First Look: Battlefront SU720 Soviet Strelkovy Platoon (Winter Uniform)

Note: The “First Look” series are not intended to be in-depth reviews of the products in question. Rather, they are supposed to convey the first impressions I had when I first received the product.

Direct Link: http://www.maelstromgames.co.uk/index.php?act=pro&pre=bat_fow_sov_inf_102_000
Price: 10.80 GBP
Shipping: Free
Contents: 45 figures

Before I make any purchase, I usually try to do my “due diligence” and seek out reviews of the product I’m thinking of buying.
Unfortunately, there were very few reviews for 15mm WW2 miniatures, and even those few tended to focus on Germans, Americans and British. As for the poor Soviets (which happens to be my WW2 army of choice), I had difficulty even finding pictures of them, apart from the official ones by Battlefront.

Oh, and in case you didn’t know, Battlefront is the name of the company that produces the Flames of War miniature wargame.

My biggest grip with pictures of professionally painted miniatures is that they look so good that you don’t have any idea as to how much effort is required to make them look like that. What I really wanted to know was how they look like “out of the box”, so that I can guess the amount of trouble I’ll have in store for me.

Well, since nobody else had done this for me, I thought that I might as well use my experience to help others facing my same dilemma.

I was very much impressed with the 2001 movie “Enemy At The Gates” (starring Jude Law, Ed Harris and Rachel Weisz), so I decided to recreate the 1942 battle of Stalingrad as my first Flames of War project. So naturally my first purchase was Battlefront’s SU720, the Soviet Strelkovy Platoon in Winter Uniform.

Unfortunately, I had already opened the SU720 blister before deciding to write this “First Look” article, so I can’t provide a box shot of it. However, I do have an unopened GE720 (German Panzergrenadier Platoon in Winter Uniform) blister that I had bought together with it.
But since these platoon blisters look practically identical, I guess a picture of the GE720 should suffice.

Here’s what it looks like:

The SU720 platoon blister contains 9 rifle teams, consisting of 4 figures each. So that would sum up to 45 figures in all.
It contains a good variety of different figures, including various poses of riflemen, SMG, squad leaders and platoon leaders.

Here’s a picture of one of each pose:

The blister also contained a wonderful figure of a commissar running with the Red Flag, but I accidentally dropped it into the sink while cleaning it…
I know, I know, that’s why my wife calls me “butter fingers”.

I’ll have to see if I can call a plumber and rescue it.

Anyway, you may look forward to an actual review when I finish painting these guys up!