Oh boy what a scene! Its awesome to see an Afghanistan dio but even more so when it is an absolute belter like this!
The figures are just works of art really- the colors are spot on, the shading and highlighting deftly observed and the details picked out with precision. Troops deployed up in the mountains like this tended to carry a real assortment of kit and its nice to see it all picked out in the backpacks and assault vests. Little details like the weapon straps and the radio wires are always nice to see as well.
In terms of the groundwork I think it has been well considered to allow the figures room to shine but still ground them in a realistic setting. It slopes upward nicely and the heli tail rotor is a fantastic touch where the hill tapers off.
Fantastic stuff, and it is certainly a great inspiration.
Incredible work and right up my alley. Would love to do these figure dioramas. Excellent figure painting and groundwork. The composition is excellent too with the rotor in the background. Beautifully done !
It sure does; I feel sometimes that politicians should be made to watch certain films, or study history just a little bit more, because at the end of the day it’s the soldier that pays. Don’t get me wrong; professional armies in a democracy are due to go where they’re sent but jeez, sometimes, just sometimes…
my dad came up with a solution to end all wars, make the damn politicians do the fighting, no fancy weapons or technology, clubs and knives only…the rest of us could go about getting on with our lives. he submitted his idea to the government, strangely they haven’t got back to him with a reply yet and that was several years ago.
I’m assuming Amazon somewhere or similar; I - as indicated - vaguely recall it from years ago on TV; I’m pretty sure it had T-64s in it which made me sit up and watch a little bit closer. I also recall a pretty spooky bit when the Afghans hove into view unnoticed by a Sov sentry. I may have to dig around for a copy myself now - having sort of talked myself into it. Wasn’t there also some gratuitous female nudity? I do hope so!
Look for the hats- the soft peaked canvas hat with round brim was issued widely in the war there. I have a great many pics of Chechnya and have never seen it there despite a huge amount of Afghan era equipment still being used there. May very well have made some appearances though- I would be glad to be proven wrong.
Pretty sure I did see some Eritrean rebels wearing them in an old Eritrean documentary about the Ethiopian Civil War- there were Russian advisers (and masses of equipment) on the Ethiopian side throughout the 80s.
Thanks Karl I wasn’t sure. I find modern Russian uniforms so confusing but also it’s difficult at times to tell the time period because they used so much of their stuff for long periods of time.
9th company (spoiler alert) is about a Soviet army company that has a very sweaty nude encounter with a girl with white hair who gets to know the boys all at once, and then the company ships out to replace a company that was either completely wiped out or nearly wiped out by the Taliban. Inside the outpost tents, etc, it seems every soldier of the previous, ill fated company had access to a photo of the same white haired girl. So, I won’t ruin the end half of the movie too badly but just say that Blondy is a foreshadowing of everything that goes wrong.
