Rügen'46 Gangs Of Sassnitz (2) Сибирские ветераны

For my last years first game of "Rügen'46" I had planned that we would first play a simple dungeon, using only two figures per player, to get warm with the rules. Followed by a simple round of racing, some lines about that game can be found in this post, the third and final part added some more units to the game for each player.

After I showed off two squads of German troops in powerarmour (this post), today I am going to show you the (Neo)Soviet forces which were used.

The commissar in the middle of the pictures obove was one of the squadleaders for the Neo-Soviet forces, just as Karl Heinz von Diskowitz was for his faction. The figure was taken from the Warlord Games "Siberian Veterans" box, on which I took a closer look at in this post, and painted in a similar scheme as all Soviet figurs that can be found on this blog.

Sorry to say, but I can not remember which was the second figure in that team, that is why he is accompanied by the squadleaders of another faction on these pictures.

The two female figures are the leaders of the Soviet factions forces, the figure on the left side is a miniature of Mariya Oktyabrskaya made by Stoessis Heroes, reviewed in this post, the figure right of the commissar was also made by Stoessi, it is a miniature of the Soviet sniper Lyudmilla Pavlychenko, which was (as Mariya Oktyabrskaya) a historical person.
I think, that I may repaint them when I will have the time for that.

Next we have one of the fireteams, taken just as the commissar from the "Siberian Veterans" box too. In the third part of the game, the two Soviet females got five of the veterans as an additional troop. These faction represented what was left of old Mother Russia.

Since I can not say which five figures I took, I made pictures of all of them. Please note, that there are some more figures included in the box.

But at least I think, this guy was not included in the game.

The next squad was another faction from the East. In Stalingrad a new government was made when the old world changed forever in Sassnitz in the year 1946.

Guided by comrade comissar, for the Neo-Soviet faction I choosed to use my modified Plastic Soldier Company Soviet Infantrists minis. I can not say which of them were used, but you can find some pictures of them in this post. Maybe I will get a single sprue of them in the future to give them a small review.

As usual, things not always are happening as supposed, and I did not find the time to finish the kits I wanted to this weekend, but today I managed to finish them, and they look great. The templates for the cards for them, they shall be used as custom units for "TANKS", will get finished tonight, that I can make a testprint tomorrow after work and them publish them via this blog.

Rügen'46: Нападающие, готовые к атаке

Last weekend I spent some time to rework the Plastic Soldier Company Russian infantry I painted a while ago. Even when I was happy with them when the were finished, in the moment I saw the Westwind Production SHS heads, see this post, I knew what would be to do with them.

I messed up the pictures.

 there are six figures missing and 

six figures two times on the pictures above

Heads were rolling like at the French Revolution. After all minis were headless, I drilled holes for the new heads, which were glued with UHU Hart. This fine stuff needs some time to dry but after it is dried there is a strong connection.

The modifications went without big complications, the most heads were easy to remove, some poses needed more efford, because of some hands and guns attached to the helmets.

I wanted to save some time, that is why the minis in firing poses look a little weird. But I did not want to repaint the whole mini, what I would have to do if I had to pose the gasmask filter a little more appropriate.

The paintjob was fairly simple. The mask, tube, and filter were painted with Revell Aquacolor. Then I made two black dots for the eyes, followed by a lighly thinned black wash. The helmet was painted before I sealed the new head.

Luckily there was almost no damage to the paint at the necks where I removed the heads. I used AK Russian primer for the new heads, that color concealed all messed up spots arround the necks.

Finally I found a use for my (weird) ww2 styled miniatures, and are only four weeks to go before these guys will roam through the streets of Sassnitz. But before they can do this, there is a lot of work to do.

Tomorrow is Sunday what means: turn off the mobile, ignore the doorbell, time for some models to build or paint. This time I have a clear goal, I have some built Amera Plastic Mouldings ruins in the basement that will get a new look.

Warlord Games 28mm Siberian Veterans for Bolt Action

 

 

A closer look at the 28 mm "Siberian Veterans" made by Warlord Games for their game "Bolt Action". The box contains enough plastic and metal parts to build 34 figures.

By the way, at the moment I am not interested in Bolt Action, but I always can use some more Russian soldiers for future projects.

First a look at the plastic parts, if you want a "real" review, you may stop reading now and search something better on google, here I only take a closer look at a pretty random piece from my collection to give other potential buyers and collectors  pictures and some basic informations.

The plastic parts are the same sprues as in the "Soviet Infantry" box from Warlord Games. There are four identical sprues for the figures, from each frame you can build 8 figures. There is a variety of heads and equipment as you can see on the picture.

Then there are 3 identical sprues with Soviet weapons. They offer a great selection of pistols, rifles and automatic guns, this will not only be useful for equipping Soviet soldiers.

Also there are a sprue with 25 bases, six single bases and the instructions leaflet. When you build all figures from the box, there will be some bases left for the bitsbox.

But I mainly did not buy this box for the plastic parts, so let us take a look at the more interesting parts that came with this box:

First of all there are two metal miniatures, a Soviet comissar using a megaphone to motivate the troops, and a soldier pulling a Maxim machine gun.

The new heads for the veterans. There are two different versions, you get two of each what makes 24 heads. This is not enough for the 33(34) minis from the box , but maybe the rest of the plastic Soviets will get zombified.

Not only I ordered the heads from the last post, there are still two boxes of SHS heads I want to show you in a future post.

A sprue with five backpacks and the first three pairs of arms, the first equipped with a carbine with bayonet attached, the second pair holds a German MP38 or MP40, the last pair of arms is holding a carbine with a rifle grenade. This is a nice addition

The last two items on the picture are an arm with an ammo box for the Maxim machine gun, and an arm holding a knife.

