Chain of Command Winter War Finnish

I was chatting to Dave about the possibility of getting some Norwegian figures for CoC but that I could only find one supplier, Gorgon Miniatures, which was in America and out of stock anyway.

Dave mentioned that he had some Winter War Finns that he had bought from a Kickstarter a while ago and was going to throw away as 'the figures are so awful' and that, if I wanted them, he was happy to give them to me. Having sometimes taken an odd liking to awful or old figures I said I'd take a look at them and see if I thought they were worth painting up.

Subsequently Dave brought in a much-larger-than expected shoe box filled with figures for me. I'd only been expecting a few figures so was most impressed with a box full of Finns and Russians!

The Kickstarter was from a company called 'Baker Company' and appeared from the Kickstarter page to have been ill-fated from the start with many unhappy investors many of whom seem not to have received anything at all.

Examining the figures in the box quickly confirmed Dave's diagnosis of the figures as awful and covered in flash. The Russians were especially bad and not worth painting up at all (oddly enough apart from the Commissar figure I painted for my Soviets!).

The Finn's I felt were not quite so bad, some of them might even be classed as 'reasonable' and they were sculpted in an old school style (like Hinchcliffe and Irregular) which often looks better painted up than in the bare metal.

As a result I decided that I would paint them but would not put that much effort into them, painting them quickly to be usable as it seemed a shame to throw them away. I also invested in a 'winter basing kit' as a nice base can often lift a poor figure!

The first two infantry sections:

The second two infantry sections:

An anti-tank gun and a maxim machine gun:

Snipers, a HUGE infantry anti-tank rifle, artillery observers and some engineers:

Officers and a couple of spare SMG men:

Two Aerosan (I think) captured Soviet snowmobiles. It took a while to make these from a collection of scrap metal in the box and some wire but I'm very happy with them, by far the best of the lot:

Finally a tank. I thought it was a Vicker's Armstrong but apparently it is meant to be a Russian tank with two turrets. It did have a second turret but I assumed that was a spare as it didn't fit on the tank! Hopefully no one else will know what a Vicker's Armstrong looks like anyway so that's what it is now!

So for around a week's work we now have a usable Finnish army for CoC with a lot of options. There are still more in the box (extra infantry, some cavalry, some bicycle riders(?!), some skiers and some casualties) which may or may not make it to being painted. If I added some later LMG's and vehicles they would also do for the Continuation War as well or even as Germans in snow suits as they largely have German kit.

I think they have come out okay considering, they are certainly not as nice as my other armies but they might get a game or two and maybe Dave or I will take a liking to them. I certainly won't be buying any figures from Baker Company anyway!