Challenge Submission #11 - A Mixed Bag of WW2 Vehicles

I had a hard time focusing during the last week of January, ricocheting around from project to project without seeming to get closer to completion. Eventually things started falling into place, and I ended up with 9 completed vehicles. Some of these have been sitting in my 'IN' box for over a decade, so it felt good to finally get them ready for the gaming table.

First up is a DUKW with a British RASC driver. This was a toy dating from the 1960s that originally belonged to my younger brother. It suffered some 'battle damage' at some point, and my brother was no longer interested in it. I thought I might be able to fix it, and it seemed like the right scale for 28mm gaming. In fact, measuring its length and comparing it to the length of an actual DUKW, it works out to be 1/56. The only 'flaw' is that it only has a single axle in the rear instead of two. I have no idea who manufactured it, but it reads 'NOVELTY' and 'Made in Hong Kong' on the bottom. 

 

The broken pieces near the back and the front right wheel well were filled in using epoxy putty, while the front windshield was fashioned from pieces of clear plastic cut from a CD case. The crates and fuel drums came from a Bandai Maultier kit, and the driver is an old Bolt Action jeep driver that I had in my 'bits box' along with the rolled up tarp. It is now ready to ferry supplies or a squad of commandos across a river or from ship to shore.

 

Next up is a Kübelwagen Type 82/3. This was a mock-up scout car/armoured vehicle with a machine gun-turret atop the cabin. It was apparently built for decoy and training purposes. I bought this from Wargames Foundry decades ago. It came with the Feldgendarm, but I only painted up the 'Kettenhund' as I couldn't decide the colour scheme that would be most appropriate. Eventually I thought Panzer Dunkelgrau would do just as well as any other colour, and now it's finally done.

 

 Third on our list is a Bandai 1/48 SdKfz 3 Maultier that I picked up off Ebay. This was another project where I couldn't decide what colour to paint it, but I finally decided to go with Panzer Dunkelgrau with an Olive Green striped camouflage suitable for the Russian Front. The tarp was painted Tan Earth and given a wash of GW Agrax Earthshade. I then liberally applied Vallejo European Dust wash everywhere. The kit came with a cargo of four petrol drums and two large crates, but since nobody would see them with the tarp in place, I used them for the DUKW.

 

 Next is a 3D printed French Panhard 178 armoured car that was from the same run as the two painted by Fellow Conscript DallasE. I used a different paint scheme that is based on a surviving example in the Musée des Blindés in Saumur, France. I used Vallejo Gunship Green and Chocolate Brown with a sharp black line in between. I left off the fifth wheel, but added a muffler on the right side made from a piece of plastic sucker stick. Sometimes it helps a recce unit to not be heard, as well as not be seen. The decals were all ones that were kicking around in my files, so I didn't have to free hand any roundels. 

 

The fifth item is a group of four M5 Half-tracks to provide some additional armoured lift capability to my 2nd Canadian Division. I am not sure if these were used in any of the infantry divisions, so I may have to mark them up for the 4th Canadian Armoured Division. The models are either Corgi or Solido 1/50 vehicles that all came in different colours and configurations. One was an ambulance version that had a tarp on it, and the back door was cut out. The tarp was tossed in the 'bits box' while the missing door was replaced using thin plastic card. Everything was painted a uniform colour and then 'muddied up'. The verdict is still out on what stars should be added and where, but the vehicles are now ready to take to the field and move a platoon of infantry in relative safety on the battle field.

 

 The last vehicle of this post is a Warlord Games 1/56 resin and metal M10 Achilles mounting a 17 pounder. While this is a newer acquisition compared to some of the other vehicles, it sat on the shelf for a while before being assembled. When it arrived, the tracks were warped and didn't form a clean fit with the chassis. A bath in some boiling water and some careful pressure in the right places straightened things out to an acceptable degree and things proceeded readily from there. Two of the crew in the turret are part of the resin casting while the third crewman is in metal. All came with separate heads which can provide some variety if you want to field more than one. The tarps were added from my 'bits box'. 

The only two Canadian units that used 17pdr M-10s were the 4th Anti-Tank Regiment RCA of the 5th Canadian Armoured Division; and the 7th Anti-Tank Regiment RCA of the 1st Canadian Corps Artillery. Both Regiments would have had two batteries of towed 17pdrs and two SP batteries with 17pdr M-10s

 

 As I said in the title, it is definitely a mixed bag of vehicles, but they are now all done.Thanks for reading.

