Monday, October 7, 2013

Wargames Factory: World War Two Russians Reviewed!


I have just finished this review of the new plastic World War Two Russians from Wargames Factory which were released as part of their World War Two range. I received these together with the Female Zombie Survivors of which you can find a review here but only found the time now to post them up and take some comparsion pictures of them with other World war Two miniatures from other manufacturers. I really like the detail on these hard plastic miniatures so if you're interested in some nice Russians for Bolt Action or other rule sets please read on.

The box

As mentionned these miniatures came together with another boxed set and therefore it also arrived in very good condition as the cartonboard box fits the boxed set size and all the spare room had been filled with newspaper to avoid the boxes to move inside their pacakage. As with the newer boxed sets the artwork on the box has been drastically improved and really looks good.


The Russian boxed set contains four sprues of which three are identical and contain most of the soldiers while another sprue contains a whole array of weapons and the officer model. This amount of sprues allows you to field 31 Russian soldiers in summer gear armed with an array of rifles, scoped rifles, submachine guns and light machineguns. You can also convert some of the miniatures to female combatants. First of all we will take a look at the soldier sprue which contains the troops and their weapons.

Overview of the soldier sprue containing 10 soldiers of which one is prone and two are kneeling.

Close up of five body variants including the prone one on the top left side.

Close up of five body variants containing the two kneeling bodies of which one can be assembled as a female body.

As you can see most of the weapons supplied on this sprue come with arms attached.

Here you can see the submachine guns and the array of pouches and backpacks.

As previously mentioned the weapon sprue contains a wide variety of weapons including but not limited to Molotov cocktails, rifles, scoped rifles, submachine guns, grenades, light machineguns and other useful bits such as pouches and separate weapons. Let's take a look at this impressive arsenal worth the cost of the entire box by themselves.

Overview of the weapon sprue showing all the weapons and bits included.

Loads of puches and individual weapons such as a scoped rifle and pistols.

Overview of the light weapons which also come with separate cartridges which need to be glued on top of the guns.

The officer body and a shed load of rifles and submachine guns.

Even more weapons and the individual cartridges for the light machinegun on the bottom right.

The box also included sufficient plastic bases similar to the well-known slotta bases. These bases come pre textured and are part of both the weapon and soldier sprues each containing an amount equal to the number of miniatures on each sprue. As with all the other plastic boxes my minor complain is that these miniatures don't come with attachment pins for easy attachment to their bases. This isn't a big probalem when using the plastic bases but when using coins or washers you will need some extra work such as green stuff for example.

The assembly

The assemby of these miniatures went quite well with the exception of snapping some rifles in the progress of building. The construction is made easy by the addition of numbers to each part so you can clearly see where which parts needs to go and following these numbers you don't create weird poses or the need to sand parts to fit. For this review I have based the miniatures on coins to make the size comparison easier. 

To attach the miniatures I have used some green stuff followed by superglue when fully dried creating a strong bond. I have assembled the following miniatuers which are one fifth of the box content and I haven't touched the weapons sprue yet for variation!

As you can see some quite convincing poses and variations.

Miniature assembled throwing a stick grenade while others fire and advance.

The comparison

I have also added the following comparison picture so you can easily judge the size and scale of these miniatures. As with most of the miniatures made by Wargames Factory these are scaled non-heroic 28mm.

Foundry Fallschirmjaeger - Wargames Factory Russian - Warlord Games Partisan - Artizan German

Foundry Prone Fallschirmjaeger - Wargames Factory Prone Russian

Painting

Interested in how these miniatures can look painted? Here's a picture of the Wargames Factory miniatures painted for their website.


The conclusion


To conclude I can only say that the content of this boxed set is of great quality and is also well worth the money for the amount of miniatures you receive. One of these boxes can form the bulk of a 500 points Bolt Action Soviet force with exception of the more specialized units such as mortars and heavy machineguns (although these can be replaced by some more light machineguns). These miniatures can now be bought from Wargames Factory or at Wayland Games.


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4 comments:

ColKillgore said...

You need a lot of rifles for a soviet platoon, so I am planning to get two of these to bulk out my 28mm Soviet force. My eventual order from wargamers factory is getting bigger and bigger, two boxes of Soviets, A male zombie survivor box and a female zombie survivor box.

ColKG

Wargame News and Terrain Blog said...

Hi, I have just checked the rifles and a quick counts gives me around 22 rifles and scoped rifles per boxed set. I hope this helps a bit.

Cheers

Ubique Matt said...

Very useful review, I will probably now buy a box after seeing the continuing improvements this company has made. They look far better than the 28m PSC versions.

Regards,
Matt

Wargame News and Terrain Blog said...

Hi Matt, Glad you enjoyed the review. The quality has massively improved since the release of their first boxed sets and are really great to bulk out large forces at a fraction of the cost of metal miniatures.

Cheers!