Goonhammer Historicals: Soviet Infantry 3D Printing Roundup

One of the stranger truths about the World War 2 miniatures scene is that there just isn’t an especially good Soviet infantry kit available in plastic, not at 28mm scale anyway. Victrix makes an excellent range of 12mm plastic Soviets, and various companies make metal sculpts to varying degrees of quality, but no truly solid plastic kits. In combination with the large amounts of infantry that most games require of Soviet forces (somewhat anachronistically), this can make collecting a Soviet force in 28mm quite pricey. 

If you’re willing to make the jump from plastic to printed resin, however, there are more options. Considerably less options than you’ll find for basically any other significant Allied or Axis nation, for some reason, but still. As part of our Eastern Front season, let’s go through a rundown of some of the best available STLs. 

All test prints were done with the pre-supports provided by the sculptor. You’re going to have to cope with the occasional stray hair in the print pictures, because I have a long-haired and very fluffy cat, and I have long since given up ridding my house of cat hair.

The Fall of Berlin (RKX Miniatures)

RKX Miniatures have only a few Kickstarters under their belt, but all four of them are exceptional. Hurtgen Forest covers US and German forces at the Battle of the Bulge, Operation Plunder (Parts 1 & 2) cover Canadian and Fallschirmjäger from the crossing of the Rhine campaign, and The Fall of Berlin provides late-war Soviet forces. 

The core pledge included a HQ squad, rifle section, MG team, mortar team, tankers, and a T34/85 with riders, and stretch goals filled it out with snipers, flamethrowers, SMGs, engineers, more vehicles and big guns, more weapon teams, and head options – more than enough to get a full Chain of Command or Bolt Action platoon on the go. 

If you missed the Kickstarter, not to worry; the full range is available on the RKX website.

Test Print

I chose a couple of the scout models for this test – a sniper and a PPSh armed scout. 

These turned out beautifully. They’re quite large, closer to 32mm than 28mm, but they have a really nice balance of fine and deep detail. The faces are very good, but still look like they’d take paint well. I find with a lot of 3D miniatures with detailed faces, they only really work in the render, and the detail is too shallow to pop in physical form. 

The provided presupports worked perfectly on my setup, no errors or slips.

Join or Die: Comrades in Arms (3DBreed Miniatures)

We’ve covered the Join or Die range of Kickstarters before in our Kickstarter roundup. They’ve done campaigns for WW2, Napoleonics, Wild West, Romans, and more besides. For our purposes, the relevant project is Comrades in Arms, which provides minis for British and Soviet forces. For the Russians, it covers all the usual essentials you’d expect (infantry, weapon teams, support options), and also a bunch of handy extra bits, like casualties, extra poses and NCOs. Once again, while the Kickstarter is over, the STLs are available on their website. 

Test Print

For this test I printed a couple of the standard infantrymen, one with a helmet and the other with a ushanka. 

These might actually be my favourite of the bunch. They’re crisply detailed, they have easy to read proportions, they have plenty of nice peaks and troughs where highlight or shading can stand out. Size wise they’re pretty perfect, though definitely on the slightly chunkier side.

Presupports again worked perfectly on my setup, no problems at all.

Black Death: Soviet Naval Infantry (Flank March Miniatures)

Sure, you can get regular Soviet infantry anywhere…actually forget that, you definitely can’t, that’s the whole point of the article. But you can get them in more places than the more esoteric Red Army/Navy options, like the Soviet’s own version of the US Marines, the Naval Infantry. 

This range contains everything you might want for a platoon, sans vehicles. In a nice bit of historical detail, the models cover multiple uniform variations – the sailor uniform with hat and with helmet, and the later red army uniform with hat and helmet. With that in mind, the regularly uniformed and helmeted infantry could easily stand in for ordinary Soviet infantry. 

The models are available in STL form from Wargaming3D, and in physical pre-printed form from Studio Historia. 

Test Print

I printed two standard bearers from this set, one wearing a Red Army uniform and helmet, the other wearing a Navy uniform and cap. I also mirrored one of them, just for variety’s sake. 

It’s quite interesting how viewing a model in the render and viewing it in person create quite different impressions. In the render, these might look like the less detailed of the bunch. But in physical form, the slightly more traditional sculpting style really make the details stand out immediately, even at a bit of a distance. These are really lovely miniatures, and the Navy outfits in particular make for a very fun themed force. A slight downside is that due to the chunkier proportions, they may be slightly harder to fit in with certain other model lines.

Presupports worked! No errors.

Wargames Atlantic Digital

If there’s a wargaming setting, Wargames Atlantic have probably put out an STL set for it, so it’s unsurprising that Soviet troops are represented in the WGA Digital library. There’s not a huge range of miniatures here, but we do have both male and female infantry. The female ones have quite a lot of equipment and uniform options, so you could easily use them as scouts, snipers, anti-tank or even LMG teams. The male set is a bit more limited, with just standard rifles or SMGs. 

