Soviet Colours

I’ve recently been putting together a small force of our new Neo-Soviet tanks (and some of the older ones as well). Up ’til now I’ve only been able to paint a sample of each model for the website and display stand, so I was looking forward to assembling a larger army and getting them on table.

Altogether I’ve started with a dozen vehicles (you might spot more than that in the photos – I painted two extra assault guns to use on the stand at the same time). My force consists of three Bars tanks, two Vombats, two Terminators, one each of the new assault guns and a recce section of one Rosomakha and two Laska tankettes.

I’ve based the camouflage scheme on the sample models I painted before Salute, using the excellent Anarchy Models airbrush stencils, but with a slight difference. Whereas my first models had a three colour scheme with two layers of stencils, the main force was painted with a two-colour grey-green utilising the Mini Digi Camo sheet (basically lots of tiny squares arranged in random patterns). This was simply to save time, as two layers of stencils on a dozen vehicles would have taken ages.

I won’t go through the full step-by-step process this time – you can read my previous article for that. However, as a quick summary, the process was:

• Spray with grey automotive primer (Halfords)
• Drybrush primer light grey
• Apply stencils
• Airbrush Vallejo Russian green over entire vehicle
• Drybrush whole vehicle light green
• Remove stencils (be thorough here – it’s easy to lose some of the stencils)
• Touch up any areas where the stencils have pulled up the primer or green has leaked under the stencils with a small brush
• Brush paint in remaining details – guns, crew, stowage, tracks, lights, sensor lenses
• Brush coat entire vehicle in Army Painter Strong Tone Quickshade
• Leave 24 hours (minimum) to dry
• Apply decals – the glossy Quickshade is ideal for this
• Airbrush acrylic matt varnish (Tamiya Flat Clear) – DO NOT use Army Painter’s own aerosol varnish, it reacts with the Quickshade and will ruin your hard work

This is the first half of my army – the next stage will be the infantry and APCs (if you’ve read this month’s Miniature Wargames, you might have seen a preview…).