Americans, British, Russian and German AB out of the lead pile!

I'm having one of those periodic moments of great productivity focussed on painting what I already own, rather than what I've just bought. I've wanted to finish off my Americans for Chain of Command and while I was digging out the remaining figures I also picked out others from different nationalities that I have bought over the last couple of years but failed to paint. So, where to start?

Slowly I've been replacing my British platoon Plastic Soldier Company figures with metals from AB Figures. I've done this over a stretch of time and in between my painting style has changed (I used to use Army Painter dip, but now use the three shades technique). Also I've realised that the colour I've been using for their webbing was too light (almost buff) and I've gone to a more appropriate shade of green. So these are the 'new look' lads and I'll be making adjustments to some of the older figures to blend in with these.

This gives me one full section plus a full rifle team for another section.

This is the prone section with some men rather precariously balanced on their bases but I was eager to keep them all on my standard 20mm rounds.

I've also added the AB flamethrower team:

And a rather nice sniper team in their Denison smocks:

I really like all of these AB British sculpts, they have a lot of character.

Russian tank crews have been sadly neglected. I've had ten of the AB Russian tank crew set waiting, primed, but unloved for some time. Now painted I've started filling up the empty hatches that were left open for them.

This T-35 is a lovely kit from S-Models.

A BT7 from Pegasus.

And a KV1 from Pegasus.

Two PSC T34s and a IS2 from S-Models.

This Zis-3 and 45mm AT gun are from PSC and originally were crewed by the PSC plastic crews that comes with the kits. Now I've upgraded these to AB crews and also changed the size of the bases to try to make them more compact. This also means I've put only three figures on each base with the remaining crew and any leaders based individually. This gives me a balance between a mini-diorama for the gun with the ability to remove some casualties as they occur. A happy compromise, I think.

For some reason I have half a dozen prone Russian rifleman that I had acquired for a good reason that I can no longer remember. I suspect it was to make up men for the MMG and HMG teams which currently have three men to a base and so always need a few extra individuals to make up the crew numbers. If nothing else they can join a Russian rifle platoon.

The Germans have not been neglected and I've added casualties.

Last but not least the Americans. With the core platoon and most infantry support painted (you can see some of them in this post) I now needed to finish off heavier support like artillery and vehicles. This is the first batch, with more on the paint table.

Tanks are from Italeri and PSC. The 57mm AT gun is from PSC and the two 3" AT guns from Early War Miniatures. Most of the gun crews are from AB with a few from Wartime Miniatures.

There are a lot more US and Russian tank crew figures that are now painted and awaiting their new homes.

It's been a very productive last few weeks that also included finishing off some 28mm Perry AWI British light infantry and progress on a dozen Perry HYW English archers.