Something of a downside is that WGA don’t necessarily include full body versions of a lot of their kits, these included, and so you’re stuck either digitally assembling them in Blender or your slicer, or fiddling about with gluing multi-part resin models, which can be tricky at times. On the other hand, it does make it easier to ensure that more of your models have unique poses. I’d recommend learning to stick them together in Blender and then supporting them yourself.

Test Print

I printed one of the women’s squad and no more, mostly because for whatever reason my download link for the other male squad is broken (fix that please, WGA).

My view on Wargames Atlantic is generally that their sculpt quality is good, but rarely blows me away. I remain strong in that opinion. There’s some nice detail in this sculpt, but the pose is rather static, and some of the fine detail is going to be difficult to pick out. Scale wise, she’s a little shorter than the others, and closer to true-scale, with a smaller head and hands. Definitely a very nice option for throwing a few riflewomen into an army, but the combination of some sculpt weaknesses and the multi-part construction would make this a little annoying to use for a full army.

It’s also worth noting that like with quite a few WGA prints I’ve done, the thinner parts of the model are just too thin. In this case, the strap on the rifle is so thin that it bends to slight pressure even after curing. The rifle itself is also quite thin, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it snapped off after a couple of games.

My experience with WGA presupports is very hit or miss. I have a suspicion that they don’t really test their prints, at least not extensively. This print did continue this suspicion. The body, right arm and head all printed perfectly. The left arm had a misprint, with some nasty stepping. This effect is generally caused by the support losing its hold on the model briefly as the plate pulls away from the vat bed, this momentary slip causes a misalignment of that layer and subsequent layers. If it happens once it happens multiple times, hence the repeated stepping and deformed shape.

Kyoushuneko Miniatures

These are a bit of an odd one out on this list, as they’re not really designed to be used in straight historicals, but more for sci-fi and Weird War stuff like Konflict ‘47. They have a notably Heroic Scale design to them, with large heads, hands and weapons compared to other WW2 miniatures. Having said that, if this style doesn’t bother you (or you even like it), then there’s a large range of infantry, weapon teams, artillery and tanks to pick from.

Test Print

Here, I printed out a couple of armoured assault engineers.

As I said, the final model gives a very different impression to just looking at the render. In the render, these looked really chunky and cartoony, but in person they look just fine. They’re still visibly chunkier than the rest of this batch, but I don’t think they would stand out as being out of place on a historicals table at all. The detail on these is really quite nice! The slightly more cartoon style actually really helps you read the detail at a distance. I expected to like these the least out of the test prints, but no, they’re solid.

The presupports were very minimalist – a small number of supports, with almost no bracing between. While the models mostly printed, the crouching chap got a bad misprint on his arm and a smaller one on the helmet. This particular effect is generally caused by inadequate supports. If an overhang area is insufficiently supported, the printed layer will basically drift off into the vat somewhere. This will repeat until a layer gets enough support and the print will continue. This is why you get these weird flat areas with a little sunken dot in the middle.

I find that a lot of sculptors fail to account for the fact that most home printers do not have as well optimised a setup as the sculptor themselves might do. For this reason, it’s better to err on the side of more supports rather than less when providing presupports.

Hartolia Miniatures

Quite the opposite of the last sculpts, these are True Scale to the extreme. Very proportional heads, hands, weapons, to the point where they look a little scrawny and small even put next to other WW2 miniatures. This is a style that some prefer, of course, and if that’s you, these are a solid option. I would recommend, though, scaling them up just a touch, even if you’re not mixing and matching.

I will add that Hartolia also puts out a staggering range of tank kits, with lots and lots of variations. While it’s not nearly as hard to find Soviet tank sculpts, these are nicely done and a strong option.

Test Print

It must be raised that the STL files themselves are a bit ropey. My slicer flagged hundreds of holes and structural errors when I loaded a couple of infantrymen in. The final models printed just fine, so it may not be an issue, but it’s worth raising.

I was unclear before printing what scale these are supposed to be, but after printing I think they’re natively scaled for 20mm. Either that or they’re just absolutely tiny. They are very, very truescale, which for me is a negative. The detail is very fine and shallow, and that’ll be a challenge to paint. They’re also very skinny, which in print resin can be something of a hazard. Even if you’re using a good flexible resin mix, those delicate parts can easily snap after table use. If this style appeals to you, however, and you don’t mind the risk factor, these are good sculpts.

The presupports worked just fine, no issues at all, but you might want to do the supports yourself if you plan to scale them up. Presupports do strange things when you scale them up, though scaling up is always safer than scaling down.

Scale Comparison

RKX are definitely the largest of the bunch, with Kyuoshuneko and Join or Die coming after. Hartolia and WGA are the smallest. If you want to print multiple WGA ranges together, or kitbash their parts, it is worth comparing their sizes carefully in the slicer, as they tend to vary in scale as a sculptor.

No doubt that with a bit of effort and time, you can find more excellent STLs, but hopefully that gives you a bit of a jumpstart towards finding the right Reds for you.

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