The Ever-Glorious Workers' and Peasants' Red Army

 I've reached the point where I've kind of run through everything I expected to get painted during the Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge, and now I'm rummaging through what I've got sitting around primed to keep the momentum going and paint down my lead pile to some extent. There's been some really excellent "Back of Beyond" figures painted this year by some very talented painters, and it inspired me to dig out some of my own Copplestone figures and join the Interwar Central Asian fun.

I'd previously painted most of my White Russians, so I pulled out a unit of Bolsheviks, along with a Commissar and one of the charming "Bolshevik Heroines" figures.

I decided to try changing things up some with my painting, inspired by the "Back of Beyond" painting guide by Mark Hargreaves that came out through Caliver Books last year. I've used a lot more washes than I usually do on these, mostly Army Painter Soft Tone. I probably could have pushed the highlights a little higher, but overall I think they "pop" well on the tabletop at arm's length.

Tunics are Reaper "Desert Stone," washed and then gone back over with the base tone; trousers are either "Shield Brown," "Uniform Brown" or "Jungle Moss," done similarly. Rolled greatcoats are either "Stormy Gray" or "Shadowed Stone," to represent the vagaries of different dye lots. 

The Heroine's trousers are Army Painter "Woodland Camo," while the commissar's black leather jacket is Reaper "Coal Black" highlighted with "Midnight Blue," which was also used for all the boots. 

I think the washes were definitely worth it, especially washing the skin tones with GW "Reikland Fleshshade." Figures like the commissar are so characterful that they really call out for that extra step. I've got another dozen Bolsheviks on my table awaiting their turn - all wearing their greatcoats, so should be even faster to paint up. 

I did purchase a few figures this week - a friend on Bluesky shared some photos of figures he'd painted up for the board game Zombicide - or rather, it's spinoff, Invader, which sets players against swarms of alien gribblies instead of traditional zombies. The figures he'd shown were all "Abominations," supersized nasty brutes that immediately put me in mind of Majestic 13 (which I'm overdue to play again). I'd made mention that I might want to look for these figures to paint myself, and he was kind enough to offer to sell me spares he had in his leadpile (or in this case, plastic pile). We came to a mutually agreeable price, I PayPal'd him the money and they're now on their way to me.

So time to update the tracker:

Miniatures Acquired: 52

Miniatures Painted: 72

Terrain Acquired: 0

Terrain Painted: 1

Scatter Acquired: 0

Scatter Painted: 0