Yesterday evening I arrived home from work to find a package waiting for me from Element Games. It contained a boxed set of Polish Infantry made by Warlord Games, which I picked up from Element Games as I was ordering some paints from them anyway, and they offer a small saving over Warlord prices. I made a little video about it for YouTube:
The boxed set contains 24 metal miniatures, which suffered from some pretty intense flashing. Most notably on their helmets and, rather frustratingly, their rifle barrels. Many of the rifle barrels were bent quite severely, and furthermore, a combination of very thin metal and flashing at the end of the rifle barrel meant that clean up was fraught with the danger of losing the end of many of the rifles. In the end, I only lost one, so it isn't the end of the world. Mould lines were minimal, though I have a knack of missing them until they have paint on them, at which point they appear to grow in size, meaning I end up scraping them off only to have to repaint again. Nonetheless, I am confident I got most of the mould lines.
In terms of detail, I am quite impressed. These are Paul Hicks style sculpts, and I suspect that he may have sculpted these. They don't have that caricatured look that newer Warlord figures seem to have. As my first purchase of Bolt Action miniatures, I am going to declare myself satisfied. The bulk of the box is made up of rifleman, which is useful since a Polish section was huge, consisting of 17 rifleman, a BAR (Polish made wz 28) gunner, led by a Plutonowy (Corporal). I'll need three of these for a full platoon.
This is the only item from the Polish Bolt Action line that Element Games sell, so I shall be picking up the rest of the Bolt Action Polish range as the project continues. I am still awaiting delivery of some Poles I ordered from Black Tree Design during their generous January sale.
Today I based and primed the entire boxed set. I am currently working on my test miniature. Both the Flames of War website and Warlord Games have a painting guide as part of their paint set that set out the base colours required, as well as a series of photos and plates. However, since I favour a three colour shade-middle-highlight system I need to figure out the colours to either side of the colours suggested by Warlord or Battlefront.
I decided to paint the core colours I wasn't familiar with onto a sheet of paper, and then surrounding them with possible choices for shades and highlights. As seen below.
Using the above coupled with the painting guides from Warlord and Flames of War I wrote up one of my patented painting cards. It is more or less complete; as I work on my test miniature I'll complete the card.
Finally, I decided to try a different basing scheme for this collection. Since much of the fighting for the Polish campaign takes place in villages, towns, and finally Lwow, I wanted something a little more urban. I therefore decided to mimic Sidney Roundwood's excellent World War I basing scheme. I read his article on it, and I just had to try it. I haven't got any miniature bricks yet, but I shall try and pick some up soon, so for now I am only doing the two tone colouring on the bases.
I quite like the effect, with a few red bricks it will look really sharp. As you can see the flesh is done, though I still need to finish the eyes. I've also decided to paint my Poles with their collar tabs on, since it adds a little colour. The infantry will have Blue collar tabs, and the officer's hat band will also be blue.
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