Tiny Cold War Soviet Armor

Ever since the announcement that Battlefront was going to publish a Cold War Gone Hot game, Team Yankee, I have been intrigued.

After release it was clear to me that it was not exactly what I was hoping for.  I wanted a game that would touch more heavily upon NATO's reliance on airpower to counter the Warsaw Pact's numerical superiority in tanks.  It seems to be essentially Flames of War with streamlined rules.  No problem, that's fine with me but at that I would just prefer to stick with WWII.

To play Team Yankee you need a shed load of tanks and I just don't want to invest that much money and time to paint them.  I am also in the camp that the 15mm size figures are too large for a game that can have so many.  I could scale down the numbers but if I am going to explore this fanciful period of gaming I WANT to have tons of tanks.  So I subscribed to the 6mm cold war gaming group think.

I still want to play some Cold War Gone Hot scenarios but I'm not planning on Team Yankee at this point.  I may take a crack at developing a homebrew rule set which incorporates lots of on and off table aircraft interaction.  Cobra's, A-10's, MiG's, yes!

So I figured I'd just bid my time and pick up some 6mm figures whenever the bug hit me.  Well the bug hit me when GHQ put their T-64 model on sale recently.  I went to the GHQ website and looked at the free stuff and found an appropriate TO&E for my envisioned 1986 WWIII Soviet force.  A regiment of tanks it turned out, 31 tanks.  I ordered up 7 packs and they arrived lighting fast (6 days).

They come nicely packaged and they have almost no flash.

Reading the back of the package is a complete affirmation of my manufacturer of choice.  Made in Minnesota and unconditionally guaranteed.  That's refreshing.

I put one package together as a test. (I'll get to the rest after I wrap up a couple other things).  The quality is outstanding and the detail is amazing for something so small.

Some people glue the turrets down and put them on bigger bases to protect them.  I wanted the option to turn the turret.  I am not too worried about damage as they will most likely only ever be played with in my carpeted game room.  So I magnetized the turrets with tiny magnets.

I removed the tiny bit of flash beneath the hull at the turret hole and glued a magnet in.  Next I removed the turret pin and glued on a tiny magnet.  Everything is tiny about these.  Once dried I carefully cleaned up any excess glue with a fresh blade and reamed out the hole topside ever so slightly.

Resulting in this fine specimen of Soviet steel.  They are small!  Shown here based on a 1 inch washer.  I didn't glue them on the bases until later.

I got to the business of painting.  Using my new Osprey book about the T-64 I selected a paint scheme that suited me and was plausible.  Basically the scheme on the cover.

I wasn't about to get into buying some fancy paint set to do this project so I used what I have.  It's more than ample.  Seriously at this scale it's not necessary to buy some super accurate paint set such as the Mig Ammo stuff.  That stuff is for serious scale modelers working on dioramas.

Using what I had I quickly got these done.  They only take about 20% the effort as a 15mm tank.  There is only so much you can do on them.  Sure, you could do more highlighting, weathering, and whatever but it would only really show up in hi-res photography.  I definitely spent more time assembling, priming, and doing all the base work than painting the tanks.

The final result.

Did I mention they are small?  Shown with a 15mm Sherman howitzer.

My camera setup sure has me stumped.  Above are shot in RAW and edited.  Here below is an unedited .jpg from the iPhone.  Not bad, but a bit blue.

Here is one from the Canon shot on automatic.  Unedited, only cropped and saved as .jpg from RAW.

I've lost depth of focus by going off aperture priority, but other than that I think it is as good as the first shot.

Aw, heck here is one super close-up, this photography is driving me batty!

Anyways, thanks for looking and tolerating my ramblings on photography.  Be sure to leave a comment if to liked them, hated them, or are apathetic.  If anyone wants I can post the painting details.  The colors used and such.

Until next time happy tank busting!