Even More 1:72 Soviet Tank Crews

The first figure on the first picture is from Orion, the rest of the figures is made by LW. After all these minis are painted, now it's time to continue to finish some other stuff that I already started with.

The third picture shows all tank crew figures in a group photo.

Even More 1:72 Soviet Tank Crews

I continued the painting of my Soviet tank crew figures. This weekend I painted some figures of the Russian manufacturer LW or maybe Evolution, I can't find the box right now, but the figures are the same in both sets. The used color are still the same that I use for my other Soviet figures, you can find the list of them here. One of the figures was slightly modified, the guy waving with the bottle got instead of that a new hand with a revolver.

By the way, Plastic Soldier Review has the first pictures of the new Soviet infantry figures from the Plastic Soldier company, you can find them here.

Pegasus/PST 1:72 Soviet ISU-152 With Crew

After two busy weeks I had some time to continue with my hobby. I finished these Soviet heavy self-propelled gun tank ISU-152. The numbers 61 and 62 are fastbuild models by Pegasus Hobbies, but they do not lack as many details as the fastbuild kits from HÄT/Armourfast. The tank with the 60 is a model kit made by East European producer PST, I did not use all parts for this kit to make all three tanks look equal.

The colors that I used for this tanks were Revell Aquacolor Sea green (#36148), mixed 2 parts color and one part alcohol via airbrush, after that I did a wash with Citadel Thraka Green wash (#68-21), then I drybrushed the tanks light with a bright grey color. I sealed them with Revell Aquacolor Clear matte paint (#36102).

The turret number decals were applied with the help of Agama Adhesol. They were included in the PST kit, the propaganda writings on the # 62 came from Peddinghaus Decals, the other decals came fron the spare box.



The track of the tanks were altered with some selfmixed mud, made of white glue, water, coffee and Busch Pine Forest ground cover (#H0 7259). This mix hides the not so detailed tracks very well.



I also managed to paint the Soviet tank crew figures by Orion that I showed in a previous post. Two of the figures were modified, the guy with the flowers got instead of flowers a piece of plastic, looks almost like a gun. The second modification was made on the strange runner. He got a new hand with a revolver from an old Airfix cowboy figure.

The colors I used for this figures were almost the same that I used for my Soviet infantry troops. All I have to do for these guys is to get them a better decorated base.

Update:
Instead of ISU 152 I called this tank ISU 155. I changed the numbers to delete this mistake.

Orion 1:72 Soviet Tank Crew 1943 - 1945

A closer look at the "Soviet tankmen and crew 1943 - 1945" by the Ukrainian manufacturer Orion. They are the newest addition to my growing collection. I read some time ago that they would appear on the market in the near future and now they are availabe.

I think they are a must-have for me (arrgh, more Soviets to paint), and when I found them at the bay on Monday I bought a set of them.

Today the set arrived, therefore let's take a closer look at them:

The box contains three sprues with total 39 figures in 13 different poses. There is almost no flash on the figures and no moulding lines except for on the bases. Three of the minis have no base attached.

The sculpting is very good and the theme is great, before these came out the only other Soviet tank crew figures that were available, were the LW/Evolution set (PSR review) and the Soviet Tank Crew figures of Preiser (On the way review).

There are two poses in this set that I do not like so much, it are the running mini in the first row (the man in the middle), he does not look natural. Second is the third figure in the second row. Why does he hold his gun to the side like a gangsterrapper?

All of the figures wear the standard tank crew helmet and most of them wear overalls, only three of them wear trousers and jackets. As you see on the picture above I splitted these figures into three different groups:

Maintenance poses:
A guy in running pose (could be combat,too), man with a big crowbar, a man running with a canister, and a guy with a wrench.

Combat poses:
A binocularist, a kneeling fig that fires his pistol, another kneeling fig with pistol, two crew men armed with PPsH, and a crewman with a pistol.

Parade/victory poses:
A fig leaning against something, a fig in parade pose for the tank hatch, and a mini that is waving a bunch of flowers.

The last picture shows some of the Orion figs compared with the tank crew minis by LW/Evolution. The LW figures are nice but in an ugly color, that you hardly see the details. For a closer look on the detail of the LW minis, check out the PSR link in the text above, they got their minis in black plastic where you can see some more.

Orion did a fine job with these set. There are only a few Soviet tank crew figure sets on the marketThese minis are a welcome addition to our hobby. They will look great when they get painted. But even the LW minis will look good when they get a good paintjob. But not in the next weeks, it's summer and I don't paint anything because in my hobbyroom it is alltime almost 30 degrees (Celsius).
However I have still a lot of fresh stuff lie arround that I will do some more small reviews for you. A little lookout for the next post, I will write some lines about the new 28mm figures of British manufacture Mantic.

