"Soviet Infantry Assembly" Topic

Any tips for building Bolt Action Soviet Infantry would be appreciated.

When I built my Perry US Infantry, I swore I would never buy plastic figures with separate arms and weapons again. Particularly after seeing a friends Bolt Action Germans and British Paras where weapons and arms were moulded as one.

Having got some Soviets for Christmas I'm now having the separate pieces nightmare all over again, if anything this time its worse!

I get that their are specific arms for various purposes and I'm not trying to fix "Prone Arms" to standing figures etc. but the "Advancing Rifle Arms", for example, don't seem to go anywhere near fitting any of the body styles and hold a rifle.

I'm used to having seeing gaps between body and arms from the Perry sets but these are hopeless.

Clearly the contents does go together, as there appears to be plenty of photos to prove it and I did make a pretty good job of the Perry's, eventually.

So what am I missing here?

Plastics are shite. The advantage of being able to create slightly different poses is lost on ill fitting joints and gaps.

I find you need a lot of trial and error before you apply the glue to ensure that you have the right arms and torsos – I am OK with it but then again I am kind of an OCD scratch builder so the tedious pain-in-the-butt stuff doesn't bother me as much as it does normal people

I really love plastics, I use a liquid brush on polystyrene cement, and like being able to adjust the arms once basically stuck to fit them just right, then brush over the joint again to seal it.

I can see having custom arms/heads for certain figures like crews, leaders or special weapons but for the vast majority of rank and file troops it's just a PITA to put them together

Had a brainwave and went on the Warlord games website then, copied every photo they have of painted Soviets on their various product purchasing pages.

This gives some idea of what's possible with various arm and body combos. For example there are two sets of "Advancing Rifle Arms". One for summer uniform and one for winter. They look the same in their positioning to a body but they don't fit if you haven't noticed you are trying to use the wrong ones.

Sounds obvious but as some of the bodies have summer trousers and winter jackets. Its easy to miss the quilting on the torso when there are no arms fitted!

At least I have some idea what I'm doing now!