Soviet shock trooper.

Shock troopers are here! Well, at least one, lol. They were well used between 1941 and 1945 as spearheads of the soviet army. They were usually equipped with heavy weapons like machine guns and flame throwers or at the very minimum with automatic weapons, leaving the bolt action rifles for the plain conscripts. But the most characteristic item was, with no doubt, the CH-42 armor. It was a very heavy and I bet uncomfy steel breastplate. It seemed to not to be very effective when in combat because it pretty much worked only against melee, low caliber guns and some shrapnel so, the weight of it annoyed more than helped except for morale boosting purposes.

Anyway, I saw this figure in Aliexpress and I had to get it. It is 1/16 scale and it is made of good casted resin. It came with a PPSh-41 gun with box magazine. Pity, I love the gangster-like round magazines, but well, I can live with that.

The soldier came with the accessories showed in the pictures, bayonet, canteen and magazine pouches. The head came with the typical Russian winter hat, an Ushenka, already molded it. It looked very cool and I liked it a lot like that, and it also came with a spare Russian helmet to be hanged on the belt.

I liked the ushenka and I liked the helmet, so I spent several days struggling what to do (oh, second world problems…) but finally I decided to grab my dremel and xacto knives and I firstly removed the ushenka and then sculpted part of the missing head and the hair with some putty for being able to fitting the helmet. After a closer inspection I must say I can’t be happier with the end result! I think the helmet matches the breastplate like a glove and the figure has more sense now. And also it makes my figure more… unique.

For the painting process, nothing special to declare. After priming the figure I painted it with the usual Revell aqua colors. Not a lot so say except the uniform was supposed to be painted with some short of… lets call it splashes, or flowers or something like that which was called “Amoeba”, but I did not like it at all and I was not sure of being able to paint them correctly anyway, so I decided to paint it with plain colors. And, of course, the star in the helmet was made with my own stencils.

So, yeah, recommended figure specially when you consider how cheap is it to obtain, which it was like 6 Euros free shipping.