World Champions! (and some painting too)

Finally after 16 years the Finnish youth hockey team managed to take gold in ice hockey! And what's even better it was against our beloved arch enemy Sweden! The team was originally thought to be pretty useless as most of the stars were playing in NHL etc. and couldn't participate, but showing true finnish Sisu they managed to drag themselves to the finals and eventually to a victory. Some minor interferance from the Canadian and Swiss referee duo who decided to hand out 3 quite shaky and disputable penalties in 7 minutes while Finland was leading the game helping the swedes in making the score even. Some great playing on overtime by the Finns finally secured victory though so maybe we can forget the blind zebras.

The traditional Swedish hockey face is even better than winning. 2011 Finland won the championship with the men's team and now with the youth team. Both against Sweden.

To go with today's theme and our national sport, I finally got started with painting the Winter War Finnish troops that I got just before Christmas. First squad under the brushes, with another already basecoated and the last two based, but without any paint.

I'm going for a dirty look to represent troops that have been on the front for quite a while. I don't think I ever saw a white snow uniform while in the army and I'm going for the same look with these by building from a sandy color upwards. I've now got 3 layers done and still 2 to go. Still a bit unsure if I should paint dirt on the knees and elbows or not. During Winter War it was unnaturally snowy so troops wouldn't trot and lie on the ground and get dirty, but then again all that artillery fire and fighting in trenches would throw quite a bit of dirt everywhere. Maybe I'll do one guy as a test to see how he turns out.

I'm not sure if painting the bases brown was a good idea or not. Makes leaving bare ground on the bases a lot easier, but I'm a bit anxious if my snow mixture will leave the brown shining through or not.