Lapland War themed Finnish force - a painting log

[The_Wanderer]

Hi guys,

Recently started a Finnish force for Bolt Action, which has been a project I've wanted to do for a while. The vague theme will be the Lapland War in September - November 1944, where the Finns fought German forces as they retreated from Finland following the Finnish surrender to the Soviets. The main reason for this is that it enables me to have lots of models in snowsuits (which will be quick to paint with my limited painting time!) and also access to more late war items like panzerfausts. It's also one of those interesting 'forgotten' battles of the Second World War.

So far I've done one unit. In the absence of a dedicated winter Finnish range I've used the Warlord Games Soviet squad in snowsuits. Most of the models are obviously interchangable between national forces but some were a bit too 'Russian' in their headgear. As a result I did a few head swaps with plastic German heads in helmets and caps and a bit of greenstuff work. I think they look pretty effective. I realise the weapons are obviously Russian, but I'm relatively happy to go with this as I know the Finns used alot of captured weapons.







Next up I have some of the Rubicon snowsuit Russians I'm planning on doing some conversion work on, possibly trying to make use of Warlord plastic arms etc. for a bit of variety.

For the rest of the force I have some of the Baker Company figures from their kickstarter a while ago. I'm unsure on using these though as the sculpting quality on most of them is pretty awful, with weird proportions and strange gurning faces.