 

28mm Great War Auto-Car Machine Gun Carrier from 1st Corps

This model had been on my radar for some time as an addition to my Great War Canadian force. The Autocar machine-gun carrier, while ultimately just a footnote in the development of armoured forces in the Great War, was a uniquely Canadian innovation and a neat-looking supplement to a wargames army.

Raymond Brutinel, the architect of the Armoured Autocar (and incidentally, one of the main drivers and tacticians of Canada's machine gun service) was an ex-French Army lieutenant who emigrated to Canada and made a fortune in mining stocks. He kept up an interest in military affairs, too - particularly as related to the machine gun. On the outbreak of the Great War, Brutinel contacted Sir Clifford Sifton, a wealthy Ottawa businessman who served as a cabinet minister in Laurier's government, to put forward his idea of creating a force of machine-gun-armed armoured vehicles. Sifton thought this was a capital plan indeed and resolved to raise the money to create this unit for Canada's armed forces.

Sam Hughes, Minister of Militia and Defence, approved the plan on 13 August 1914 (!) and Brutinel decamped for the USA to find appropriate vehicles. These he found in New York City, in the form of two-ton trucks manufactured by the Autocar concern in Pennsylvania, and used by the American Express company as transport vehicles. The large sum of money contributed by Canadian business benefactors ($150,000) allowed Brutinel to contract with Autocar for eight armoured machine gun carriers, five support vehicles for carrying ammunition and supplies, a fuel and oil tender, and four unarmoured "roadsters" for officer use. Autocar itself contributed an ambulance. 

Brutinel then contracted with the Colt Firearms Company of Hartford, Connecticut for twenty Colt Model 1914 machine guns and accessories - sixteen to mount on the Autocars and four spares. While the Colt was a poor weapon, the superior Vickers gun was in short supply at the time. However, by 1918 the Colts had all been supplanted by water-cooled Vickers guns as shown on my model.  

The fully equipped Autocar weighed three tons and was powered by a 22hp flat-twin water-cooled engine mounted under the driver. Top speed was 15mph. The armour plating was a mere 5mm thick and hardly bulletproof, despite the representations of the Autocar firm. The two machine guns were mounted along the centre of the rear compartment, and bins along the periphery carried 12,000 rounds of ammunition.

Its service history was somewhat mixed. By the time the 1st Canadian Motor Machine Gun Brigade reached the Ypres salient in June 1915, terrain conditions were not conducive to vehicles at the front lines. Brutinel changed tack and innovated a new role for his machine guns - indirect barrage fire. In this he was quite successful and eventually, he was appointed to Corps Machine Gun Officer, having control of all heavy machine guns in the Canadian Corps. 

By January 1918 Brutinel considered the Autocars obsolete and Sir Arthur Currie, Corps commander, endorsed his proposal to remove their armour and relegate them to a transport role. But before that could be done, the Germans launched the Kaiserschlacht offensives and the Autocars did yeoman service in zipping here and there to support the hard-pressed British troops. This brought a reappraisal of the value of the Autocars in "mobile warfare", and the unit served admirably in the Hundred Days campaign that ended the war. Four of the armoured Autocars survived the war. Two were returned to Canada in 1919 for possible use in quelling civil disturbances such as the Winnipeg General Strike. One of these disappeared after being sent to Winnipeg. The other was eventually used as a training vehicle for a time, and ultimately accessioned into the collection of the Canadian War Museum in Ottawa, where it can be seen today.

I quite enjoyed building and painting this model from 1st Corps, although the customer service I received was pretty poor. At first, there was no acknowledgement of my order - just an email from Paypal confirming my payment. After ten days or so I sent messages with no response - eventually I got a "yeah it's been sent" message through Facebook. However, when the order arrived, it didn't include the crew models shown on the 1st Corps site - instead of the standing crew member, I got a second gunner. Emails and Facebook messages asking about this discrepancy have not received a response. So - great models, lousy service. Disappointing, because I think a previous order of some Curteys Miniatures knights from them had come through fine. Oh well.

As noted, the model is great - resin body with metal guns, ammo boxes, coolant canisters, and wheels. The driver is cast in metal as one piece with his bench which makes for easy painting access to the cab. There are a couple of armour plates in resin too but despite there being no instructions included, assembly is easy enough to figure out from reference photos.
 

This 24-page book is an invaluable resource for information on, and many photos of, the Autocar. It's available from Service Publications for only $10CAD. Highly recommended.

