Welcome to the Strelets Forum. Please feel free to discuss any aspect of 1/72 scale plastic figures, not simply Strelets. If you have any questions about our products then we will answer them here.
Thank you to you and your partners for sending in the "Battle of Lake Peipus" diorama. Most impressive are the cracking ice and sinking victims, and also the casualties whose blood is soaking the surrounding ice and snow.
All of the details plus the incredible painting lends to it's authinticity as an actual battle ground in 1/72.
This year we had an Ork-Diorama on the DUZI. Maybe "we" is the wrong word because most of our group decided not to be involved in such a thing and it was mostly the work of Peter Herfen. You can see photos from the diorama on different homepages (Fuhrmann, Benno from the Netherlands) but not here.
So I had time to help with Peipus. But there will be no other anual diorama from my side this year.
A truly magnificent effort -- it brings back fond memories of growing up in Ukraine and watching "Alexander Nevsky" on television, as well as setting up the Battle on the Ice with the (historically inaccurate but very dynamic) Soviet-era plastic soldiers!
One questions for the artists -- I noticed horse archers from the Zvezda and (maybe) Italeri Mongol sets fighting on the Russian side. Is there any evidence that the Novgorodians had any allied contingents from the Horde or other Asian-equipped peoples fighting with them at the Lake? I don't recall reading about that, but would be delighted to be enlightened!
About the mongols, we read in the Osprey and in an old Soviet book I read that Nevsky made peace-agreement with mongols before the battle, so we decided to make more colourfull the diorama with this possible element.
They are the 'ungraded' LW figures.
Here you can see an article and photos about how I repair them:
http://www.freeweb.hu/saswargame/index.php?type=article&value=26&article_language=eng&language=eng&filter=author&first_image=1
I had forgotten about those LW figures. I actually read your article before and considered converting them. But as you said they are quite expensive for having so few figures.