Zvezda

Soviet Infantry 1941-1943

Recently Zvezda has released a number of wargaming oriented kits that are suitable for display modeling as well, such as their T-34-76 kit that is very nicely detailed and has simple yet admirable separate band tracks. This is one of their figure kits, one of several sets concentrating on German and Soviet figures. Also available are German and Soviet machine gun teams and German infantry, all World War 2 era.

The box top acts as a painting guide and inspiration; I like the painting. The figures in the kit reasonably match the poses here in the box art: advancing riflemen, riflemen standing firing and a leader/officer holding a PPSh sub machine gun. The helmets appear to be olive green and the uniforms a light khaki color. The rifleman at far left has short boots with puttees or leggings; the officer/sergeant at right has pull-on black leather boots.

The set also comes with two wargaming playing cards for a tactical game called Operation Barbarossa 1941. See the website http://art-of-tactic.com/ for more information.

The box comes with two identical sprues of green, injection-molded styrene hard plastic. We have two firing riflemen, a standing officer figure, and two riflemen with fixed bayonets (what did your mother tell you about running with scissors and fixed bayonets?!). Each figure comes with an individual base, or all figures can be mounted on one large base around a flag andflagpole. [There are no decal markings for the flag; I presume the flagpole is for moving the cluster of figures around the wargaming board.]

The figures look well proportioned and in scale, they don’t have the dwarfish look. All figures are molded in one piece unlike many Preiser figures. Molding in one piece like this makes compromises in detail necessary.

The figures appear competently sculpted and molded. The hard styrene has the advantage of allowing thin, delicate parts like the rifles that stay straight and true. Many paints also adhere better to hard styrene than to flexible polyurethane figures.

CONCLUSIONS
My personal assessment is that this is a nice set of figures ideal for wargaming the WW2 Eastern Front and that has some use in a display diorama or vignette. For a display diorama modeler a wider variety of figures would be good. Facial and body details are a little soft compared to the best styrene and resin figures from Preiser and Millicast, etc.

Considering the detail, cost per set, and number of figures in each set I believe that a good soft plastic set of 40 to 50 figures, such as from Revell and Pegasus is more cost effective for a wargamer.

Article Last Updated: 04 October 2011