Thursday, November 23, 2023

3D-Printed WWII Soviet 'Army'

My friend Scot has organized a defense of Stalingrad campaign with a bunch of his gaming friends and I was invited to participate. Since I don't yet have any Soviet WWII troops and they make for excellent enemies for both my German and Finnish forces, I chose to be on the Soviet side of the campaign.

I thought this would make for an excellent opportunity to see if I could 3-D print the entire army while also trying out the 'slap chop' painting method to paint them. Painting has been going fast and furious in order to get my 500 point force ready for the first game. There were some hiccups in my understanding of which troops would be acceptable for the first game, so I'm about 1200 points in to field my 500 point force for the game. This dark photo is the army so far sitting in my figure case. Detailed photos below of each unit.

Two nine-man infantry squads of NKVD infantry in their khaki uniforms and sharp blue caps. Each squad with an LMG, an SMG and seven riflemen. 

Below a close-up showing the LMGs, SMGs and a great figure carrying a grenade. 


The weapon teams. An 82mm mortar left and a Maxim MMG team below.

 

Command and specialist teams. Lieutenant and his runner to the left. Below a Commissar with assistant and a sniper and spotter.



Twelve-man 'factory worker militia' squad. Bolt Action allows the Soviets to get a free 12-man inexperienced squad as part of their national characteristics. Quantity has a quality all its own I guess. These are a mix of figures from two different sculptors and I love all of the sculpts and how they work together. Favorites are the guy in the back smoking and the guy in the front with the sawed-off double-barrel shotgun!


Support vehicles: a Gaz truck with quad Maxim guns on an AA mount and a BA-64 light armored scout car with LMG/MMG. 

A squadron / platoon / 'zug' of three T-60 light tanks. Many people know about the T-34 factory in Stalingrad that was making tanks and sending them directly into battle un-painted or in primer. There was also another factory doing the same for T-60 light tanks. These will be part of my 'tank platoon' when we do the urban Stalingrad games.

These and everything above amounts to a total of 45 figure and five vehicles painted in the past 5-6 weeks since planning for the campaign has begun. Not bad starting with liquid and ending up with a sizeable army in that amount of time!

This squad of eight SMG-armed infantry and a converted Flamethrower figure I purchased off of Ebay when I thought I might not make the deadline for the first game. I'll still include them here, but they are not part of the 3D printed figures. I believe these are Warlord plastic figures. 

The 'flamethrower' is an MG ammo box on the back of that figure. I WILL be replacing it with a proper 3D-printed replacement.

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