I played in a tournament with German Pioneers last year and came up against a Soviet player using a mechanized battalion that included a strelkovy horde and scouts. Needless to say the power of scouts moving that strelkovy company 16” and having my Pioneers assaulted on turn 1 was a little unsettling. Losing a fighting withdrawl on turn 2 was not a good time. I had to get me some of those scouts to go with my Soviets.
After I told my tale of woe a buddy purchased this platoon for me. In it were 23 figures, one small base, and four medium bases. Looking at both mid war and late war book I see that I can also have a kommisar in mid war, but that was not included in the package. It is a disappointment to not have everything you need when you open up a package, considering the Soviets have all those komissar add-ons. Luckily, I have a plethora of Soviet infantry that I’ve collected over the years. My rear echelon supplies me with a komissar and an officer with a pistol as well – too bad they didn’t come with the package.
The figures are overall excellent. There was very little flak on the lead and there are a good amount of crevices, folds and small details that paint up well. I have, over the years, used black spray paint (Home Depot $1 – flat black) to prime the figures. It is cheap (best part), covers well, and allows the paint to hold well. When I paint the figures I try to not blob it on allowing the folds to be kept black and the edges between colors black as well.
As I paint many time periods I use general acrylic paints right from the craft store. Great variety and nice price. I mixed Folk Art Honeycomb 942 (Soviet Strelk color) and Americana Avocado (my Soviet Tank and helmet color) to get the base colors. I wanted them a different shade then my Strelk hordes to tell them apart, but still closely resemble them. I’ve added a few spots of ameba camouflage to add some variety.
After painting them and hot gluing them onto the scored based I hot glue a rock or log here or there on the base. I then, carefully, cover the rest of the base including the raised bases of the figures and then cover them in common beach sand. When it dries, I use a little water in a dark brown, let dry, dry brush medium and then light brown on top. Glue on bushes (Woodland Scenics clumps of dark, medium, and light green) and some patches of glue for grass (Woodland Scenics ground cover medium green).