Beginning a Soviet Horde in Bolt Action

By Troy A Hill

One of the joys and pitfalls of moving into a new area, and joining a new gaming group is that many of the local players in the new area already have their army builds done. When I lived in Southern California, there were a mix of players and armies. In my regular gaming group, no one was playing British, so I picked it up to compliment my US and my German Armies.

But, when I returned to North East Indiana in the States, and looked up the local crew, the most popular nation to play in the new local gaming group is… yep, British of one flavour or another.

What was I to do? Americans are the vanilla “easy mode” according to the Juggernauts. In my 15mm WWII wargaming days, I began with Americans and soon tired of them. Germans are definitely challenging. And with my grandmothers coming from lineages of Kaiser and Sigsbee surnames on one side, and Bechtel on the other side of the family, the German army seems like a good fit for me. So far, though, my interest in all things German seems limited to the DAK.

Well, when I played Warhammer Fantasy, I loved the horde armies of the goblins. Guess I should look at… The Soviets?

I picked up , and groaned. Unfortunately this is one of the few remaining nations for Bolt Action that doesn’t have the newer design of weapons already in hand. And, when I moved out of SoCal, I lost the use of my assembly dude friend. He’d build the models for both of us, in exchange for me painting his armies. (I still have my British Airlanding army that he built, awaiting paint.)

No problem. I assembled my Americans using the old style kit. I can handle the , right?

Glue the arm to the body. Glue the other arm to the body. Test fit the weapon. Move the first arm while the plastic cement is still tacky. Test fit the weapon. Move the other arm. Oops, the first arm drifted. Curse. Move both arms, reset the weapon. Both arms drifted. Curse a lot. How many more of these do I need to assemble?

Soviets. They’re a horde army. Eight sprues of eight dudes on each. That’s sixty four dudes, or 128 arms to glue and miss-align.

ARRRRRGH!

A few deep breaths later, I started think my way through the process.

My default cement for plastics is the Tamiya orange bottle with the brush. That is a bit overkill on applying cement when assembling dudes with lots of parts. Ah HA! I’ve got a bottle of Faller Plastic Glue, with a needle applicator. The only problem is that the needle does clog. Wipe the tip of the applicator right after use to reduce the risk of clogging. If you need to clear a clog, you can do so with a small open flame. Please take all precautions (well ventilated, eye protection, etc), and do so under adult supervision (for most of us, that means having our wives stand by with fire extinguishers.)

The process of gluing the arms is still the same, but the amount of plastic glue is more manageable with the needle style applicator. The best part is that I could get the arms and weapon positioned, then use the needle to drop a bit of glue in the hands to secure the weapons. No more bumping the arms with the brush from the Tamiya bottle.

What to build?

Well, the Soviet army has a lot of options. And their special rules give me a free squad of Green troops with rifles. So, I need at least one unit of 12 dudes with rifles. Probably ought to have two units of rifles. So about 20-ish dudes with rifles.

Wait… which battle am I basing these for? Ruins like Stalingrad or Berlin? Or more of the glorious Russian countryside? Enjoy the Motherland! See the sights. Get stuck in the mud!

Ruins it is. At least for now. So I need to build the core of a list that can handle a 1250 point friendly or tourney list (I’m not a strong meta player. The wooden spoon award is good enough for me, if that means I helped my opponents have fun games.)

I know… the Stalingrad list from the Armies of The Soviet Union book is considered Cheese in the extreme. That’s why it won’t be the go-to tourney list for me.

I purchased several other options to flesh out the list (Command pack, ZIS 2 gun, Standard bearer, Naval Squad etc) to get a decent tourney build. This is what I settled on for now, using regular troops as point sinks until I could build even more units for the horde

The List (1250 pts)

Generic Reinforced platoon

• Junior Lt with one Komrade (Regular)
• Kommisar with one Komrade (inexperienced)
• One infantry flag bearer – assigned where needed
• SMG Squad 9 Komrades + 1 LMG (Regular) with AT grenades
• SMG Squad 10 Komrades + 1 LMG (Regular) with AT grenades
• Free Rifle Squad (Green) with 12 Komrades
• Rifle Squad (Green) with 10 Komrades
• Naval Squad (regular) 9 Komrades (tough fighters)
• MMG Team
• Medium Mortar with spotter
• One Sniper with unarmed Komrade
• Three AT Rifle teams – these count as one slot in the AT teams due to Soviet rules
• ZIS-2 AT Gun
• Truck for Tow
• T-34/85 Tank

Other than needing to add a Gaz Truck, I should have more than enough Komrade dudes to fill this list out. The AT Rifle teams may be the cheesiest part of the build. Unfortunately, the sprues in the Soviet Starter Army come with one prone guy per sprue. So, I had eight prone figures to build. One sniper (avoiding the cheese of the Stalingrad list with multiple snipers) and Komrade spotter for him, plus three AT Rifle teams made the most build sense. That way I don’t have to purchase dog team minis, and count on my luck where the dogs blow up our own troops.

I built my extras out as SMG teams, figuring I could always go to more infantry and less AT Teams if needed.

I’ll cover painting in the next installment. However, I’d like to share a method for priming this many Komrades. Normally, in smaller scales, I’d glue them to craft sticks, five wide, and give them a spray all around, then one belly down, and another belly up.

This time, with the larger 28mm models (as compared to the 15mm scale) I used soda bottle lids and tacky glued each figure to a cap. Then I used Rustoleum Desert Camouflage spray in a rattle can. The problem is the plastic figures are light and easy to knock over if the spray gets too close.

I solved this by using a cork as a handle. Sticky-putty (poster putty) under the bottle cap, and a screw driven into one end of the cork, gave enough adhesion for me to hold the cork and rotate the figure to get an even coat all around and even under the various bits. (Tip: Wear a glove, so you don’t have to scrub paint off your thumb and fingers).

Next time, I’ll cover painting and basing the figure.