This article covers the first stage of modelling my Finnish Infantry Company, for details on how I got myself to this point feel free to check my earlier article.
So I’ve started assembling the Finns and, in keeping with my earlier decision to do the Infantry Black Box platoons first, I’ve assembled my two Core Infantry platoons and HQ as well as the Pioneer platoon.
Now, as I want to be able to play with these in Mid War as well as Late War, this means a little more work for me now rather than trying to paint up extra teams at a later date which, lets be honest, I simply wont do!
If you are buying the nice new packs from battlefront (FI702) you get everything you need. However, as I have some older packs, I had to order a few teams from the Direct Order Catalog to be able to do this. Also the number of figures in the old platoon packs is slightly different to the new ones, handy for me as it gives me a few extra teams which I will need later in the project.
Step 1 is to sort out the models. I always do this before I start to paint so I can get a feel for how the teams will look at the end and to look at the distribution of the actual casts I get as they do sometimes vary across packs of metal models. I do this by simply lining everything up on my cutting mat and slowly rearranging them until I get a range of combinations of models; hopefully with as few of the bases ending up being exactly the same as possible.
For my teams I try to create a mini diorama effect. So, if my officer or NCO is pointing, I will look to use models that are either charging forward or firing to enhance that sense of movement from the pointing leader. If my section leader is kneeling I’ll look to add other kneeling or lying down figures creating a sense of a section making use of the ground cover. The images below illustrate this idea.
For each of my Infantry Platoons, I have two three-figure leader teams, one with a Panzerfaust figure (LW) and one without (MW), eight four-figure Rifle teams and a Panzershrek team and a Anti-tank rifle team. So, that’s 43 figures per platoon. The Pioneers are a bit simpler but I am still doing two extra teams so I can field them with and without the Flamethrower option so one leader, two flamethrower teams (small two figure bases) and 8 pioneer four-figure teams. Still, its another 39 figures and a grand total with the HQ of 129 figures to paint!
Once the models were all sorted into their teams, I cleaned them up removing flash, mould lines, etc and checking they fitted on to the bases OK as I had organised them. I like to do this at this stage as it helps me decide if I am going to paint them on the bases or not. This is also an important step if using the new style brown plug in bases designed for the plastics with metal figures as now is a better time to cut the bases than once you have them painted up.
Next up its popsicle time – I decided after looking at the space on the bases that I would glue each team to a lolly stick using a hot glue gun for initial painting. Unusually for me, I’m using a grey primer for these from Green Stuff World using my latest new toy, a battery powered Airbush! Previously I have either used a black or white rattle can followed by a base coloured spray so this saved me a bit of time and effort using a grey primer. More on the battery powered airbrush on another day but you can check it out here. In my next update I’ll be covering painting.
My target is to get to a total of 38 teams in summer uniforms for September, looking something like these!
