From GregB - 20mm WW2 Soviet Rifle Platoon (56 Points)

1/72 WW2 Russians from Plastic Soldier Company

Here is my first entry for the Painting Challenge - a completed rifle WW2 Soviet rifle platoon.  The figures are all from Plastic Soldier Company's 1/72 range.  Some of these were painted prior to the Challenge, but the balance were whipped up over the weekend.

Officers on hex-shaped bases

I have painted a lot of WW2 stuff over the years, but 20mm is all new for me and I'm finding I quite enjoy it.  It is, as Curt and others have expressed, a great "compromise" scale between 15mm and 28mm. I don't think these PSC plastics are the best figures out there - some of the poses look a little odd, more "possible" than "natural", if that makes sense - but I was pleasantly surprised by the detail on them, and you get quite a few figures in each box.  I have enough for a rifle platoon, and I still have a bunch of extra fellows with SMGs to finish up. A good value, and a good way to get started painting a new scale.

NCO on a square base with rounded corners

There are enough figures here to represent a rifle platoon - three 10-man squads, each sporting a 2-man LMG team - and a couple of officers.  The basing will be familiar to anyone here who has followed Curt's system - 20mm rounds for the regular fellows, 20mm squares for NCOs and junior leaders, and 25mm hexes for the senior officers/commanders.  Having the different bases makes it a little easier to determine which figures represent leaders at a glance, important in gaming systems like "Chain of Command".

Ready to defend the Motherland!

My only complaint with these figures is the poses chosen for the LMG gunners - prone (and PSC is hardly the only ones doing this - it is very common).  I know lying prone is a very realistic portrayal and something that happened a lot/all the time in real fighting, but in toy soldier fighting, prone figures are lame, particularly at 20mm scale and above. Prone figures require alternate basing, often much large than others and looking out of sorts compared with the rest of the fellows in the unit.  Every time a prone figure is cast in 20mm scale or larger, I'm pretty sure a baby whale gets kicked.  The only prone figures on a table should be snipers!

PSC figures were surprising with the amount of nice detail for plastic figures; much better than their 15mm size figures

Of course, for skirmish gaming, the only worse sculpt than prone is marching - and sadly, the PSC alternative to the prone LMG team is a pair of fellows marching along like they are having a jolly time.  Again, PSC is not the only one that does this. The marching figures look even more out of place on the table, so they went into the spares bin, while the prone figures got the paint.

20mm has been a lot of fun to paint so far, and I'm looking forward to adding more 20mm WW2 stuff during the Challenge and beyond.

There are 26 figures and 3 MG teams here, but 13 figures and two of the MG teams were painted prior to the Challenge starting, so on whole I think this net of 13 figures and one prone MG team in 20mm should get me 56 points.  

From Curt: Whoa, beautiful work Greg! These Soviet lads are top notch. Your shading on them is very smooth and the basing looks spot on. I've seen some the PSC stuff in other forums and I think I'll have to try some of them out. Nonetheless, I do have some old SHQ German Fallshirmjaegers on the painting desk and when they're finished we'll have to get together for a rumble. 

(As an aside, I always love hearing Greg go off on prone figures. The topic is usually good for about 10 minutes of his very funny, expletive-ridden philosophy of how toy soldiers should look - what you've read above is a much more abbreviated (and cleaner version) of his usual diatribe. I swear if I handed him a hammer in the midst of one of these rants he'd flatten every prone figure in his collection. Here get this: 'Hey Greg, you're a complete tw@t about this 'cause prone figures are not only realistic, but they provide some much-needed variation to the typical upright poses AND you don't have to paint as much as half of them are belly-to-the-base.  And, c'mon, look at them, they're just plain cool: lyin' down and takin' up space n' stuff.' 

There, that should set him off...  Really, what are friends for?)