RFCM

Thank you all for your responses!

Quote from: Sean Clark on August 31, 2023, 12:41:05 PMWe do prefer people to sign off with their name if it's not obvious from their username. If I was a betting man, I'd guess Vic, but I'm not so I won't 😆

Understood! You'd have won that bet indeed.

QuoteIn the absence of an actual figure, is a conversion possible? I often find useful figures elsewhere in ranges such as artillery crew that can be re-purposed. Head swaps are a great way of an easy conversion, though I appreciate this doesn't help the weapon situation 😆

Yes, my back-up plan is to use regular riflemen but with the helmeted heads swapped for pilotka-wearing ones, so that at least these are clearly distinct from other riflemen in the same pose.

Quote from: martin goddard on August 31, 2023, 01:06:38 PMHow about the chap in 653?

I hadn't considered these but I'll definitely add a pack to my next order. Thanks!

QuoteHow many figures do you need?

That's part of why I'm looking for more variety in poses; with 4 squad leaders for a platoon-level game and 12 for a company-level game, I'll need some conversions to get some variety.

Quote from: Sean Clark on August 31, 2023, 02:02:00 PMOne of these might work too.

Another good suggestion, thank you!

- Vic

Hi Martin and everybody else,

As of late, I've been assembling a WWII Soviet force out of PP figures. I base them individually, so I use figures in clearly "leading" poses for leaders to aid in their quick recognition. When preparing the forces for the earlier half of the war, however, I've run into a problem: unlike other armies, the Soviets at first didn't arm their squad leaders with sub-machine guns, going for standard rifles instead. We have pretty good coverage of this on surviving Shtat documents (the Soviet equivalent to WETs or TO&Es) and all infantry squad leaders (both in rifle units and in the organic infantry components of motorised and tank units) were explicitly assigned rifles. As a note, SMGs were present, but assigned to other men in the squad, which suggests that it was a conscious choice based on doctrinal reasoning, although I haven't seen this actually stated in any document. This only changed in May 1943 when squad leaders (along with a bunch of other personnel) were rearmed with SMGs across all types of infantry units.

This is unfortunate because I cannot rely on figures in "leading" poses for quick identification of their role on the table. I have to use regular riflemen figures instead, resorting to other tricks to "mark" them apart as leaders. Late war isn't a problem because fortunately there are excellent NCO figures in appropriate poses carrying SMGs.

My suggestion therefore would be for a pack depicting early war NCOs carrying Mosin rifles. Would this be possible? Would it be worth it?

It's my first post here, let me know if I did anything wrong and thank you for your time!