Update:
I messed this up while reformatting, sorry to say, but I can not find the pictures from this post. This are the best pictures I have, but you can visit Plastic Soldier review to get a close look at the minis.

More Painted 1:72 Soviet Infantry

I continued the work on my Soviet Infantry forces. The colors are still the same that I showed in this post with one little addition. My local toy store has now the Revell Aquacolors in its sortiment.
For the officer's hats, their jackets and the rolled coats of the normal infanterists I used Revell Aquacolor Dark Earth (# 36182).

One of my six mortar crews.

From left to right:
converted officer (see here), a Revell figure with a Preiser (?) crate and the Italeri mortar gunner with a new head.


From left to right:
Airfix officer with the head of the Pegasus Russian Summer infantry, Revell LMG soldier with a new head and new legs, Revell grenade thrower with the arm/rifle of the Italeri Soviet grenade thrower and the sniper of the Revell Soviet infantry box.


From left to right:
converted officer (see here), Dimestore binocular officer, Airfix Soviet grenade thrower with new head and new grenade from his Italeri comrade and a Pegasus Summer Soviet with a new head.

This is what I already finished.

This is what I still have to paint.

I am waiting for some more figures that I ordered but his will take two weeks until they arrive. And off course I am still waiting for the new Soviet infantry figures of The Plastic Soldier Company that will appear on the market in the next weeks.

Some 1:72 Soviets (Work In Progress)

Beside I was a little ill last week, I think it was some kind of flue, I was very, very lazy. But here're some pictures of the progress I made on my Soviet forces. In one of my first posts in this blog I showed some pictures of the figures, but now they got the final matte varnish and are glued on their bases.

Heavy machine gun support, a DSchK 12,7mm machine gun. The figures are from Mars, the bases are pokerchips. I changed the positions of the gunners arm because it looked poor in its original pose. The structure of the base (and all other bases) is made from a mix of birdsand and pva (white) glue.
I have alternative hmg teams on the workbench, some Maxim guns from the ESCI/Italeri Soviet set.


Some antitank rifle teams. These figurese came from Mars, too. I took the barrel of the at gun from the Revell "Siberian Riflemen" antitank gunner, the handlebar is made of scratch plastic. The base is from some plastic card.


More figures from Mars, this time a 60mm mortar. The legs of the mortar were made of 0,5 mm steel wire. There is a small bag with mortar ammunation for every mortar which I can't find anymore. When they are found they will be added to the base, too.


Some mortars. The smaller mortars are of 80mm calibre, they come from the ESCI/Italeri Soviet Infantry kits. The two larger models are from the Airfix Soviet Infantry set, they shall be the heavy 120mm mortars. I added some static grass to their bases, I still have to do this on all other figures in this post.


Light machine gunners, the are from the ESCI/Italeri Soviet Infantry kit. Every rifle squad has a light machine gun for fire support.

The color that I used were:
Skin:
Citadel Bronzed Flesh, then Citadel Ogrin Flesh wash
Uniform:
Citadel Desert Yellow, then Citadel Devlan Mud wash
Helmet:
some Hobby Color green mixed with a little part of white
Equipment:
different brown tones of Citadel, Vallejo and Hobby color
Boots:
Citadel Chaos Black
Heavy weapons:
Tamiya XF 5 Flat Green
Other colors:
Citadel Burnished Gold, Citadel Blood Red, a selfmixed dark silver/steel tone, and some more colors I can't remember.

Now I'm almost finished, only 120 figures more to paint, and in the last days I had not much desire for painting figures.
And then there are some tanks, I think there are 6 T34/85, 4 JS-2 and some support vehicles waiting for glue, paint and decals. There is still a lotta work waiting for me.
But there are some old projects finished, tomorrow I will post some pics of my Pegasus German trucks and my scratchbuilt Bergepanzer III.

1:72 Soviet Figure Conversions

Two weeks ago I asked my readers for some help and I am glad to say that I got it. The postman brought me today a letter full of the needed figures.

I have to send out a BIG CHEERS to Hugh from the UK who helped me out with some dimestore figures. Please take a look to his interesting blog about his toy figure collection.
I needed them to strenghen my soviet mortar groups which lacked of officers.


These figures were used to build a kneeling officer with binoculars:
- a cheap Airfix clone soldier with binoculars (upper body),
- the kneeling gunner from the Airfix WW2 Soviet set (lower body), and
- the stupid runner of the ESCI/Italeri WW2 Soviet set (gun and spare magazine).

