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| Strelets box art is quite unique :) |
Each sprue has an officer with a pistol, two riflemen with panzerfausts, a Light Machinegun, three SMG's and six vanilla riflemen. You should get two boxes to field a full rifle platoon as there are too many SMG's in the mix in relation to the riflemen.
The plastic is soft and the casting is bad. It is as expected. I saw the master models from the Strelets site and they're not that bad, actually. The molds and the plastic clearly dont do the figures any favours. The worst offender is the LMG, all the sprues have the MG bent like this:
That machinegun has been fired A LOT!
The thing is, if you want to do summer uniformed Finns in 1/72, and my gaming group does as there are already suitable soviets painted up in that scale, there are pretty much just two options. These ones or the ones made by CP Models, and they're not that handsome either. If you know others, let me know. I think I'll have to mix the two to get a force I can game with. Good thing vehicles and guns are pretty much German hardware or stuff captured from the Soviets.
Here's a rifle squad painted up. I didn't spend too much effort on them as they're pretty mushy where it comes to detail:
In the end I'd say they look ok for wargaming. They look appropriate from a wargaming distance and shouldn't raise any eyebrows. Unless you take a closer look:
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| derp. |
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| K-k-kill me! |
Well, at least they paint up quickly. I'll aim for a platoon sized force with some supports so I can game some fighting by my countrymen in the Continuation War.
They look pretty good considering the quality of the figures, nice work! The box art is hilarious. Someone has spent a lot of time making it look that bad :-)
ReplyDeleteI think they will do the job in a normal poorly lit gaming environment where you don't stop to appreciate the fine detail anyway. Painting up a platoon of these will "Open up a new front" easily as we have both Soviets and Germans already ready to play. Finns fought the Soviets of course, but then there's also the Lapland War when Finns fought the Germans to eject them from the country as per the requirements of the peace treaty with the Soviets. Also there are some opportunities for scenarios with both Finns and Germans fighting side by side against a Soviet force which includes marines. Should make for colourful wargaming!
DeleteThe ratio of SMGs per squad depends on which part of the Continuation War one is setting the scenario and also what kind of Finnish unit one wants to field. Iskuosasto (strike force) had more automatic weapons for their task than average similar sized unit etc. I started a thread about the Finnish Continuation War CoC list on the TFL forum some time ago, haven¨t had time to update it so far, do join the discussion there?
ReplyDeleteHmmh, I read the discussion there. Looks like the situtation isn't quite as simple as I thought. Can you cite sources where I can find info on the platoon compositions for Summer '41 and '44?
DeleteThose red spruces of bendy blobs that ought to represent figures remind me of some unnamed manufacturer of 1:72 scale from my childhood. They were so terrible that words fail me, and paint refused to stick. I thought they were taken away and stowed in some lightless pit for eternity, but apparently someone has restored the unnameable horror. That said, impressive that you even tried to paint them. Has any shed off yet?
ReplyDeleteNot yet, although I worry especially about the gun barrels. I washed them with soap water well enough and read a tip from the grognards that one should give them a coat of PVA water before undercoating so I did that. No issues with paint not sticking after that, but I fear it will come off easily. It's quite an achievement to do 20mm models in this day and age that have worse detailing and quality than 6mm :)
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