The Cold War in 6mm

My usual opponent is dead keen on playing 1980s Cold War Gone Hot games in 6mm, and he's got some Warsaw Pact stuff raring to go. So, to keep him happy (and because I found the proposed Cold War supplement interesting) I ordered a bunch of BAOR kit from Heroics & Ros, which has now arrived.

So, this is my new project.

So far, all I've done is sort out the various bits and pieces (and started learning which bits are which, because I really know very little about post-WWII vehicles) and made a beginning on priming them.



The new infantry from H&R are really very good indeed. I think I've sorted out the Vallejo colours I'll be using for DPM, and painted a test group: a three-man Milan team. They are:

• 72.030 Goblin Green
  
• 70984 Flat Brown
  
[*70847 Dark Sand

• and Panzer Aces 318 US Army Tank Crew for the webbing.
  

I've painted these ones on a dark olive base, but I'm wondering if starting with a green or brown base colour might make the process a bit quicker. Experimentation awaits!

Being prone, these guys tend to disappear into the basing a bit, so I'll have to do a test-paint on some standing ones just to make sure they look OK. I'll be basing them on 22mm, 16mm and 12.5mm washers for 3, 2, and 1 man groups respectively. I figure that should give me a good compromise between ease of handling and the ability to swap out bases to reflect casualties.

When I made my order at Heroics & Ros for my BAOR force, I inadvertently did a double-order for my FV432 APCs, and the FV105 Sultan command vehicle.

As it turns out, that's not a tragedy. Better to have too many APCs than too few, and it means that one of the Sultans can be turned into a Samaritan battlefield ambulance.

Great inspiration! Pls keep posting your progress..i'm going to re start collecting 6mm and any advice or examples regarding how to paint to base etc..will be precious.

Great looking minis! Cold War at 6mm is on my wish list after hearing about NORTHAG as well.

As part of the preparation I give to all my 6mm models, I glue small rare-earth magnets to their undersides.

This is for several reasons, but primarily to ease transport and storage: I can keep the models in small steel tins, like old cigarette tins or the like, and they don't rattle around in there and knock all the paint off. The magnets also mean that if I need the vehicles to be based for any reason, I can just glue a small piece of thin steel sheet to the base and pop the vehicles on or off as required. And finally, it makes handling the models easier when I'm painting them — I use fairly large bolts as painting holders, and the magnetized models just cling to them.

The magnets are attached with 5-minute epoxy. That green stuff in the photograph is a thin silicon rubber baking sheet that I've cut up, with a steel ruler underneath that the magnets are clinging to. I put a blob of glue on the underside of the model and then put it over the magnet; this ensures that the magnet is flush with the very bottom of the model's wheels or tracks.

The magnets are invisible behind tracks, but not so much for wheeled vehicles like these 1 tonne Landrovers. However, when I'm priming, I paint the undersides black, and then on the tabletop the magnets aren't really noticeable unless you really look closely.

I bought the magnets in bulk from China, and they were very cheap. The size I use mostly for 6mm vehicles is 3mm x 1.4mm, but I also have a stash of 3mm x 1mm for very low-slung models.

Here's a couple of Heroics & Ros 1/300 scale Abbot 105mm SPGs.

When I've seen the Abbot in photographs, it has always looked like a really big vehicle, but in fact it's really quite small, as becomes clear when you see a human being standing next to it. It's the same basic chassis as the FV430 series, I believe.

The model's gun is moulded horizontal, but I've bent these two up into a firing configuration. On the real vehicle, the angle to the turret would be a lot more acute, as the pivot point is further back inside the turret.

Very nice. Nice bit of dry brushing on them. Yes, I always thought the Abbot was a bigger vehicle, but think your right on the FV430 basic chassis, it's an FV433 if I remember correctly.

Cheers, Andy

I've got all the guns, vehicles and aircraft primed now, so that will limit the degree of embarrassment I feel if and when they get on to the table before they're properly painted.

