Aaron's Stripes US 2nd Armored Cavalry

Aaron's 2nd Armored Cavalry

Aaron's Stripes US 2nd Armored Cavalry
with Aaron Mathie

Aaron is a great (and prolific) painter who not only spends his days painting up the majority of the miniatures seen in our books, but also knocks out army after army in his own time.

Check out Aaron's other Team Yankee American army here...

With the release of Stripes I have decided that an entirely new army was is order, and the Armored Cavalry Troop from the 2nd Armored Cavalry Regiment, looked too tempting to not do.

I started off with the Troop Commander mounted in a venerable M113. Not content to just build a basic M113, I opened up the rear cargo hatch and glued in the Company command figure.

Also I constructed a rolled camouflage net, made of a bit of Miliput and some model railway leaves (as per the article that Evan wrote for the release of 'Iron Maiden'). Then I raided my parts collection to get hold of a rolled Tarpaulin and a rolled up Air Recognition Panel. 

As a command vehicle I determined that it would be best to be able easily spot it on the table, so I attached two antennae. Finally I topped it off by hand brushing a Winter Verdant MERDC camouflage scheme on, along with adding some cavalry markings from the Vietnam range and the usual tactical markings from the 'Team Yankee' M113 kit. 

Right: Notice the orange Air Recognition Panel on the top and red/white cavalry making on the side

Aaron's 2nd Armored Cavalry

The Scout Sections are constructed from the same 'Team Yankee' M113 kit. When building an army I like to invent a story to go along with it. In this Instance I decided that the Regimental commander found a stock ACAV tubs and shields, and had them attached but didn't have time to paint them camouflage. 

The M901s from the Scout sections got my usual modifications of loading shields and supports for the Hammerhead launchers. 

Then I added rolled up camouflage nets on various parts of the vehicles and raided my spare parts collection for rolled up tarps ans Air Recognition Panels.

 

Aaron's 2nd Armored Cavalry

Left: a single Scout Section

Below: Four Scout Sections and the HQ track

Aaron's 2nd Armored Cavalry

Not content to stop there I also left the cargo hatches on the APCs open and stuck in glued in figures and weapons. Like the command M113 I finished these vehicles with a neat brushed on MERDC scheme

Stripes introduced a new variant of the mighty M1 Abrams tank the IPM1, I had to add some of these to my collection. With this in mind I built two platoons of four vehicles each, so that my cavalry would have some heavy armour to back them up. 

Like the M113s I did some slight modifications to the already excellent M1 kit, by opening up the Gunner's sight. I'm not completely happy with my modification, but en masse I think that they will look ok.

Aaron's 2nd Armored Cavalry

As hard chargers I determined that all of the Tank Commanders would be fighting with their heads outside the turret, so I modeled all the vehicles in the unbuttoned configuration. This posed a bit of a problem when it came to figuring out which of the Abrams would be platoon commanders, so I attached two antennae to the command vehicles.

Then I raided my spare parts stash again to add stowage and rolled up Air Recognition Panels.

Finally I finished the tanks in the overall forest green that was common at the time, along with cavalry markings from the Vietnam range and the tactical markings from the kits.

Aaron's 2nd Armored Cavalry

Aaron's 2nd Armored Cavalry

These 17 vehicles get me to 81 points.

I'm debating what to do to reach 100 points, options at the moment include Cobras (in Cav markings of course), M106 Mortar Carriers or maybe even some awesome M109 SP Howitzers. In the meantime I have all of these for my regular US Army, so I look forward to playing some games to experiment where the last 19 points should go.

~Aaron