Flames of War - WW2 Soviet Rifle Battalion

Howdy all,

I thought I would post some progress pics of my Soviet Rifle Battalion...I'm starting with the headquarters element for the Battalion and headquarter troop elements.  I've always toyed with the idea of fielding a Soviet force for World War 2 Flames of War...I've taken my time over the past few years and collected a few models here and there.

The club is running a Firestorm Bagration campaign, and I thought it would provide me with some motivation to get these fellows up and painted.  Now admittedly, I have opted to be a filler player for the campaign, so I can equally be Russian or German...but if I play my cards right I may be able to field some freshly painted troops.

Ultimately, my goal is to have a Penal Battalion...which with a few subtle changes can become a Rifle Battalion for mid or late war with very little effort.

Anywho, I hope you enjoy the pics...take care.

Funny enough, I had bought this pack of Flamethrower troops several years ago now...I think not long after the River of Heroes book came out...I had visions of a Sapper battalion...

 

Instead, here I am today, opting them in as Battalion HQ troops in a Penal Battalion...I have decided to go with a Stalingrad-esque setting for my bases...it should work with nearly anywhere in the East Front or Berlin...

 

The figures painted up quit quickly and I am using Citadel texture paint for the main layer for the bases...I'm using sprue cuts and Astrogranite Debris to build the rubbly looking bases...it takes a bit more Citadel product than I would like...but it does make basing go quicker for me...

The only issue I had with the figures was that I found the sculpts to be somewhat 'wonky'...the faces and body proportions looked rather small compared to other battlefront figures...I think they come from the same era as the PAVN infantry...a little 'truer' to 15mm but a little emaciated at the same time...

 

I recently purchased the 'all plastic' Strelkovy Company box and after painting up some Battalion troops, I though the command teams should be next...the Battalion headquarters group is 2 x command stands along with 1 x kommissar stand.  To signify the Battalion HQ, I included some brickworks on the bases and painted them up red... 

 

For the first Company, I elected to include some 'stovepipe' type cylinder pieces to differentiate the troops on the table...

 

Overall, I like how the plastic troops paint up...prepping them while they're on the sprue helps save some time, there are some clumsy/clunky pieces to the figures from the molding so you end up with oversized arms and thicker than normal tool handles and odd shaped puches in areas that would be considered 'under the shadow'...I'll try to show some solid examples in future...however, the cost for the box and ALL THE FIGURES that come with it are pretty awesome...so, tradeoffs...

 

To round things off, I thought I'd include a couple of sniper teams...just in case I go with the Rifle Battalion structure...so, I had the Zeytsev pack kicking around and thought I'd paint a few teams up...

 

 

Painting so far in 2017:

Painted:

28mm - 76

15mm - 54

Bought:
28mm - 108 (+11, I bought some scatter terrain from Fandom II and FDB...a couple of Reaper bookshelves and some HD printed terrain, IIRC)
vehicle - 1

15mm - 132
vehicle - 7

 

Overall PROGRESS: -118