Tuesday 17 February 2015

Warlord winter Russians review? Not quite!

Warlord games have recently released a pack of plastic winter Russians. I've been immensely excited about this pack since it was announced, as the Eastern Front is my favourite theatre to model and game. Upon eagerly ripping open the box and rolling around on the piles of fantastic sprues, I looked at the models a little closer, and was very pleased with the level of character and expression on the faces, and the mix of poses is great(!) too. On each frame are 5 figures in great coats, and 3 in padded suits. You can see close ups of the sprue in my unboxing here.

Upon looking at the sprues and consulting my collection I discovered I have one Russian Army, and 3 German armies. This clearly meant that I needed to add another German army to my collection as I've not covered Tuesday January 24 1944 yet, which lead me on a short search for plastic figures in great coats...

To make my winter Germans I sculpted hoods and heavier trousers onto the figures in padded suits, and removed some of the quilting effect, and the great coated figures I trimmed some of the overtly obvious Russian items, though this was quite simple.

 I also sculpted a small sheet onto one of the figures for him to use as camouflage. For the heads I had a choice, either use German heads without modification and waste the awesome Russian heads, or cut off the Russian helmets, and trim the heads out of spare German helmets, and then nail the two together.  This was with hindsight really quite a frustrating exercise, however once I'd got some practice with the first few it became simpler. 


Weapons, webbing and some of the arms came from both of Warlords German sprues and these fitted perfectly to the models.






 


Painting was done using Vallejo Russian Uniform (Ironically) for the field grey great coats, Khaki, Reflective Green and Leather Brown were used for the Splinter Pattern items, and Off white was used for the white.















To make the snow I used baking soda mixed with Vallejo Water effect, and applied as a paste. Larger base comes from Warbases, and is a 50mm round. 

As always more of my work can be seen at Volley Fire Painting Services, and you can purchase some Winter Russians from Warlord Games

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