Long Weekend Painting Frenzy Part 1 - Team Yankee Canadian Mechanized Infantry

Reinforcements for the 4th Canadian Mechanized Brigade Group in "Team Yankee"

We just finished another unique Thanksgiving weekend here in Winnipeg. I use the word"unique" because our province was hammered by a severe snow storm through Thursday and Friday.  While terrible winter conditions are something most Manitoba residents are used to, Thanksgiving is just a touch early for that sort of thing - when snow does arrive at that time of year, it tends to be the wet, heavy sort which brings down trees and power lines.  As I type this, thousands of residents remain without power, and it could be a week or more before the power is restored.

Mechanized company command stand (and an M113 for the group to ride around in).

For my part, I was very fortunate - while my lights flickered, the power stayed on, we did not lose too many trees on our property, and I was able to spend Thanksgiving with family because our pickup truck can drive through almost any weather conditions. But since there wasn't much else to do, I was also able to paint like a madman through the whole long weekend!  Building on the ADATS from last week, one of the items I finished was a mechanized infantry platoon for my "Team Yankee" Canadians.

I first started painting Canadians for "Team Yankee" back in January of 2018, before any of Battlefront's models or rules had been released. So my initial Leopard C1s were a mix of models from the Plastic Soldier Company and an outfit called "Armies Army" - a niche outfit which had also released an insanely complete collection of infantry, M113s and Lynx vehicles.

The bulk of the infantry platoon, with their M113s in the background. The blue flowers denote the platoon command stand.

The casting quality of Battlefront's metal infantry models continue to be, at best, average, but at least the range is complete and still available.

This was all months before Battlefront had released their Canadians, and I was a keen early adopter. My Canadians have already participated in some fun games of "Team Yankee", but my force is a small one, and I am looking to bulk it up for some bigger games.  Sadly "Armies Army" no longer exists, and its fine products are nowhere to be found...while I do have left-overs from my initial order, they won't be enough to bulk up my tabletop forces very much.  But it's 2019 now, and Battlefront's (very complete) range is now established and available!

Supporting weapons for the platoon...a .30cal MG team (almost straight from WW2) and a 2-man 60mm mortar team. It's old school, but it all helps hold back the Warsaw Pact forces...

The photos in this post show a complete Canadian mechanized infantry platoon and their 4 M113 APCs for transport.  There is also a Canadian infantry command stand, and a separate M113 for the company commander.  The models and figures are all from Battlefront - but the decals are from my "Armies Army" haul and a specialist 1/87 decal provider (I like the over-sized Canadian flags on the vehicles...).

M113s...missing that iconic road wheel on the front (something the Canadian vehicles always seem to have in photos) but hopefully the little over-sized Canadian decals give enough "Canadian content" for the models.

Another view of the M113s...not my favourite Cold War vehicle by a long shot, but you will not find many NATO forces without them...

I always find the M113 to be a bit of a tough slog to paint - they are not inspiring vehicles - but I credit Battlefront for an overall amazing kit in terms of options to build your M113s into a wide assortment of of the variants used by NATO forces.  The Battlefront infantry sculpts are also good, but I do prefer the "Armies Army" ones in terms of quality - the sculpting and casting was just better with "Armies Army".  But full credit to Battlefront, their range is very complete - and you can still order from it, so it's great to see them supporting their range and their game.

With these reinforcements, I can now field multiple elements in my "Team Yankee" Canadian forces - a mechanized infantry company and a Leopard C1 squadron. While my gamer-lizard-brain will always immediately speculate about further expansion (a third mechanized infantry platoon, maybe to represent the combat engineers, would be nice, as would more TOW launchers, and the Leopard C1 squadron could use a couple more tanks) for now we have some additional variety in terms of options for our "Team Yankee" gaming.

Thanks for visiting - and stay tuned for more Long Weekend Painting Frenzy Output

Prairiecon 2018 - Battle of Blickheim, a "Team Yankee" Game

Ouch! Tough outing for the Royal Canadian Dragoons at Prairiecon...victory came at a price

So another "Prairiecon" has come and gone! This is Western Manitoba's main gaming event, held every summer in Brandon, Manitoba.  Conscript Dallas has been involved with Prairiecon for...longer than I can recall, so I will leave origin content to him, but as a group a few of us have been going to Prairiecon every year for...wow, something like 19 or 20 years, with Dallas even more? It's a real tradition, one I look forward to every year.

