Flames of War Slovakian Infantry trial run...

Slovakian Infantry about to cross the Dniepr river in 1943 - Colourised Historical Plate

One of the bottomless wells of joy that comes from historical gaming is the vast amount of subject material there is to pick from.

A view of Slovakian riflemen in action

One of the beauties of this is that there are some armies and/or forces that nobody in the world has considered producing, or else have written them off as not interesting enough to enough people to make the project commercially viable. My Polish 'Obrona Narodowa' is a good example of one of these, and so as it happens is my next big project for 2019. 

A Slovakian army that took part in the invasion of Poland in '39 and then assisted in the invasion of the Soviet Union in '41 in 15mm.

To my knowledge the only organisation that has shown any interest in the Slovaks in 15mm at all is Battlefront and as usual they exercised the usual prerogative of ramming a square peg through a round hole... essentially using poorly chosen Italian miniatures to represent the Slovaks.

Battlefronts version of a Slovakian Infantryman
converted from an Italian Fucilieri

Anybody who decides to take a close look at Slovak uniforms will immediately hone in on the fact that the Slovaks don't carry ammo pouches over their belt buckles, as the Italians did and use leg wrap puttees as opposed to the Italian whole calf wrap around puttees. In fact it seems that whoever took charge of this particular project chose to convert the Italians based solely on the ease of modifying the helmets. 

The rear of a Slovak uniform

Now, clever dick here (yup that is referring to yours truly) had actually bought a stupendous amount of Italians in order to convert them to Slovaks before I realised this... you are more than welcome to read that as '...before I bothered to look closely at a picture I chose to part with my hard earned money!' Fortunately the more I look into the CSIR (Corpo di Spedizione Italiano Russe) the more I like everything about them... and they have some REALLY cool uniform options for the Fascist Militias and the Bersaglieri :D So now I have another giant Flames of War army to paint...

Anyway I digress. To come back to the Slovaks; a decent examination of the miniatures that Battlefront manufacture will eventually bring you to their Romanian range. If you ignore the sculpts from the neck up you will see that the uniforms are almost perfectly fitted to be a Slovakian analogue.

Slovak reenactors showing off their nice shiny uniforms...

I duly started buying up all of Troll Traders excess stock (and yes, so many in fact that I now have a Romanian army as well as a Slovak army!)

Owning all of these miniatures however still presented one serious problem; Helmets! NOBODY... ANYWHERE... AT ANY TIME... has done a miniature Slovak in 15mm with a helmet that is reminiscent of Slovakian helmets. I duly contacted the powers that be at Peter Pig and put a request in for some Slovak heads to be sculpted for me. This was duly done and a month (or three) later a large order was placed.

Slovakian Infantry Reenactors staging a mock advance...

I have to say that I was over the moon at the sculpts. The scale and dimensions of the sculpts were perfect relative to the size of the Romanian bodies.

Finally, I had the miniatures. All that remained was to pull a convincing paint job out of the bag!

A Militaria Uniform Plate showing
the elements of a Slovakian uniform.

After studying as many photos as I could lay my hands on it became clear that I had an option of two differing directions that I could take. 

Either I could make the troops look just like my Poles (based on all of the colourised historical photos and illustrations that I had seen) or else I could take a stab at slightly greener uniforms (which was based more on militaria uniform collection plates and photos of Slovakian reenactors). 

Slovakian helmet details

I opted for the greener reenactors colour schemes for two reasons. Reenactors are notoriously anal about making their uniforms correct (and thank God for that!), even if they aren't so hot on vehicle colours (just take a look at the Slovak reenactment groups and their disco paint scheme on their Lt-35 and secondly it gave me a slightly different looking army than I had just spent the last two and a half years painting (and thank God for that too!) so I am able to bring a bit of variety to the table!!!

So, I tried a few things and I am very happy to say that I think I've nailed it, by which of course I mean that its a variation of the colour of the uniform that I am happy with so without further ado let me introduce my trial miniature for my Slovaks circa '39-41

Its funny but even though we always know that these miniatures are only the size of a little finger nail... the photos never seem to look as good as they do in the flesh (so to speak!)

Anyway, for those of you who think you may want to dip into the murky waters of the Slovakian army in a ridiculously small scale I have included my colour table below for your use...

Colour Table for painting Slovakian Infantry: V- Vallejo, AK- AK Interactive, GW- Games Workshop

Fix Bayonets M***** F*****s!!!! The Slovaks are coming!