Sorry about that but I think the ESCI figure is one of the most useless figures that I have, beside the dull ESCI German paratroopers set.

New figure front view

New figure rear view

There is still some flash on the figure but I think I will keep it because it is nearly invisible at this scale. Eventually I will add some more equipment to the figure, I have some sprues of Preiser's German equipment. I have to build 5 more of these figures, then I have all figures I need and I can start with painting at the weekend.
I hope I can animate a frient of mine to help me with painting, he told me that he thinks he can't paint figures in this scale, but I was thinking that too before I made my first tries.

Thank you Hugh, your were a great help for me :D .


Small update picture:

1:72 Soviet Rifle Company (Work In Progress)

After a crazy weekend I found some time to continue the work on my Soviet WW2 army. Following this link which shows the structure of a rifle company I build up my first rifle company. It contains Soviet figures from Airfix, ESCI/Italeri, Revell, Mars and Pegasus.

For the heavy MG squad I have two choices, a squad with 3 Maxim machine guns or 3 12,7mm DSchK machine guns. I made pictures of them but they will be posted in the future. A first older picture can be found here.The squad leaders got new heads from the Pegasus Soviets. All figures are fromRevell except the last one which is from Airfix.Pegasus Soviets with new heads from Italeri and Revell Soviets. The second figure in the row is from Airfix and got a new head from Pegasus and a gun from an Italeri figure.I re-based my 80 mm mortar figures. All mortars were seperated from the figure, it gives me a little more flexibility, because I still do not know which wargame rules I will play. The mortar on the right comes from Airfix, seems like it shall be a heavy 120 mm mortar.There is still a lot of work to do, I counted all figures and I will have to paint a lot of figures. And not to forget the Soviet figures from the Toy Soldier Company which will appear on the market in the end of march. And then I have some Revell Winter Soviets, that need basing and some paint.

By the way, the first soviet hardware has arrived (greetings to the Dragon's Cave Shop). These Pegasus T34/85 are fine models with nice details and a fair price.

Some Help Needed

My last Soviet reinforcements have arrived. Only the Pegasus Summer Infantry is still on its way, I hope they will arrive tomorrow. If they are here, I will start to build up and paint my first big bunch of figuren. A lot of conversions are or will be done, you can find some first pictures of my Soviet troops in this and this post.

But now I have a little problem. I need some cheap Hong Kong figures that I can't get here in any shop. I went from shop to shop but I did not get them. So maybe some of my readers can help me.
I am searching cheap Hong Kong copies of old Airfix "Russian Infantry" figures. Airfix produced them in 1:32 but they never came out in 1:72. Some of the poses appeared in the "Red guards" set of ESCI but this is a long time out of sale.

I need one pack of cheap Russians or at least 10 to 15 guys with binocular from this set, maybe some German reader can help me, I would be responsible for the costs. The figures are needed for conversations like this one (the figure in the middle).

The figures are sold in packages like this one.

I need 10 - 15 of this figures.

If you think that you can help me, please send an email to ww2modelzone(at)hotmail(dot)com, maybe I have figures or stuff that can help you. Or someone can send me a link to some shop, but only German shops please.

1:72 Soviet Mortars (Work In Progress)

Here are some pictures of the WW2 Soviet infantry, on which I am working. I made some basic painting on them, I did not finish the webbings, bottes and skin yet. I have still no idea how to paint the bases of them, maybe they will get some urban style.

Light mortar (Mars)

Heavy mortar (ESCI/Italeri + Revell)

1:72 Soviet Infantry Basic Painting

continuing with the infantry

Light Machine gunner with DP LMG (ESCI/Italeri)

Heavy machine gunners with 12,7mm DSchK (Mars)

Antitank rifle team with PTRD (Mars)

1:72 Soviet Infantry Based And Primed

I am building a WW2 soviet army for wargaming. The most figures are from Revell and Italeri Soviet Infantry sets. A handful of figures are from Revell Siberian Rifleman set and some other figures and guns come from Mars.

The hole bunch...only the antitank rifles and the lying gunners are not primed and based.

This Soviet fighters are based on 1 Euro cent coins. The structure on the base is a mix of PVA Glue and sand. The big round bases are pokerchips from TeDi, 26 pieces for 1 Euro. All other bases are made from plastic sheet.


Some minor modifications were made. The mortar soldier got a new head. The stupid runner figure from Italeri got one arm lowered. And two Airfix soldiers with new heads and weapons.

The Airfix kneeling gunner with a new torso from some Dimestore Soviets and the Mars Anti tank rifleman with new barrel and handgrip.

The next step is to give all unpainted figures a black base coat.