Plastic Soldier Company 15mm Russian Infantry

Apologies for the  hiatus in posting over the last couple of weeks, I've been away and it is a very busy time at work this time of year. Finding today a little bit less 'exciting' than the last five, here we go again.

I bought these figures quite a while ago now (at Triples 2012 iirc) but didn't get around to painting them for ages. One box of of infantry and one of heavy weapons was more than enough for an entire reinforced company using my 'team' type basing with enough surplus figures for individually based commanders and gun crews for my Skytrex 45mm AT guns.

Reinforced rifle company plus 45mm AT and 76mm Field guns.

A figures are a bit monopose, but with all the headgear variations there is a decent variety and they are easy enough to convert as they are hard plastic. I mainly did pose conversions on the officer types to give a bit more variety. The infantry boxes stretched to four rifle platoons (three infantry, one SMG) each with three sections of three elements which will also obviously scale up as companies or battalions for higher level games. I differentiated subunits by headgear (helmet, pilotka or mixed).

SMG section in helmets. As with many wargames figure sets, there are far too many SMGs included so I mixed a few in with the rifle stands as NCOs but also did a full SMG platoon.

Rifle section in helmets. Two rifle stands (one NCO with SMG) plus an LMG team.

Rifle teams in pilotka. The grenade throwing pose is very nice, as is the wary rifleman advancing.

 
The heavy weapons box means these chaps are well supplied with heavy weapons, which again will be useful for heavy weapons elements in higher level games. There is a slightly odd mix and I felt it could do with more Maxims but it is limited by the four sprue format. In the box you get eight AT rifles, four maxims and four each of 50mm, 82mm and 120mm mortars. You don't often see Soviet 50mm mortars, but I can't help thinking four more maxims would have been more useful.
 

Examples of each weapons team: Maxim, prone AT Rifle and 50mm, 82mm and 120mm mortar teams.

Various officer types are included (mainly kneeling junior officers) although there is is only one higher officer in a cap in the typical 'look one way and point in the other' pose so beloved of figure manufacturers. He is accompanied by a female orderly, but again I couldn't help thinking that more proper officers would have been handy. I chopped a few of the figures up to change the arm positions which helped with the variety a bit.

Higher HQ stands, officer figures lightly converted.

Along with gun crews I also made up some engineer stands, useful for both tactical and operational games. They were bodged up from various crew and rifle/SMG figures.

The flamethrower man was converted from an SMG gunner as I really didn't want to buy a whole box of BF flamethrowers.

They were all painted in a fairly simple way.

• Undercoated black, misted with white spray from about 2' up onto the highlights.
• Main coat of Vallejo British Khaki, leather webbing in GW bestial brown, boots black, helmets Russian Green, Plash Palatkas dark earth. 
• Overall inkwash with W&N peat brown ink. 
• Light drybrush with Iraqi Sand to bring out the highlights. The tan drybrush removed the need to paint canvas webbing items seperately. 
• Sealed with Matt vallejo varnish.
• Based on builders sand with static grass clumps.
• Magnetic strip applied to both the underside and a small square on the rear of the base for markers.