a group of eight 28mm "not-Cyberskulls" from a 3D printshop. I wanted some more floaty skulls to go into my 40K Sisters of Battle army, and to use in an Inquisitorial gang. And these are pretty nice.

 

I like how the one is sporting a Bishop's mitre, for Pete's sake. That must be heretical on some level...

The others are carrying weapons of various kinds.

The skull on the right is carrying a book. There's purity seals on it so it must be OK.

A couple skully dudes floating along trailing rolls of toilet paper they stepped on in the space-restroom.

The Bishop again. Love this guy.

Anyway, here's the points breakdown:

3x 28mm Winter Soviets: 15 points

8x 28mm floaty cyberskulls: 40 points

Sarah bonus: 20 points (I've clarified this with the Snowlord himself and unfortunately this Bonus is claimed exclusively through the Sarah Serephon/Succubus mechanic transferring you between themes. It can still count toward the Sarah's Challenge though - Paul)

Sixth Circle bonus: 20 points

Total: 95 75 points

Skulls: 8

Cheers!

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Nice Soviets to add to your force Dallas, and I LOVE the Cyberskulls - I'm sure Barks the Skull Lord will be impressed also! 

As you say the one with the mitre is just fab. Clearly he was an Ecclesiarch of some note, though unable to be cannonised because of those incriminating social media posts from the Dark Eldar pleasure palace on Eroticon VI - pity! Perhaps the other skulls are the remnants of his Ministorum crew back in the day too? :-)

- Paul

From DallasE: Warlord Games Winter Soviets (Limbo) (240 points)

Opening the Challenge with an entry just in under the free-fire wire. This is a bunch of models I started before the Challenge so they're suitable for the first Circle - Limbo. 

Earlier this year I spotted a smokin' deal on Warlord Winter Soviets from Meeplemart - it was like $100 less than the price on the Warlord Games website. So as with many hobby projects it started with a "great deal" :-)

Anyway the box came with a plastic KV-1/2 model tank, 80 infantry, and some HQ/mortar/Maxim HMG models. As the first tranche I've painted 40 infantry, a metal Maxim HMG, and one of the HQ models. Colour scheme mirrors the one on the Warlord site. GW Zandri Dust washed Agrax Earthshade for the uniforms, black with Vallejo Dark Rubber for the boots, Celestra Grey washed Nuln Oil for the scarves, Doombull Brown for the belts and leatherwork. Some of the webbing was highlighted with a lighter khaki tone. I'm painting on an assembly line here so not a ton of extra detail. 

This chap with the Molotov cocktail is definitely my favourite but one is probably enough for the platoon :-) 

Anyway, I'm not a huge fan of multipart plastic models but the Warlord ones are tolerable, if you can get them at a deep discount like I did. At regular price it's $68USD for 40 models and at those prices I would buy metal models from Crusader or someone like that. 

But if you get 'em cheap they're OK, even though they have separate arms and weapons. I really prefer the weapons molded onto the arms for ease of assembly and good looks. But these went together mostly OK and look good when painted. Next I'll do another MMG, the mortar, and some command I think.  

Scoring:

40 x 28mm infantry = 220 points

Limbo bonus = 20 points

Total = 240 points

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Welcome back to the Challenge, Dallas! 

I know you are a man of 'The Smokin' Deal', so I had to smile at this entry. Quite the points bomb here! While there may be better figure options out in the market, these Warlord Soviets look all the better for passing by your glue, brush and flock (er, snow). I agree with you Dal, the molotov cocktail guy is excellent. He looks somewhat chagrined having to toss something he'd probably much rather drink...

Great opening salvo Dallas!

- Curt

From FrederickC: Soviet Infantry in Winter Uniforms (197.5 points)

 

Another contingent of defenders of Mother Russia was completed this week, specifically 42 Soviet Winter Infantry from the Warlord Games boxed set of the same name. The set consists of five identical sprues of eight figures, plus three weapons sprues, enough to build 40 miniatures. I transferred two additional figures from the Siberian Veterans I did last week to beef up the numbers a bit. They are dressed in either greatcoats or quilted jackets, many wearing mitts, or having them dangle from 'idiot strings'. The selection of heads provided a lot of choice from a variety of fur hats, pilotkas, or helmets, with many of the faces wrapped in scarves. The only criticism I have with the set is that the weapons sprues don't provide enough basic Moisin-Nagant rifles. but I was able to make up the shortfall by carving away telescopic sights, or grabbing rifles from the sprues that came with the box of Siberian Veterans.

These were all painted in my usual style, starting with a dark brown primer. All the basic colours were painted using Vallejo acrylics, followed by a coat of Army Painter Strong Tone Quickshade. At times it was a little tricky getting the brush into the deep recesses. I might try a method I saw on YouTube where all the parts were painted while still on the sprue and then assembled. I used AK Diorama products 'Snow' and 'Snow Sprinkles' on the bases to give them that frosty look. The dead grass is Vallejo Scenery 'Wild Tuft - Beige'. The end result is a platoon of three identical 10 man sections, each with a submachine gun, a mix of Moisin-Nagant rifles and carbines,  a DP-28 light machine gun team, plus some hand grenades and Molotov cocktails, and a section of 9 conscripts armed with rifles, all led by a senior officer with a pistol. Add to that a PTRS-41 or Simonov anti-tank rifle team, ready to engage the Fascist invaders. 

The Bolt Action rules for Soviets allow a free section of conscripts as one of the force selection options, or I can use them to increase the strength of the other three sections up to 12 men, so this group will provide me with some options on the wargames table of either bigger sections, or a free group of 'Grot'. They will be teamed up with my Soviet Winter Support Group and my whitewashed T-34 for a battle in the snows of Russia.

 

A platoon of Soviet infantry in Winter uniforms

Squad No. 1

Squad No. 2

Squad No. 3

Veteran Officer and Anti-tank Rifle Team

Призывники Фосетт-авеню

The points being claimed are as follows:

39.5 x 28mm foot figures @ 5 points each = 197.5 points

(I am counting the five prone figures as two and a half)

This is the last of my Soviet infantry. The last of the Soviets? Stay tune for next week's submission.

Nice work on these Winterized Soviets Frederick.  I like the basing with the light snow and dead grass clumps.  Don't mock the so called Idiot Strings, IMHO the idiot is the one who runs around the house looking for the second mitt or leaves home with only half a set.