New Recruits from Armies in Plastic

As I've mentioned a few times, I took advantage of the Armies in Plastic holiday specials. They arrived exceptionally quickly and below are the new recruits reporting for basic training.

Here is the contents of one box of Cossacks and one of Russians, arguably Russian Civil War, Russo-Japanese, or WWI, but suitable for my purposes in the 1880s.

I'm not sure what I expected light green to look like but this wasn't it. This green would make a fantastic guitar color.

The figure count for the infantry was listed as 20, and I got 24, lots of similar poses to make units with two rows of four rifles, each row looking relatively uniform. I like having two different officer poses - perfect for GASLIGHT, which includes two main characters per unit. The extra four figures will man the gatling gun I acquired - the included crew is British.

One of the Cossacks will serve as an unattached main character / general until such time as I can acquire a suitably dashing Russian cavalry figure.

Here are the elements of the box of Camel Corps. and British infantry that will see paint.

For Queen and Country!

As I already have  a unit of Highlanders, I really only need one unit of infantry to bring up the force to match the Russians. The single camel rider will function as a character / general. His fellows (four others) may end up as an additional unit eventually.

The British infantry came with several running figures, but the other poses were in twos and threes, which made it difficult to get my preferred arrangement of 4 figures in similar poses per line. Lacking a second but different officer pose, I opted for the kneeling figure. That's something I have done in my 15mm VSF games to avoid having to purchase additional figures.

And, as you may have guessed by my choice of the Russians, I have decided to set my VSF campaign against a fictionalized backdrop of The Great Game, which I really only just learned was a thing between England and Russia, although I've heard it mentioned a number of times, and using the imaginations of Gintania and Vodkya.

The setting for the conflict will at least in part be a suitable stand-in for Afghanistan. But it's possible it will be on another planet, thanks to Star Gates. I haven't worked out the details yet. In the event camels aren't present in the battle locations, it'll just be a personality quirk of the British leader that he always has one to ride.

Finally, here is the plastic pile, sorted and awaiting processing:

It isn't terribly daunting - the uniforms for most all concerned are basic, one or two color affairs.

The WWII figures are recent acquisitions from the Classic Toy Soldiers Black Friday Sale (well, the ones I've sorted out that I want to paint). Both sides will be brought up to nine 3-figure bases, nine unbased leader figures,  2-3 anti-tank rifles, 2-3 machine guns, and 2-3 light mortars.