They are Partisan
As answered above, they are printed in Soviet color but are not Soviet and can represent partisans of any area. See A25.24 and especially the first sentence for an explanation of the color choice. Partisans have no class [A1.25], but are neither elite nor inexperienced for any purpose. Note that this last applies to SMC as well.
Phil,
Those are armour leaders.
To "flip" counters means you buy them in less-than-perfect condition, improve/repair/upgrade them then sell them at a profit. It requires less capital than flipping houses. See the House and Garden channel for instructions.
There are no hard-and-fast rules for what you do to sell the counters. If you think displaying them turned at 90 degrees will improve your profit, go for it.
It seems to me that whilst MMP decline to print anew the 2nd Edition rules, and I do want these rather than a pocket edition, we have to rely on what we can get. Here in the UK I see that the full rulebooks are selling for stupid prices like £250 plus £50 postage on ebay, plus probably a horrible amount of import tax. I guess thats about $400 - $450 dollars. I am beginning to love asl, for all that it is extremely complex, but there are limits on what one could and should spend on a wargame, even at Christmas time!
If the 2nd ed is oop (seriously? So not cool imo... and I dont think MMP has much moral legitimacy bellyaching about folks turning to copyrightinfringing .pdf if they let it go oop... although they still have of course 100% legal legitimacy) you could buy the pocket RB for 40 bucks (cuz its a great RB imo which you will want in any case) and the 1st edition RB on the cheap for the dividers and H. That's not optimal there is a lot of content on the 2nd ed dividers that's not on the first ed dividers and some differences in chap H too...... but it is definitely better than no RB/Chap H/ Dividers imo... Hopefully the lack of 2nd ed RB hasnt driven the price of 1st ed RBs high too (i havent checked) ... i dont know what pdf rulebook you are using... there are more than one floating about. The one's I've seen have been pretty wretched... full of not so minor errors. GL.