Assuming I don't drag my feet too much, painting the vehicles should go fairly swiftly. The BAOR black/green camo is very simple, and other markings are minimal. Even the aircraft should be a doddle, as the RAF roundels in the modern era have shrunk away almost to nothing.

The infantry will be a lot more labour-intensive though; they're going to need their DPM camo done, and their basing as well, which is always time-consuming.



These are the strips from the "1980s British Infantry" pack. There are about 50 figures to the pack. The prone LMG included in the basic infantry pack appears to be a 7.62mm Bren rather than a belt-fed GPMG. There is also an advancing GPMG gunner on the command (?) strip though.

Something I found out about the H&R infantry by accident: many of the individual support weapon team strips duplicate those packed in the "1980s Infantry Support Weapons" pack. Which, in retrospect, I probably should have foreseen.

These are 1/300 Chieftains from Heroics & Ros. I have seven more left to paint, which will give me three troops of three to field.



The Chieftain has been one of my favourite tanks, ever since I was a kid. I was just a toddler when it first came into service, and it was well established as one of, if not the best MBT in the world by the time I started modeling tanks and things at the age of seven or eight.

There are possibly more detailed models of the Chieftain available in the 6mm scales, but this one from H&R looks pretty good to me, and I'm quite happy with it.

By Fitz:" The infantry will be a lot more labour-intensive though; they're going to need their DPM camo done, and their basing as well, which is always time-consuming."

Putting a camo layer on 6mm infantry is going beyond the call of duty, can't wait to see them

This is the first rifle section for my Heroics & Ros 1/300 1980s BAOR force. I've made an attempt at representing the DPM camouflage uniforms, though with only limited success. I'll do another section in plain green and see if the extra work involved in painting the camo uniforms is warranted in 6mm.

I'll be basing them on steel washers: 22mm, 16mm and 12.5mm, for three, two, and one man groups respectively. The groundwork material is green coloured MDF powder, with some brown-coloured ground-up stuff (maybe kitty litter) in amongst it. Oddly, it is magnetic: I'd guess that the brown is a ferrous oxide of some kind, perhaps.

These are a pair of British 105mm Light Guns in 1/300 scale, from Heroics & Ros.

I think it unlikely that the crews would be wearing their berets in the field, but that's the way they're modelled. I haven't decided yet if I'm going to add any more variety to the bases; I think I'll add a bit of scrubby vegetation to break up the flatness a bit, but that's probably about it.


I have a couple of One Tonne Landrovers to pull them around. I'm not a big fan of bases on vehicles, but because these models have little magnets glued beneath, I can pop them on or off steel bases as need be.

More Heroics & Ros 1/300 scale artillery, this time the big boys. This is the 155mm gun and it's massive Foden tow lorry. The lorry's load comes as a separate piece from the body of the truck, and I'm not sure whether I've got it the right way round or not. I guess if I've got it wrong, I'll just have to live with that shame.

There was really very little point in buying these models, as the chances of guns this size ever actually appearing on the wargames table are pretty remote. But that's never stopped me in the past.

For a change, I haven't painted the crew in DPM uniform, which gives me an opportunity to see how they compare visually with the much more labour-intensive camouflaged figures. It helps that these older sculpts are in such rigid "toy soldier" poses.

Those are looking awesome! Are those large 105 & 155 guns based on the 22mm bases? I'm curious because I'm waiting for my order (6mm) to arrive and I want to base my guns in the same manner (gun and crew on the same base).

The artillery are based on 32mm washers, and I need to get some more in that size — I've only got one left. The holes in the washers are just covered with a piece of torn-edged paper soaked in superglue, which is adequately tough for this purpose.

This is a Heroics & Ros 1980s British three-man GPMG group, with the gun mounted in its sustained-fire mode on a tripod.

I am mounting all my infantry on steel washers, the size of the washer being dependent on the number of men in the group.

For three-man groups and team weapons, I'm using 22mm washers. For two-man groups 16mm, and for single figures 12.5mm.

Single figures are there pretty much just to allow for casualty removal, but also to represent men with specialist equipment like the Blowpipe AA missile launcher.

