The Red Hordes...

 ...have at last moved across my painting desk and deployed into GHQ awaiting a varnish spray, which is dependent on that rare thing of late, a warm and stillish day!!! These are the Plastic Soldier Company's imaginatively titled box of Cold War Soviet Infantry, though not all 141 claimed pieces as a few had weapons snapped off during their time in pre-painting limbo! They comprise: 20 bases of 4 infantrymen; 2 Command bases; 3 AGS-17 machine gun bases; 3 SA-7 man-pack anti-aircraft missile bases; and finally an AT-3 Sagger and an AT-4 Spigot man-pack anti-tank sections on large bases. Here are the whole collection on view ~

Now, before I move on to the expected close up pictures of individual groups I'd like to say that they were painted to be viewed at gaming distance on our table in GHQ, not in close up where all the little niggles are clearly visible! I'm assured by those who've seen them that they are perfectly adequate and so will do the job just fine, so I'm not going to argue the case beyond asserting that I did my best with the figures! 

As my loyal reader will recall from time to time I bang on about hand and eye issues so you could be forgiven for wondering how I tackled painting such small figures. I can satisfy your curiosity if you'll bear with me. Firstly of course I cut the figures carefully from the sprues with a sharp craft knife and gently filed off any superfluous pieces left on the helmets. The figures could then be assembled where necessary, fixed with whitetack to my trusty MDF board and sprayed with my usual double acrylic Matt white paint, £5 from our local Home & Motor store. The spray needs to be very light to avoid obscuring details. When the figures came then to be painted I fixed them with whitetack to 60mm MDF hexagonal bases, usually in 4's or 3's - a base at a time - and I washed them with Games Workshop's Agrax Earth wash. These two preliminary steps ensured I could comfortably hold figure groups and see the detail I was trying to paint! Experience has shown me that hexagons are easier to hold and rotate pretty much as well as circular bases for painting. The 60mm size means that it's easy to get at the inner facing aspect of each figure. I painted the figures with my usual Size 0 ProArt 40 Sable brush from ABC Brushes - ridiculously cheap and keeping the point far longer than any other make I've ever used! The uniform colour I bought from Great Escape Games at Partizan,  the AFB Series AK11370 Russian Sand. All the other colours are my trusty Foundry paints bar the bases which are GW Steel Legion Drab, formerly Graveyard Earth!

I began this project you may recall in response to Matt's challenge to me to tackle something outside my comfort zone. Plastic figures and 15mm scale definitely fit that bill! Of course I had considerable help and support from Phil with the vehicles, so much so that I doubt I'd have got beyond assembling a few without him! Are we finished then you can reasonably ask? Well, not really, as I've still two HINDs and two Lynx helicopters from the original purchases as well as the recently acquired T55s, but these can all wait for now as I turn back with some relief to my F&IW expansion project...Oh, a game you ask? Probably not until July or August. Holidays beckon you see for we GHQ Irregulars!