This year I am pleased to share reports of a heavy Conscript presence at the event, with three different demonstration games.  Dallas ran a fleet-scale "Battlestar Galatica" game.  Byron ran an exciting "Through The Mud And The Blood" WW1 game.  Our great friend Curt came out from Regina to host a special game of "Spectre".  And if that wasn't enough, we also ran a game of "Team Yankee".  That's a LOT of gaming!

The table at the outset of the game...the peace of the village of Blickheim will soon be shattered...

For today I'll touch on the "Team Yankee" game that was played on the Sunday morning at Prairiecon. The game was an opportunity to put the new Canadian units I had been working through the winter into play on the table.  The timing was fortuitous given that Battlefront has recently "released" its new Team Yankee book, "Free Nations".

Soviet elements prepare to move out on the assault

The scenario is we played was derived from the battle reported in the (fictional) book "First Clash" by Kenneth Macksey, which features the 4th Canadian Mechanized Brigade Group in action against a Soviet ground assault set in a fiction Cold-War-Gone-Hot in the 1980s.  In Macksey's story, a moment in the battle arrives when the Canadian line starts to buckle, and the Canadian commander unleashes his reserve armoured Squadron, catching the Soviets by surprise, and blocking their breakthrough.

Soviet advance elements approach the McPizza king...they would soon learn the blue "objective marker" was, in fact, a NATO pre-registered artillery target!

Since the theme for Prairiecon 2018 was "It's a trap!", I set up the scenario with some mild deception.  The Soviet players, controlling a T-72 battalion with some attached infantry and AAA support, were told they needed to clear the village of Blickheim (home, naturally, to a critical 'McPizza King' location) of a lingering Canadian rear-guard, that the NATO forces were in retreat.  They would have eight turns to accomplish this.

The Canadians appear! Leopards and M150s move into firing positions

The Canadians, on the other hand, learned they had the opportunity to arrive from a totally unexpected table edge at a turn of their choosing - they have been working themselves into position through the late hours of the evening and into the morning, with the Soviet forces unaware their flank was vulnerable. This was a great advantage - which the Canadians would need, as the Leopard C1 tanks do not dominate the tabletop the way other modern NATO MBTs would in games of "Team Yankee".

Soviet armour burning after the ambush...

The game was well-attended, with several guests and observers participating.  Dallas led the Canadian side, with help from Byron and Curt, while Dave V led the Soviet side, with support from a few convention-goers.

Leopards try to move out...the obstacles ended up being tough to overcome, due to some bad luck with the dice...and you can see the Soviet's put an artillery aiming point on one of the bogged-down tanks, causing Canadian frustration and knocking out a couple of Leopards

The Soviet column rolled up aggressively, and uncertain of the location of targets, started to hit the town with heavy fire.  On the third turn, however, the Canadians emerged on their flank, and opened fire. A pair of US Cobra helos came along in turn four to add to the carnage.  Under Curt's careful guidance, they picked off several T-72s with TOW missiles before the ZSUs finally got to them.

Many Soviet tanks and BMPs were lost, but critical morale roles kept the large Soviet tank company in play to the bitter end.  The remaining T-72s dished out heavy return fire, knocking out many Leopard C1s.  The Soviet infantry also struck hard, neutralizing a bold flank maneuver by a Leopard C1 troop with their RPGs.  As the number of losses on the Canadian side mounted, it was in doubt for NATO...

Soviet infantry prepare their AT weapons...

But in turn eight, the Soviet side finally broke...a real nail-biter, and a pyrrhic victory as the Canadians were reduced to a mechanized infantry platoon (which was a little low on the 'mechanized' part due to losses in the fighting), a pair of Lynx recon vehicles, and a pair of surviving Leopard C1s, all that remained of the 12 tanks which started the ambush...

A Canadian Leopard C1 troop shows the impact of losses from infantry AT weapons...

A big "thank you" to everyone who came out to play, particularly to our great friend Curt, who made the trip from Regina.  Work has been very, very busy over the past month and a half (and as you can see, the blog posting and painting progress has been very sparse) and it was SO great to dive into a bunch of gaming and see so many friends once again.

Painting Challenge Submission 12 - RCHA Support for Team Yankee

Big guns for Canada! 155m shells and Maple Syrup to defend the NATO lines!

Another bit of 15mm Cold-War-gone-hot content to share - a unit of M109 self-propelled 155mm howitzers, some big-time support for my Cold War Canadian forces.


