Having finished another 36 figures for John this week (French Line and Guard pikes and Austrian musketeers by 'Mars') I'm having a bit of a change by starting on these lovely 20mm metal figures for new customer Alister. The link Alister sent was to Simon's Soldiers (click). I am totally unfamiliar with this range but I must say they are some of the best 20mm WW2 figures I have seen, far better than even the AB 20mm's in my humble opinion which simply failed to inspire me to paint them. These of course represent the late war Volkssturm called up for the last desperate defence of Berlin consisting of older men and younger boys, equipped with whatever could be found, many of them trained in the use of Panzerfausts which seems to have been a very common weapon judging from the number of them that appear in photographs from the time.
I have around 75 of them to paint and there are a wide variety of uniform types, greatcoats, civilian clothes, a couple wearing the distinctive French helmets others in trilby type hats and forage caps, the only issued item in many cases being the red/white/black Volkssturm armband. Most carry rifles, some assault rifles and there are a couple of machine gun teams, MG42 or possibly the older MG34, not had a close look yet. I'm very much looking forward to painting them.
Rag-tag, allows for the pleasures of some artistic licence.
ReplyDeleteYes Norm, I'm going to enjoy these :) The photos don't really do the sculpts justice, when I get some painted I'll take the pics with my wifes superior phone camera!
DeleteLovely looking French and Austrians! I look forward to the final line of defense to be realised!
ReplyDeleteBest Iain
Cheers Iain. They should turn out pretty well I hope.
DeleteOooh nice aren’t they.I’m off to have a look at the company that made them. Never heard of them…but then I guess they’ve never heard of me either. Lol.
ReplyDeleteI'm told they are now available from the UK JBM, not sure where though, these were purchased from Australia where they are manufactured.
DeleteSuperb uniforms and colors on the pikes and musketeers, I do like them!
ReplyDeleteThanks Phil, they are all plastics and very nice figures.
DeleteYou continue to do and excellent job on those figures for John. The Volkstrum look interesting and the figures look really nice, I know you will do a first class job on them and look forward to seeing your results.
ReplyDeleteThanks Graham. The Volks figures are far better than my photos show! The undercoated shot shows more detail, the folds in the clothing for example and seams along the arms etc. faces are very well defined for this scale too. I have thought through my approach to painting them and made a pleasing start on the first dozen :)
Deletemy Pikemen and Austrians look superb , many thanks, look forward to see Volksturm painted
ReplyDeletecheers Old John
It's a pleasure as always John :)
DeleteLove the Austrian's. Very well done Sir!
ReplyDeleteCheers Ray, enjoyed painting them, nice figures.
DeleteAh cool. I love the Volksturm! Are those the old FAA castings? Back in the day I painted all of the samples for the owner, who back then was based in Nashville. He kept me well employed during a tough time.
ReplyDeleteHi David, to be honest I really know little about this range of figures so if you can fill in any gaps it would be appreciated. What I can say is that they are really great sculpts and crisp castings that capture the Volkssturm units very well with a mix of basic uniform and civilian clothing. So far It's 48 figures painted and I'm very pleased with them, I'm saving the machine gun and command packs to last! Cheers, Lee.
DeleteI'm afraid I don't know much other than the new owner changed the way the figures were marketed I believe, which affected availability of some of the lines. Don't know if my painted figures are still used for publicity or not, but they sure look like FAA. Well what do you know https://www.faaminiatures.com/t-about.aspx Don't look like the same figures though so I may have been mistaken.
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