Tuesday, July 20, 2010

First NVA platoon

One down, 3 to go...

After the USMC with camo and such, the NVA sure paints quickly once I figured how I wanted to handle the uniform colour. Two half evenings spent painting, afternoon painting and chatting at Murphy's Heroes and then 2 hours or so finishing the basing.

The whole platoon




The platoon consists of 3 9-man squads and one big man (who only turns out on a good day....). In comparison to the USMC platoon with squads of 12 you got to feel sorry for these guys!

Bunker




To help these two guys out, and since I had some spare putty going about, I built 2 small bunkers, one of which is shown above.

Some of the squaddies




Kinda liked RPG gunner, so I included one in every squad. Even if that is a bit too much for realism...

On Patrol




I used three different colours for the uniform. All US khaki drab highlight to different shades of green.

Wednesday, July 07, 2010

First USMC platoon finished!

I cracked ahead painting another 2 squads and a corpsman to complete the first platoon. Quite happy with how fast I've been able to paint these little guys, 10mm sure is a pleasure in that regards.

The whole platoon

 

Saturday, July 03, 2010

First Charlie Don't Surf USMC squad

I finally got around to doing some painting for Vietnam wargaming with Charlie Don't Surf by Too Fat Lardies. I'm using Pendraken miniatures, and found they paint up pretty well for 10mm. Fast, too - definitely faster than when I am painting 15mm.

Company headquarters:


These two stands both (in the CDS rules) represent 'big men' - the guys that get things to happen. On the left hand side a senior NCO, on the right hand side the company command group, with officer, NCO and RTO. The RTO I had to convert from the ANZAC range as the US range doesn't have RTOs.

Platoon command:



In the middle of the first squad is the platoon command group, consisting of the platoon commander and his RTO (again a conversion).

First squad:


Here's the full first squad with platoon and company HQ. Note that there's in total 7 converted figures. In all cases I had to remodel bush hats to helmets. In some cases more, and in some cases less successful. Still, on the table I don't think anyone will notice much.

Oh, and why? Contrary to what Hollywood may have us believe, it's really hard to come across any evidence whatsoever of guys within the same squad wearing bush hats and helmets. Who knows, maybe they did figure that the helmer was useful in keeping their brains in one place?

I am pretty content with the camouflage patterns. After washing and drybrushing they are subtle enough not to scream for attention. I used the army pattern for the helmet covers, and the newer camo pattern for (some of) the trousers. Primary difference being that I added black in the mix for the trousers.