The Cold War in 6mm

Quality work. Deeply impressed by your DPM!
I  chickened out by sticking to the Bundeswhe (and thats in 20mm....)

These are the new Heroics & Ros sculpts of the 1980s British GPMG teams, with the guns on tripods in their sustained-fire mode.

The red beads are a visual aid for my own reference, since my eyesight is no longer what it once was: red means a machine-gun of some kind. I use other colours to indicate other weapon loads. It also gives me the team's facing, since the bead is always at the rear of the base.

This is the bulk of my APCs finished, though I still have a few Spartans to do. These are the British FV432, from Heroics & Ros. The two at the very back mount the Swingfire missile system, while all the others are pure APCs.

I accidentally ordered these twice, so I have twice as many as I actually need for the size of force I was intending. Oh, woe is me, to have too many toys.

This little helicopter is going to give me some air recon capability.

The rotor disc is cut from a piece of blister-pack plastic and fixed in place with a pin stub.

Construction was a bit fiddly, but not too bad. Nowhere near as nightmarish as their WW1 biplanes.

The Gazelle gives me an air recon asset, while this helicopter, the Lynx, provides some ground attack capability in addition.

This model was more involved than the Gazelle, as I had to carve off the moulded-on tail rotor blades so that I could replace them with a clear plastic disc, and I had to tear off the rocket pods and remount them on brass pins because I got them the wrong way around the first time.

These two aircraft complete my air support assets. Both are 1/300 models from Heroics & Ros. On the top, the Jaguar, and below the Tornado.

Regrettably, the Tornado has its wings swept back as it would be in its interceptor role, rather than forward as they would be for ground attack, but never mind.

Here are some light transports for my BAOR force — a bunch of Land Rovers. ½-tonne on the left, ¾-tonne on the right. How much I'll actually use them on the battlefield I don't know, but I guess they'll come in handy for whizzing observer teams and the like about. I'd think Land Rovers might be a bit vulnerable to be operating up the sharp end, but then my teensy-tiny lead men are VERY VERY BRAVE.

As ever, the models are all 1/300 scale, from Heroics & Ros.

From Wikipedia:

"FV103 Spartan is a tracked armoured personnel carrier of the British Army. It was developed as the APC variant of the Combat Vehicle Reconnaissance (Tracked) family. The vehicle can carry up to seven personnel, including three crew members. Armed with a single machine gun, it is almost indistinguishable from the FV102 Striker in external appearance. Rather than a general personnel carrier for infantry, the Spartan has been used for moving specialist teams, such as anti-aircraft missile teams. An anti-tank variant of the Spartan has been produced, named FV120 Spartan MCT; this is armed with MILAN anti-tank missiles."

These will also be standing in for FV432 Milan carriers, which I don't have any of (as yet).

CVR(T) stands for Combat Vehicle Reconnaissance (Tracked). It's one of the multi-role, multi-function chassis series so beloved by modern militaries because of the way they streamline the logistics train.


The Scorpion was bought by the New Zealand army (in pretty small numbers — just a couple of dozen) in 1982. They replaced our M41 Walker Bulldogs, and have since themselves been replaced by wheeled LAVs.



These are the last of the vehicles I have so far for my 1980s BAOR force, so now it's on to the infantry en masse. They're a lot fiddlier to paint and base than the vehicles.

Disappointed that you have not modelled the Antenna tuning boxes on your landrovers!!

Here are some of mine I dug out as modern rules and the talk of 6mm has been mentioned

Here are some more

Here's a selection of Heroics & Ros' new 1980s British infantry, three rifle sections of them. I have enough squaddies painted now for a full-strength company, but there's still plenty of command and support weapons to paint and base.

The large bases are the rifle groups, and have five figures on them The smaller ones are the gun groups, and have three figures — they have a small red bead glued at the rear of the base to let me know at a glance what they are, since my eyes aren't up to distinguishing a 6mm figure's weapon load at tabletop distances any more.

The little 5mm d6 on the middle rifle group base is used to count casualties. My friend Steve got a bunch of them from China for next to nothing. He likes to have the die showing the number of casualties taken, while I prefer to have it showing the base's remaining strength — I don't suppose it matters all that much, but it would probably be a good idea to both be using the same system to avoid confusion.

I like the new H&R infantry sculpts a lot, but alas, my painting doesn't show the detail to best advantage, and it's not helped by my representation of DPM camouflage cloth which tends to befuddle the eye further — surprise, surprise.

Here's another addition to my BAOR force, some H&R 1/300 dismounted 81mm mortar teams.

They'd normally be dashing about the place in a FV432, and the mortar can be fired from the vehicle, but it could also be dismounted and emplaced in a sneaky hidden position and be a bit less obvious than a honking great tracked vehicle.

These guys are equipped with the Blowpipe, a semi-disposable man-portable anti-aircraft rocket system. The reusable aiming system clips on to a disposable launch tube.

Reports from the Falklands did not cast the Blowpipe in a good light. At the time they were only reporting a 10% hit rate, even against slow-moving aeroplanes and helicopters, and later analysis indicated that the hit rate might have been as low as 2%. One senior British officer described using Blowpipe as "shooting grouse with a drain pipe".

Hopefully my guys will do a little bit better than that on the wargaming table.

The H&R Blowpipe infantry sprue just comes with five launcher figures. The loader/observer has been added from the general infantry pack.

Painting note: this time I tried building up the DPM camouflage from a brown base, splotching the green and sand over the top. It seems to have worked well enough, though the overall effect is slightly darker than going from a green base. I thought the brown would make a better base colour, as it's a more useful shadow colour than bright grass green.

Thats a nice bunch of very small and brave lead soldiers.

I've given my BAOR lads some more potent AA capability with the Rapier missile launcher.

The sprue(s) come with sufficient bits to make three launch teams, of which this is one. There's a bit of assembly involved, so it pays to make sure you know which bits go where before you start gluing things together.

This team is a bit more compact than it would be in real life, because I wanted to keep everything on the one base. The launcher and targeting radar would normally be quite a bit further apart.

There's a tripod arrangement at the front of this base that I think is the aiming and control post, but I'm not completely sure. There's a sort of blobby thing attached to it which, now that I look at it closely, might be meant to be a man hunched over it. If so, he's a lot smaller than any of the other figures. Maybe the BAOR employed 12-year-olds for the job?

You are correct, the blobby thing is indeed the controller hunched over the optical sights. Convention suggests he should be facing the front as at the moment he seems to be looking closely at the actual missiles and launcher, which is probably not going to do his eyes any good at all.

Cheers, Andy

I suspected as much — blast! (In fact, back-blast!)

Well, I'll know for next time.