The final picture shows the sprue with the rest of the arms. This sprue contains four pairs of arms, two with carbines and two with the PPSH machine pistol. Just as all the other parts they are a bit of heroic scale but they do not look like boybuilders.

The plastic parts are the usual great quality as all plastic minis Warlord Games offers for their Bolt Action range.

All metal parts will need some cleanup to remove some minimal mould lines and the residue from the casting process, but  the metal figures are nicely modelled and casted without any flaws, just as the rest of the metal parts. The faces of the heads may look a little cartoon-like but I like that.

All in all, this box offers a great value for its price. When you build all miniatures, you will have plenty of bits for other projects, especially the weapons sprues are very useful for every Eastern Front project. This shall not be a review but thumbs up for this box, I can only recommendate this box.

The Friesian Summer is still ongoing, my arm is better now, and tomorrow is Sunday, which means I will spend my time on some models. I still don not know what I will build or paint, but the Sunday is reserved for it.

28mm Mariya Oktyabrskaya By Stoessis Heroes

 

A closer look at the 28mm Mariya Oktyabrskaya miniature(s) produced by Stoessis Heroes. I bought this blister directly from him at the Hamburg Tactica this year. (If you read this, please make a Rodger Young miniature)

It contains 2 metal miniatures, one standing and one sitting pose. Also included is a small text on the back of the insert about the historical person on which the minis are based.

As you can see on the picture above one hand of the figure on the left side needs to be glued to the body, for the picture below I used whiteglue for a temporal connection.

The quality of the models and the casting are very good, like all other miniatures from Stoessi. If you want some nice additions for your 28mm ww2 armies, I recommend his shop.

The last pictures shows that the miniatures are true 28mm. At the moment I do not have any suitable miniatures for comparison, but in my opinion their measurements would make them fit in any Soviet Bolt Action army. And the left model seems to be ready to smash some heads.

I am waiting for a box of Warlord Games plastic Soviet figures, when they arrived I will make some comparison pictures with some other miniatures.

If you want to know more about Mariya Oktyabrskaya you can read the Wikipedia article about her. The English translated Russian entry contains not only more informations than the English one, it even has a picture of one of her "Боевая подруга" (Fighting Girlfriend) T34 tanks.

You can see Mariya Oktyabrskaya on the right side of the picture, looking into the camera. To build this tank it seems I need both Rubicon T34 kits to to get the matching hull and tower.

I always wanted to keep any advertising out of this blog but sometimes there are some shops worth to be mentioned. I do not receive any bonus for this.

28mm Russian Infantry And Guns By The Plastic Soldier Company

Some years ago I ordered each one sprue of Plastic Soldier Company's 28mm Russian "Infantry in Summer uniform", "Infantry heavy weapons" and "45 mm AT gun". Then they were stored somewhere deep in a box (like most of my modelling stuff).

I recently found some time to paint them. The uniform color was the rest of my old GW Desert Yellow, the helmets got some generic green and most leather was painted with Citadel Snakebite Leather. The skintone comes from Pegasus.

The final steps before basing were some skintone washes followed by a 50/50 mix of  Armypainter strong wash and War-Ter®, and sealing the figures with Revell Aquacolor Farblos matt.

update:
In this post all minis got new heads with helmets and gasmasks

Italeri 1:72 Winter Soviet Infantry And Other Minis

I wanted to continue this blog after more than 7 years and while I was preparing a new post, I found this unposted draft from the past.

This assortment of Soviet ww2 infantry is from Italeri but I see at least one mini from another manufacturer. I think these figures and many more are somewhere hidden in a box.

See some new stuff in the coming post.

Zvezda 1:72 "Art of Tactics" Soviet 122mm Howitzer

I wanted to continue this blog after more than 7 years and while I was preparing a new post, I found this unposted draft from the past.

The gun and it's crew and the infantry troops come from Zvezda's "Art of tactics" and went well together (as far I remember). I think there are more built and painted Zvezda guns and mini somewhere in my old stuff .

Orion 1:72 Anti Air Quad Maxim And DSHK

Here are some pictures of the new Soviet figure sets by Orion, "Soviet Quad Maxim AA MG and Crew" (#72037) and "Soviet DShK AA MG and Crew" (#72038).

First the Maxim Quad, it can be used well for early war scenarios, the figures wear their field hats and are armed with rifles, the equipment of them is mostly light.

All figures are out of the box, the only modification was to base the lieing rifleman, he got a new base and is now shooting straight. The figures are painted in my usual Soviet color style, the colors I used can be found in this post.

The gun itself was a tough build, I can't remember that I ever used more glue on a gun than on this, and my personal carpet monster got a new sacrifice, that's why the gunsight is missing.

The DshK kit is more a late war set, all figures wear helmets and the gunners are equipped with the PPSh machine gun which depicted in the later war.

These figures were painted in my Soviet scheme, too.

The machine gun was build without any problems.

One of these two kits had a lot of flash and mould lines, but I can't remember which of them, but it made no fun to build the quad Maxim.

Update:
Booth sets contain 3 identical sprues each with 5 different figures and one gun. Pictures of the unpainted sets and sprues can be found on Plastic Soldier Review.

Pobeda 1:72 Dead Soviet Infantry

 

The figure above is from the Pobeda Set "Die in Stalingrad" (#72-101) which contains some resin figures and a vac-formed base.
The stretcher is made of steelwire and aluminium foil.

This pile of bodies comes from the same Pobeda kit. I think this is one of the strangest figures in my collection.

Booth Pobeda figures needed a lot of sanding, on the pile of dead I used some putty to fix the worst airbubble holes.

Hmmm, no comment. The figure is the dead one from the Pegasus Summer Soviets, the ladder comes from Airfix. The rest was built from scratch.