"Growing Resistance" - New Enfilade Insurgents

Time to add some more shameless advertising for my own range of miniatures, after continous presentation of Elhiems great Soviet Range.

I´ve finally managed to invest some time into painting up some of my latest releases, a mix from the two new Insurgent sets.  Painted and put into a nice banner for my website.

If you´re interested in the minis click on the banner to go straight to the shop.
Beware though, the product pictures are not yet up to date as I need to paint the remaining three Insurgent figures - right now the product pics are looking rather ugly, but that is about to change very soon...

"Push through!" - Soviet Infantry

This is the final post about Soviets in a while (unless I finish painting the Support Weapons or the vehicles) and actually, just more of the same.

Again, we see a mix of the two painting techniques - figures in the background and on the left are washed, the leader and the two men on the right are shaded without wash.

So, time for more background info:

I´ll be playing these Soviet forces in an attempt to get more playtesting for Regular vs. Regular engagements with Code Red, the modern ruleset that I am still working on.  Somehow playing Russians vs. USA does not feel as thrilling when set in modern times compared to a Cold War Setting.  Furthermore, I´ve long been invested in the setting emotionally (when starting Force on Force, I decided to play Afghanistan and not Cold War, but building up Cold War Forces was planned right from that time on, when I first re-entered wargaming in 2012) - and the British Units were already set up.

After finishing the infantry, more vehicles are required. I´ve already assembled some BTR-80 transports for my Motorized Infantry.

Apart from that, all I need to go hot is better terrain, especially some buildings for central Europe. I´ve seen some H0 railway model builds in action on another table I recently played on, and I think it´s a valid option to consider. They´re not 100% correctly sized, but they suit about right  - and with a slightly distorted ground-scale it could be a cheap way of building a nice table.

"Cease Fire" - Soviet Infantry

And we ´re back with more Soviet infantry!

Hope it doesn´t get boring?

By now you might wonder why there are so many rifleman but barely any support weapon.  Well...
Again, the available poses by Elhiem didn´t suit my taste. 
This time, I started sculpting some support weapons for real as the required investment was rather limited - I just need some RPKs, RPGs and Grenade Launchers, about 2 or 3 poses should to the job.

And the regular viewer should remember that I already posted pictures of these here a few months ago - in the meantime, the entire set was cast in metal and is ready to be painted - just didn´t finish them yet.

"Spread out and fire at the barn!" - Soviet Infantry

Again returning to the main batch of Soviet Infantry.

I think I said all about the painting process of these, so today I´ll focus on the surrounding trivia about this force.

About a year ago I painted some British Cold War Infantry and some self-made East Germans, but somehow I don´t like my own figures anymore (they´re very early sculpting attempts and by now means compatible with my modern quality standards).

The growing discontent with these WarPac troops forced me to make a choice:  Resume playing with these,  pimping the forces or swapping for a different WarPac faction.
Option 1 was out due to the already mentioned discontent.
Option 2 would require either major investment (time and money) into sculpting new figures or purchasing new East Germans. Matt at Elhiem figures released some NVA troops last year, but they don´t suit my taste -  I can´t even tell you why.  It´s a mix of the helmets looking wrong and the fact that Matt has re-used the same dollies/poses one time to many on these guys.  I already have two lines with exactly the same poses  (Taliban + regular Insurgents)...   Combine these two and they are out of the picture. Sculpting also wasn´t an option as my priorites in 2015 did not include Cold War figures.
Though that does not mean that I´ll never sculpt my own NVA troops ;)

And Option 3 finally came along as an associate traded a small pack of Russians on very good terms for items that I didn´t need any more.  They formed the core of my new Soviet Forces  - and I just added some more.


That´s it for today!

"Suppressive Fire!" - PKM Team

These were the latest addition to the Soviet forces, painted as the last batch after all the other infanrymen were finished.

On this team I tried to speed up the process somewhat and experimenting with a mix of painting shadows and washing. Instead of using pre-made washes, I mixed my own acrylic wash with the colors I needed and slapped them into the most recessed areas, carefully selecting the right color for the area i wanted to hit.
The more visible and "important" shadows are still hand-painted however, so these are hybrid figures, but finished within a single painting session  - and still looking good I think.

Next up: More infantry from the main batch.

"Alfa - Advance!" - Soviet Assault Team

And here we go again:

On this picture we can re-examine the contrast between figures painted with different techiques. One the left, we have a single minis from the first batch (washed with oil) and three guys without washes.


On this picture, the contrast is less visible than in the command group.

"Initiate the Assault!" - Soviet Command Group

To demonstrate what I meant with the two different painting styles, here´s a side by side in the form of a Soviet command group.

The two figures on the right were in the first batch I painted using an oil wash over a basecoat-highlight. They are looking quite good, but applying the oil wash is always a bit of a mess, it stinks, needs a lot of time to dry and usually needs some cleanup afterwards.

The figure on the left is one of the later batches with shadows painted by hand. He´s missing the rugged, dirty look of his fellows, but the contrast is less stark on other pics, so I assume some of that is due to the lighting conditions.  You could probably invest some more time to improve the shading and give him a more realistic look.