Kirill's NORTHAG armies : Soviet Tank Division

Hi everyone!

I've already posted them on the Facebook group, but I wanted to have something I could put more text, info and pics in. So, let's begin!

I just finished the infantry part of an upcoming BMP-2 platoon for a 500 pts Soviet Tank Division battlegroup for NORTHAG in 1/72 scale. So, we have 3 squads (two 7-man ones, one 6-man one), a 3-man command group, and a Combat medic (is the Medic supposed to be armed? I gave mine a rifle, but I had a doubt...)


Group picture :


The platoons, one-by-one :

Command Squad


Assistant Squad, with an Igla MANPADS


Motor Rifle Squad

(This one is mounted on coins because I had hoped to build a diorama around them and ditched the bases a couple months ago...)

Command Group


They are all Zvezda soldiers, taken mostly from the "Soviet Motor Rifles" 5-man mini kit, while a couple of them are from the Metis ATGM, NSV Heavy Machine Gun and Igla MANPADS team kits. They wear the 3-tone TTsKO camouflage pattern with M88 cut uniforms and 6B5 body armour, which is a typical loadout for Soviet/Russian infantry from 1985 to 2005. The BMP-1P is a S-Model BMP-1 that was modified with leftovers from ACE kits (the AT-4/5 missile mount) and Modelcollect ones (smoke dischargers) and painted in the late Cold War (1985 and later) Soviet 3-tone vehicle camouflage pattern.

So far, I still see a couple things I should do : finish the bases, touch up the camouflage pattern with more green and brown, and add black to the butt plates of the weapons' stocks and magazines. Then, I have to get a couple weapons such as PKMs and SVDs to give the platoon extra firepower, and give the whole platoon a light black wash.

I'm talking about adding more green and brown to most of the figures, because in my opinion, the camouflage looked much better on my first batch of infantry (on the right) than on the new ones (on the left) :




And now, a couple tips!

First one : I don't like to have duplicates, so I cut off some of the Zvezda soldiers' guns and mounted them on other guys, as to have different poses for the same weapons : have a couple examples, first with the RPG-7 carriers :


And then for the RPK machine gunners :


I pulled that little trick on the command squad as well : one of the soldiers has just been taken from the Zvezda Igla MANPADS team, and here are the two other ones :


The one of the left has been taken from the Zvezda "Soviet WW2 Scouts" kit, and the one on the right is a modified RPG-7 shooter from the original Zvezda "Soviet Motor Rifles" kit with a radio that comes from the depth of the spare parts box. The former had an AK-74 (from the Motor Rifles squad, the RPG-7 shooter has his rifle laid on the ground beneath him, I grabbed it and re-purposed it) put on his back instead of the original PPSh-41, and the latter just received a rifle instead of the RPG, which gives him a pose as if he was talking in the microphone of the radio.

Another small tip : Cold War Soviet small arms are not just blued, but receive a coat of gloss black paint as well ; so, if you want to paint Soviet Motor Rifles, bring out the semi-gloss black instead of the usual gun metal! (However, the Poles and East Germans did sport blued rifles, if you want to go for non-Soviet Warsaw Pact lists.)


Of course, there's some work to be done on them, but I think they can already be brought to the battlefield if needed!

And that's all for today ; I've got a T-80U and two T-80BVs in the stash waiting for a new airbrush compressor, so the guys will soon receive some heavy armoured support. The BMP-2s will come, I think, soon after the next paycheck, and I hope to bring in the last elements of the list (a sniper team and a BRDM-2 armoured car) before December! Then, I'll tackle other lists, which are very likely to be 15mm stuff featuring PSC T-55s and infantry, so that thread will get a steady flow of updates... I hope, at least!