Hey Everyone,
I got my new Russian pieces from HBG yesterday. They look fantastic. Coach did an excellent job matching colors to both the current maroon OOB Soviet pieces and the burgandy OOB pieces from Europe (1999). The colors are darn near identical. Coach’s pieces have a little duller look because he uses a slightly softer plastic than WOTC, but otherwise they blend together great. I’m looking forward to putting his new pieces to work with my current pieces.
I’m wondering, since these are “early war” units for Russia, if they should have slightly lower combat values than the current pieces. Or perhaps there should be a rule that Russia has to start with these units until the European Axis declare war on the Soviet Union. That would make a good representation of the initial success of Barbarossa. Part of the reason that Germany did so well at first was that most of the Soviet weapons were obsolete. The Germans didn’t start running into better Soviet equipment (like the T-34), at least in large quantities, until the winter of '41-'42 when the German advance litereally froze in place and the Russians launched big counter-attacks.
I’m going to try and get a few pictures of them in the next couple of days and post them here.