Review 01 Strelets Indian Troops
Indian Troops box art by Strelets
Indian Troops sprue, credit Strelets
This review is intended to complement the Plastic Soldiers Review of the same set. This review will cover some additional information on the models, how the set relates to the historic rifle platoon and conversion ideas to increase model diversity.
Credit Plastic Soldiers Review
The style is probably best described as 'heroic' with slightly exaggerated heads and chunky weapons, which means they aren't quite true to scale or proportionate but makes distinguishing the small arms on the table top easier.
The uniform is the British Tropical uniform, suitable for both the Mediterranean and Burma theatres - however I believe it was good practice for men to wear long trousers rather than shorts, especially in Burma where cuts were prone to being quickly infected.
There are three different types of Indian troops represented across the kit: Sikh, 'Rajputana' (with the turban wrapped around their hat) and 'Regular' based on their headgear. To assist this, most miniatures have great face sculpting with a good amount of facial hair. However, there is one model whose face is poorly sculpted (R1,C4) which I will avoid using.
There is also an unfortunate error with some of the Sikh miniatures (R1,C3; R2,C3), as they have helmets on their webbing which shouldn't be there (will be covered in part 2 of the British Rifle Platoon article). Some careful knife work is required to correct this.
The box contains four identical sprues of four(!) officer options (one with pistol, two with Stens and one with a Thompson), an LMG, a radio operator (armed with a Thompson), a sniper (whose scope can be trimmed off to make an additional rifleman) and 6 riflemen. The Sten guns are Mk. V as PSR notes (distinguished by their forward grip and bulky stock, see the Fire Arms History blog for a concise summary) which are only suitable for the very late part of the war (1944 onwards), but the Thompson was used from much earlier on.
As a section consists of an NCO, Bren and 8 Rifles, only two repeating poses will be present in each section without converting any models. As each Platoon has five officers, and four unique officer models are provided, it can be built with only one repeated officer pose. The ever useful radioman could be used in a number of different ways and the sniper model is a very useful support choice. The only models which need to be bought/converted to complete the platoon are the 2-inch mortar team and the anti-tank team.
This set has excellent conversion potential (more on this in a future post) with the three different head types provided, which massively increases the mileage of the set. In addition, a bit of careful knife work can turn 'Rajputana' models into Sikh models and then the cloth fan of the turban with peeked hat can be transferred onto Sikh models to transform them into Rajputana models. I had a success rate of about two thirds in cutting off the fan then transferred it to a Sikh model. The box has many spare officers when building a platoon, so these make excellent head swap and fan transfer potential.
Photo by me (added 3 months after original publication because I am organised...)
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