I know that on-table models to represent artillery like this is very, very silly (at best).  For a lot of folks it is one of the worst features of Battlefront's rule sets. The range of the weapon is something like 15 to 18 kilometres, and that is before any enhancements like rocket-assisted projectiles or other horrors are added.  Having units like this on a 6' x 4' table - or even a much, much larger table - in 15mm is kinda dumb in a lot of ways, and can exacerbate issues with those who feel strongly the period is better suited to 6mm or even 3mm. Even in "Spearhead" (division-level) games, where the large table, even in the abstract that "Spearhead" uses, can represent a very great distance, artillery like this can be well off-table.

Kinda silly on the table...but FUN! 155mm shells to support the 4th Canadian Mechanized Brigade Group

On the other hand, you know what? As I get older, I find myself getting a lot less hung-up about stuff like that.  It's a lot of fun to paint the big guns, put them out on the table and have them blaze away!

1/100 M109 models from Battlefront's Vietnam range

Big guns are fun! At a core level in all of this is a kid in me who is not growing up and thinks more things on the table that would make a "boom" sound are awesome. And while I find maybe some WW2 games seem to have too much tactical involvement of artillery, for a setting like "Team Yankee", I think it is quite appropriate to have shells raining down on both sides for most of the game. If nothing else, I want the other Canadian figures I have painted to "know" they would have the support because it is sitting with them on the shelf, ready to move out :)

So, there you go...I'm a contradictory nerd...back to the models...

The artillery punch of the 4th Canadian Mechanized Brigade Group came from the Royal Canadian Horse Artillery, equipped with these armoured, self-propelled howitzers. The mechanized brigades had 60mm and 81mm mortars with their infantry.  And of course the Leopard C1s could dish out direct-fire abuse from their 105mm guns.  But to really rain on the Warsaw Pact parade, you need some serious stuff to fall from the sky on to the bad guys - and 155mm shells fired by the stout members of the RCHA will do nicely for that!


These are 1/100 scale models from Battlefront - actually from their Vietnam range. I think those would be the appropriate if approximate vintage for the weapons equipping the Canadian formations in the 1980s. Any deployment to halt a Warsaw Pact attack would have relied heavily on timely support from these bad-boys.

A few decals on the back to ID the nationality

While the armour on these vehicles would not stand up to anything like the main gun on a tank, it would have been pretty important - being a gunner in this fictional (phew!) circumstance looks like it would have been terribly dangerous work. Any extended fire missions would rapidly be identified by Warsaw Pact spotters, and counter-battery fire from the enormous artillery complements within the Soviet formations would have been a near-certainty. The ability to keep hammering out shells while under fire would be essential to preserving the 4th Canadian Brigade, so I expect they would dig these guns in, open fire and pray for the armour to keep them safe!


Reading Kenneth Macksey's awesome "First Clash" offers excellent insight to how critical the artillery support is for the Canadian formation (or really any formation), and just how much planning went in to ensuring the shells would be there at the right time and the right place. Once battle was joined, the bombardment and counter-bombardment would be almost continuous.  Timely support from the RCHA would be critical for the smaller (relative to attacking Warsaw Pact formations) infantry-centred Canadian Battlegroups to hold off major assaults from large Soviet Motor Rifle battalions.

The Battlefront M109 model is a mixed resin-and-metal model kit...good detail on all the casting, well done by Battlefront

I found a number of different photos of these units on manoeuvres in the various NATO exercises through the 1980s, and they seemed at the time to be sporting a simple black camouflage pattern, so that is what I have tried to replicate here.  And of course some Canadian flag decals have been very helpful as well.

Three more vehicles in 15mm, another 18 points...hey, it all counts! The grind toward the 1000 point target continues...

Painting Challenge Submission 11 - Cold War Support Elements

NATO support vehicles hold the Warsaw Pact back from strategically vital parts of...my kitchen...models from Battlefront and Armies Army

After five consecutive weeks featuring submissions of 15mm Cold-War-Gone-Hot subjects, I really thought I was going to switch to painting something different - but the switch didn't stick. I started thinking to myself "well, what about one or two support elements to, you know, 'round out' the work I have already completed..." and such are the debris-strewn pathways of my hobby mind that I put down that other stuff and went back to the 15mm stuff - just can't seem to quit the Cold War!


Subjects from two NATO nations today - some support elements for my 15mm 1980s Canadians, and some tank-hunting helicopters for my 1980s West Germans.


Since it has been a few weeks since we last visited the Bundeswehr, let's start with the helicopters. These are BO-105s, multi-part 1/100 scale plastic kits from Battlefront, part of their extremely comprehensive lineup of figures for the 1980s West Germans in their "Team Yankee" game.

