Casey's Armageddon Team Yankee Soviet Motor Rifle Battalion

Casey Davies’s Red Banner Tank Division Tank Battalion

Part 3 – 31 March 2016

The Horde continues! Over the last few weeks I’ve managed to complete the BMPs. I’ve painted 22 in total: one BMP-1 OP and 21 BMP-2s. It’s a convienient number, as it can provide the vehicles for a Battalion HQ and two mid-sized BMP Motor Rifle Companies with attached Gremlins, or when supporting a Tank Battalion, they cam provide vehicles for a full-strength company with enough vehicles left over for two BMP scout platoons.

With the BMPs finished (sans commanders) its time to move onto the Air support! Since the Afgantsy have just come out, I’m going to paint eight Hinds so that 6 can be taken to support regular forces, or 2 companies of 4 Hinds as Afgantsy to support the infantry that I still have to do. At first I was daunted by the assembly and painting required for the Hinds, but I found that once I had assembled a couple and got into a rythem, the rest of them flew together. I’ve got all 8 assembled and painted to the same stage as the one photographed below. All I have left to do is mask and spray the light blue on the belly and under the wigs, paint hte rocket pods, gloss and pin-wash, and add decals.

When painting lots of Hinds I find it pays not to glue everything together at the start. The wings are a nice tight fit into the main body, andI haven’t glued them in yet – that way I can take them out to make it easier when I paint the blue under the wings and the fuselage. For the same reason, I have assembled the weapon pods on the sprue – this makes it easier to handle while painting (I’ll just touch-up the spots when I cut them off the sprues), and keeps the weapons pods for each helicopter togther to make it easy when it comes to attaching them to the helicopter.

Part 2 – 18 February 2016

Not content with painting one Soviet army for Team Yankee, as well as painting my own army I’m also painting a Soviet Army for the boss! While I haven’t made much progress on my army, I’ve painted a massive amount of the other army.

The core of the force is 22 T-72’s. That may seem like an unusual number, but it means that it can form a formation of one command tank and two full companies at 100 points, or a Command tank and 3 companies of seven T-72s each for larger games.

For those gamers who like to gamble with smaller units the 22 tanks can be split into two formations of one Command tank and two companies of five T-72s for 98 points, leaving a couple of points for support (my choice would be a pair of Shilkas)

Casey's Red Banner Tank Batallion

Because I have been working mostly on painting for Pete, my own army hasn't changed much since our Armageddon weekend.

Firing Gopher While I haven’t progressed very far with my army, however I have managed to finish my Gophers. Right from the very start I wanted to do something special with ones of these. I managed to get a spare missile from Aaron off an old aircraft kit so I could model the missile being fired from the gopher. I took a few photos to share how I made this (sorry about the quality, my phone camera and lighting setup at home isn’t as good as the studio camer and setup). The missile wasn’t exactly right, so I had to modify it slightly to resemble a Soviet 9M37 surface-to-air missile. The main issue was that the missile was too long, and I had to trim the fins a bit. It's still not 100% accurate, but close enough for my liking. he process was quite easy. I drilled holes into each end of the launch tube an fitted some brass wire.

I then got some clump foliage and threaded it onto the wire. Once I was happy with the shape I soaked it in some thinned PVA to hold it together.

Once dry I gave it an overall airbrush with a Deck Tan colour, followed by a targeted white airbrush for highlights. On a side note, you can use any colour clump foliage you like since you paint it completely; I just used yellow and red so It would look less out of place if I missed a spot.

Once the exhaust trail was painted It was a simple exercise to glue it all together and paint the rocket, which I painted the same green as on the vehicle. The nose of the missile is painted the same way that I would paint a headlamp or gem to represent the seeker head.

Part 1: Armageddon Weekend – 12 December 2015 I’m the Sovietophile of the studio. I have at least one Soviet force for each WWII period, as well as Egyptians from Fate of a Nation, so why would team Yankee be any Different! I decided I’d start my Team Yankee Soviets by making a BMP-2 Motor Battalion. The main reason for this is that it gives me a large variety of toys to start playing with.  The core of the list is 2 minimum strength BMP-2 Motor Rifle Platoons. The great thing about this is that in Team Yankee the transports are separate platoons, and can operate independently from the infantry, so the first 22 points of my army acts as 4 platoons giving me a lot of flexibility. I added the Gremlin missile teams to mainly because they came with an additional BMP-2, but having the extra AA cover is useful as well. With the ability of everyone being able to take lots of aircraft I decided to add 4 Shilkas to my force. I like the Gopher model better, but in low points levels I like the Shilka as they are equally good at taking out aircraft or light armoured vehicles. Lastly I added 5 heavy-hitting T-72’s. No Soviet army is complete without them. With a couple of points spare I decided to give the T-72s some mine clearing devices, more because they look cool than the expectation that I’ll run into lots of mines.

So for 49 points I end up with: 5 T-72s 11 BMP-2s 9 AK-74 teams, 6 RPG-7 teams, 2 SA-14 teams, and 4 ZSU-23-5 Shilkas.

BMP Motor Rifle Battalion HQ 1x AK-74 team, 1x BMP-2 2 points  BMP-2 Motor Rifle Company 4x AK-74 team with RPG-18, 3x RPG-7 anti-tank team, 1x SA-14 Gremlin AA missile team, 4x BMP-2 10 points BMP-2 Motor Rifle Company 4x AK-74 team with RPG-18, 3x RPG-7 anti-tank team, 1x SA-14 Gremlin AA missile team, 4x BMP-2 10 points T-72 Tank Company 5x T-72 + Mine Clearing Devices 23 points ZSU-23-4 Shilka AA Platoon 4x ZSU-23-4 Shilka 4 points Total 49 points