Tuesday, December 1, 2009

The Red Horde!!!


Ever since I was a little kid, I was fascinated with WW2 history. I would go to the library and sit for hours and check out the different books on the subject (and there were plenty). My first models were snap-together WW2 planes and tanks that I painted with testors paints straight out of the bottle. At age 8, I could tell you what a Messerschmidt was.

With my introduction to wargaming a few years back, it was only a matter of time before I picked up a WW2 game. Flames of War is probably the most popular, and I hope to get many games in. The ability to command a full army with tank and artillery support is something that really appeals to me.

I'm very happy to see that Adepticon is offering a small tournament in 2010, and I have been slowly and steadily working on what initially started out as a side project, but has become somewhat of a front-burner army lately.

So here are my first 1000 or so points of Flames of War Soviets. I feel very accomplished to have gotten these done to a photographable level. I would still like to add another level of highlights to all the infantry, but for now, I'm calling them completed to a table top standard.

I still have another 3 Strelkovy Platoons (that are about 1/3 of the way done), 5 t-34s, some artillery and a company of Stalin's Organs (Katayushas) to finish up. That will pretty much be a completed 2000 point army.

The 122s have freehand numbering, and some additional grab bars and chains that I slapped on during assembly. The one to the left says "victory!" in Russian. I like the way that that weathering came out, and while I was worried that it was going to be excessive, they actually look better in person than they do in the pictures. I spent an evening on these from start to finish, and it didn't feel rushed at all.

I love the way that 15mm paints up. Very quick, but large enough to leave some room for additional details like the sand bags on the ZIS-3 gun in the foreground.

Oh, and I still haven't gotten a single game in with them yet... So cross your fingers for me, and hopefully they don't totally suck!!! I mean, they're meant to die in droves, but hopefully with some effect. Death to the hitlerites!

ZIS-3 Guns: "Baby Gods of War"

ISU-122 Heavy Assault Gun Company

Strelkovy Battalion

Scout Platoon

The entire force, awaiting battle (very patiently).

6 comments:

Pedro Kantor said...

those are awesome. Thats so funny too, my first intro to model building and painting came from building German WWII tanks and planes as I wanted to impress one of my uncles (who also build german tanks and planes) Also testors right out of the bottle, actually my first 40k army was a Chaos Undivided army (unnamed) that I exclusively used testors on. Back then I could see spending that much money on GW paint when i could buy a whole set of testors paints for the cost of like 2 pots of GW paint. I don't think I could go back now though... ha

Dasanton said...

I cringe thinking about the sheen that testors paints leave. I'm sure that they have their uses; model cars and such, but nothing that I would use them for...

BT said...

Well done. My wargaming story is pretty much the same, Warhammer started back in '88 for me.

I have about 6-7000 points of Midwar Soviets painted.

Few thousand of german infantry and Panzer forces of Stalingrad-Kursk Germans.

And someday maybe I will paint my Romanian infantry.

Flames of War is an awesome game, in many ways drastically improves upon GW's retreaded rules.

You'll like it a lot. What are you waiting for?

BTW, those ISU-122's are LATE war Assault guns. Looks like you have a midwar strelkovy batalon. The SU-122 is a midwar vehicle. Same chassis but short barreled low velocity 122mm gun on it.

Soviets are awesome to play. Good choice!

Here are some JSII's to gander at. I should probably take pictures of the rest of the stuff:

http://anthraxinyoursoup.blogspot.com/2008/06/soviet-js-iis.html

If you make it to Indy, I have table to game in the factories and rubble of Stalingrad. Drag Nicky Badballs ass down here too!

Brenden

Dasanton said...

Benden,

Thanks for the info, I actually figured that out myself as I was looking through the army books. I've settled on playing an Udarny Strelkovy Battalion, which will allow me to use everything that I have painted so far. I'm realizing that I need some other support options, so I'm in the process of working on some flamethrowers and some PTRDs, as well as some Katys and artillery. I've got t-34s done, and might want to run them as flame-tanks... we'll see. I wish there was a way to work Cossacks into the list, because I think they're really cool, but I can't see any way to make it happen with the army lists I've been looking over. Oh well!

Dasanton said...

Woah, my first blog spam!

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