BO-105 tank hunting helicopters for the Bundeswehr

Where the Germans have some fine form when it comes to battle tanks, these BO-105s don't, shall we say, give off quite the same "menacing" vibe as, say, the utterly terrifying Soviet "Hinds".

Instead, the BO-105 has a kind of practical, workmanlike "well, anything is dangerous once you attach anti-tank missiles to it" sort of aura.

TOW anti-tank missiles are the killer armament of these helicopters...they are out to hunt tanks

With the Warsaw Pact and its 3 billion tanks facing you down, you do need to have as many economical anti-tank options as possible to back up your ultra-sexy Leopards! The BO-105 is a fine tank-hunting platform, capable of moving quickly, hugging available ground cover and obstructions to "pop up" and pick off enemy armoured targets with guided anti-tank missiles.

While plastic has its issues, bravo to Battlefront for bringing these models out..they'll be fun on the table!

Dallas already has a solid collection of West German forces, including a pair of these helicopters already, so this painting is not necessarily super-useful in terms of our overall group's collection. But it was fun to get these finished. In our "Team Yankee" games the helicopters seldom survive, but their approach is always dramatic and tense :) perhaps these extra helicopters can be involved at some point to help the West Germans hold out in the face of large amounts of Soviet AAA fire.

OK - moving back to the Canadians, here are a couple of support elements to "round out" my initial battlegroup from the 4th Canadian Mechanized Brigade Group.

M113 "Lynx" Recon vehicles for the Canadian Forces

There are two "Lynx" recon vehicles - a variant of the M113 APC that is a little sportier-looking than the average M113.  The Canadian Forces used the Lynx for various scouting, security and other purposes.  These models are from Armies Army - Keith, being a great guy, tossed them in as freebies after I ordered a squadron of Leopard C1s - "they will look great with your tank column" he said, and he was right!  While I thoroughly dislike the M113 in general, the Lynx at least has a sporty little look to it, and the turret-style bracket mount for the .50 cal is pretty neat too.

.50cal MGs in the turret-style mounting, and a little .30cal on the back for some extra fire support in the event of a sticky situation while out scouting...

Big "thank you" to Keith for tossing these in with my Leopard C1 squadron...they will round out my forces nicely!

As I mentioned in a previous posting, wargamers can seldom relate to recon assets the way real commanders in the field would.  These vehicles would be out ahead of the Leopard C1s, reporting back and providing vital intelligence as the battle was joined.  With an actual battle underway, as experienced on our tabletop, these poor Lynx vehicles won't last any longer than the Soviet BRDMs or other equivalents, but at least my Canadians will have some recon support, and the additional power of a couple of .50 cals will back up the infantry platoon.

M150s - APCs mounting TOW anti-tank missile launchers

The other two vehicles are M150s...these are M113 APC with a mount for a TOW guided-anti-tank missile launcher. High-end anti-tank hitting power is at a premium in any NATO force, but particularly so for the Canadians, who may have to tangle with Soviet tanks while the Leopard C1s of the Royal Canadian Dragoons are busy elsewhere.  These M150s provide the Canadian mechanized infantry elements with some theoretical heavy anti-tank power with quite a long potential engagement range.

Clever casting work by Armies Army to allow the convenient mounting of a TOW launcher and gunner on the M113s

Some oversize decals from a 1/87 sheet to give some good Canadian flavour, eh?

Much fiction related to war with the Warsaw Pact (and thank goodness it is fiction!) features weapons like the TOW sniping Soviet tanks with clockwork precision - although it should be noted that some accounts, like Kenneth Macksey's fantastic "First Clash", are much more sanguine about such things. I am personally skeptical of the projected effectiveness of weapons like the TOW under real battlefield conditions (it would be no small thing to steer a missile towards a tank in the middle of the smoke, falling artillery shells and other horrors and utter chaos of a Cold-War-Gone-Hot battlefield, I expect), but I do really like the models. They add some additional flavour to my Canadian battlegroup and the infantry platoon will no doubt appreciate the support!

I popped the commander out to show a command vehicle, but let's assume the firing pose is for propaganda purposes only - I hope they wouldn't fire the missile while the poor driver was popped out of the hatch, right in front of the barrel!

The M150s are also from Armies Army (now available from Plastic Soldier Company).  As I said before, Keith did an incredible job bringing a very complete collection to market - I love when sculptors do that! Go buy this stuff and support these guys!!


So six vehicles in 15mm were good for another 36 points toward my target. The steady march toward 1000 points of painting continues...