The only problem with washers as basing material is the extremely inconvenient hole in the middle. I cover that hole with a piece of 80-90gsm printer paper, torn into an irregular shape to give soft, irregular edges and glued into place with liberal amounts of cyanoacrylate (superglue). The superglue penetrates the fibres of the paper and, when dry, gives you quite a tough, plasticized material, more than strong enough for this purpose. Make sure the cyanoacrylate has soaked the paper directly over the hole as well.

The figures are glued in place, either before or after being painted, again with superglue.

Lots more superglue (liquid, not gel) is flooded all around the figures, and then baking soda is spooned over everything. The baking soda combines with the liquid superglue, curing it almost instantaneously, and results in this rough plastic-like groundwork around all the individual figure bases. This blends the square figure bases in with the communal base, and it means that you don't have to faff about with any other groundwork materials like pumice gel or the like. The excess is just tapped and blown away.

The last stage would be the application of very fine flock — I like coloured MDF powder, which gives you an irregular cover that isn't granular enough to overpower the very tiny figures, but the more convenient ready-made option I use is Woodland Scenics Fine Turf — the Burnt Grass colour seems to me to be the best basic colour — with the very restrained addition of Coarse Turf to represent small bushes.

Great tip about using superglue and baking soda I've not heard of that before! It gives your ground work a very realistic effect. It appears your project is moving along splendidly.

Thanks

It's been a little while since I did anything on my 1/300 scale BAOR force.

This is the backbone of my armoured component, the Chieftain Mk.IX. They'll be standing in for Chieftains of any mark, because they're all visually very similar in this scale, but if I find I want Challengers I'll get proper models of those.

The models are from Heroics & Ros, as usual.

These guys — the FV432 Mortar Carrier — carry the 81mm mortar, a useful piece of kit for rapid-response infantry artillery support. They can be fired from the vehicle, or they can be dismounted and emplaced — there are dismounted mortars and crews available as part of the Infantry Support Weapons set, or you can buy the mortar sprues on their own.

These models are Heroics & Ros 1/300.

Looking good! I've always loved the look of the Chieftains, they'll definitely be on my list to paint when I move into the cold war era.

Nice I have plenty of H@R 6mm stuff, Ian Armstrong even produced a Midge Drone after much persuasion! I can't remember, in the model is the mortar tube fixed?

nickdives wrote:I can't remember, in the model is the mortar tube fixed?

If you mean, is it a one-piece casting, yes it is.

If the Chieftain was the archetypal British tank when I was growing up, the Hawker Harrier jump-jet was the archetypal British aeroplane. With its VTOL capability and futuristic lines, it evoked all kinds of "Captain Scarlet" associations in my juvenile mind.

Apparently it was not without its shortcomings, but I knew nothing of them and just thought it was indescribably cool.

This 1/300 model is from Heroics & Ros (as usual), and will hopefully serve to give my ground troops a bit of air support.

To tell the truth, I haven't really examined the air support rules in any detail, so I probably should do that.

Here we go on the troop transports. They're FV432 APCs by Heroics & Ros.

There are a couple of Swingfire turrets in amongst them too; I debated leaving those in overall green without any disruptive camo, to differentiate them visually from the APCs, but in the end I gave them their stripes too.

I'm about half-way through painting this lot, and at the moment they're looking to me like a lot of licorice allsorts. Next step is dry-brushing to bring out the highlights, then painting the tracks, and finally a wash to define the shadows.

Here's one of the ATGM configurations of the CVRT, the Striker. They mount five Swingfire missiles in the launcher at the back of the hull top; these are moulded in their firing configuration, which is good, since with the launchers lowered it's a bit difficult to distinguish the Striker from the Spartan APC, especially with eyesight as crappy as mine.

The models are Heroics & Ros 1/300 scale, and they're pretty good. The only real issue I have with them is that there's a fairly large casting channel entering the body of the model right over the rear access door, which is a pity. It would be quite difficult to clean it off properly while keeping the access hatch, and I haven't really bothered; I just cut off the excess as close as I could manage it and left it at that.