I have been a Bolt Action enthusiast since the beginning of its story, and up to now I had collected a Yankee (Hey now! - J) and a Green Devils (i.e., the German paratroopers that are so badly treated by the rules) army. However, the fantastic Baker Company Kickstarter raised my interest on the Soviet hordes of the early war, so I started putting together an early Russian army with the core clearly made up of Baker Company winter war figures.
I received the first wave around Christmas and I really liked both the variety of poses, and the early uniforms.
After a warm bath, I organized some squads and quickly started painting them.
The Russian horde after the bath is pictured above.
Intimidated by the size of the horde, but eager to use them, I opted for a fast painting procedure that allowed me to paint a squad quickly. I used as an inspiration the nice video on fast painting Russians from the Warlord website, and used as a finisher the good old Army Painter dark tone dip. This is mainly to provide additional protection to the paint on the lead figures, since it can tend to deteriorate quite quickly.
I started with a greenish color for the overcoats then gradually switched to more appropriate grey and brown shades. This, combined with the considerably large number of poses in the pack, overall give a quite varied aspect to the army and I like it very much. I intentionally used bright red for the red star and light brown for the rifle to give color contrast that looks fine on the tabletop.
Below you will find an overview of the whole range we received in the first wave of the Kickstarter:
I am still in doubt about using some metallic color on the rifles, and the I will most probably go for muddy bases like those that I did for the prone figures. Snow bases are very nice but on the typical green table look really odd in my opinion! I will, however, use them for the Finnish that came with winter dress.
As many other participants of the Kickstarter, I am eager to receive the next lots - with its horde of tanks! - so as to complete the army and chase the German invaders from the Motherland.
In a future post I will cover the reinforcements to this Soviet infantry that I got from the last BTD big sale!
Garga
(Let ol' Garga know what you think of his work over on the forum! - J)
