Zillion men or how I made it through hard labor camp!

Here is the full Soviet infantry finished.

From the box until the last picture, I reckon it took me a bit less than 25 hours

So I am now officially a hard labor Soviet infantry painter. No need to say that I feel important.

In the making of this army were used 11 paints, Autumn grass from Siflor, Winter Tuft from Army Painter, sand from the beach, the Udarny box, an 81mm mortar pack, a Flame Thrower pack, an engineer pack, an artillery HQ pack, an HMG pack and lot's of patience. Mostly lost of patience, breaks and humbleness as to what was on the painting table and what I could do at a time.

Let me introduce you to the comrades:

all pictures are click-able. Before any little petty bourgeois starts pointing thenumber of figures per base, I would like to quote directly from the game editor's webiste:

Since Flames Of War works by teams, the actual number of models on a team’s base doesn’t really matter and [...] three-man teams fight just like a full-strength team. In this case, we simply assume that the three soldiers making up the team are the survivors of many battles. Being the toughest and most skilful (and luckiest) soldiers in the squad, they fight just as well as a bigger squad of less combat-hardened troops. eh eh, how convenient...

So being in line with the official propangada indications, here we go with the battle hardened combat troops.

The Rifle/LMG infantry

Before any bourgeois left starts pointing out that they are not painted to a master piece level, we true comrades of the Soviet union know the quality of the mass of anonymous heroes and reckon that the level of painting is more than adequate for gaming

 

Artillery HQ and observers

Anti-tank rifles attachments

I decided to paint these guys as I notices that they can beef up the infantry company and help them sustain casualties and/or avoid "pins" for cheap.

Flame throwers attachments

Why hesitate taking them and burning the German fascists? I did not paint all the teams and figures from the pack, honestly I have other things to do in life...

HMG attachments

Here again, I did not paint all the HMG teams but only what I am in general buying for my lists. No need to waste the People's energy (myself) in useless activities when the People's time (my time) is scarce.

Same group from the side

This pack is very nice, with good poses.

HQ group

The HQ group with battalion commander on the right, the 2ic in the center appropriately kneeling, and the battalion commissar with his body guards, ahem, aides.

More details of the command group

Before anyone calls me inconsistent, I admit that I painted 3 teams of snipers that I will probably never use as such. However they can nicely double as artillery observers. How good an excuse is that?

81mm Mortars

Here of course, I painted all the teams as the fascists need to take a pounding...

Sapper platoon

Why hesitate taking those tank killers? To tell the truth, I was a bit disappointed by the pack and would recommend to try out the one with the body armor.

Sappers

Udarny SMG

Very good sculpt for the Udarny boys. I was very impressed, good size for the weapons, not exaggerated but not too thin, very impressive facial features that do look slavic, good poses in general. We are far from the cartoonish fever that took the sculptor some time ago.

Remark:
What is interesting is that it takes me 18 hours to paint a full german platoon in camouflaged smocks of 30 figures at my "highest" level. It took me 25 hours to complete 220 figures or so of Soviet infantry.
For some reason I am a big fan of the Soviet PPSH 43 submachinegun and it is the reason why I was interested in painting these late war figures! The sculpting is a nice departing from the crap we have been seeing lately, culminating with the infamous British Paratroopers not to mention the catastrophic re-sculpting of the US paratroopers who had been for long some of the best minis on the market.

What went well:

• I simplified quite a lot the painting, cut the number of figures per base and it works very well IMHO
• The Udarny figures are... exquisite. Nice poses, nice detail, good sculpt
• I like the combination of the grass and tuft for a step/swamp look. Here again I went for speed rather than elaborate bases
• I didn't paint all the pack content and it was actually a good idea
• I really like the less crowded look for my bases rather than sticking 4 figures a team
• I am an official Soviet army painter

what was a pain:

• I can't say to people to stay clear from painting Soviet infantry but honestly it is not for everyone. Painting that amount of bases takes resilience. Whether you cut corners, speed paint, it is still a huge number of figures and it's difficult. One can enter this type of project only with high focus, patience, pace management and pugnacity.
• I really had a hard time to apply thick layer of grass. For some reason, sometimes the bases had a thick layer and other times, the grass was very thin. It may have something to do with the amount of glue (not too much) that needs to be put, but I am not sure about it.
• The boots and weapons of the SMG company were initially painted grey and then highlighted. It turned out it was a waste of time and I directly went for the highlight of the weapons for the other figures, leaving the base coat instead of painting it grey.
• The silflor grass and tuft that were sold to me were supposed to be the same color, however the tufts were a lot darker. For the look I was going after -actually very much inspired from the Fow website- I needed to buy the ones from Army painter (which are re-packaged Silflor's... and the right color!) . Go figure.

Where do we go from there:

My Soviet army is nicely shaping up, I have more than enough to play multiple lists  and I will add 120mm mortars, scouts/spetsnaz, maybe 122mm artillery and a couple of 45mm anti-tank guns. I need to paint my Katyushas, IS-2 and T-70s. But overall, at this stage it is not all that critical.