From FranL: The colour that broke the sci-fi back (288 points)

.......and thanks for everything....everybody!

I wanted a 15mm chaos force and still had a bag of chaos looking figures but then chose the chaotic red from the army painter range and so it began to go downhill......

The challenge has been great for productivity, clearing the lead mountain, discovering methylated spirits are better than dettol, Ray is still a git and I started to like painting again.....

Things got very red.........

....I hate chaotic red!

These figures from GZG are my chaos elite but upon receiving them I suddenly thought that they were a cross between a ladybird and a deer that has been violated by kermit the frog......

........things went downhill from there!

I see methylated spirits in there future.....possibly?

So sci-fi has come to a halt and now maybe a journey in to 15mm fantasy, a little sword and shield shenanigans....

Thank you to everybody especially Curt, loved it........

92 15mm figures: 184 points

13 15mm vehicles: 104 points

288 points I believe?

________________________

Fran, your 'Kermit the Defiler' imagery is now seared into my consciousness. Okay, where is Dave's patented Mind Bleach when you need it. Yes, these chaps do look rather red and rather mean, but I suppose that the entire point with them being elite chaos troops. Ergo, they are brilliant! I love the Wheelie, Yoga-Ball vehicles and that not-Land Raider is the bizz. Well done Mr. Lee. 

Mate, it was wonderful having you back with us and am delighted that the Challenge helped spark the hobby mojo within you (In the top ten buddy, wow!). Keep up the madness and let's get together next autumn for another bash, eh?

- Curt

From FranL - 15mm Legion of Ood and 28mm Donnybrook Unit! (639 points)

My Legion of Ood (The Blue Boys) roams the galaxy preaching the writings of Ood and if you don't like the preaching of Ood then they knock the galactic faeces out of you.......

This is a hodge podge of scales, manufactures and technically periods, the majority is GZG, the vehicles are from Armies Armies now The Scene, Khurasan and Heavy Mechs which used to be WH40K Space Marine Dreadnoughts ( I have re-purposed quite a few 28mm GW models for 15mm)....

There is even a 20mm kloth from CP Models fantasy range posing as a religious advisor/leader.......

.....casualties by cutting the bases of some figures and laying them flat!

I must admit the bikes were my favourite..........

The second part is this 28mm unit from Warfare Miniatures for Donnybrook, they will be based by their owner Ray, an absolute arseache to paint but needs must..........

28mm figures (34 infantry, 1 cavalry): 180-25%= 135pts

28mm vehicle/Dreadnought x 3: 60pts

15mm

18 vehicles (including the bikes): 120pts (15 vehicles are 120 points and I'll score the bikes as cavalry for an additional 12 points - Lee)

14 crew-served weapons (I am counting the equipment/ammo handcarts as crew-served weapon but could be wrong): 56pts

128 figures: 256pts

I'd like to thank Bill Bailey for the word and religion of Ood!

---

Oh my brain...counting this lot gave me an actual headache! All I can say is you have been a very productive boy. I'm guessing it's the slow season in the mud farming business? Time on your hands equals a head-splitting points bomb?!? Nicely done sir....now I'm off to find some Paracetamol. 

Lee

From GregB - Cold War Support Elements in 15mm (36 Points)

NATO support vehicles hold the Warsaw Pact back from strategically vital parts of...my kitchen...models from Battlefront and Armies Army

After five consecutive weeks featuring submissions of 15mm Cold-War-Gone-Hot subjects, I really thought I was going to switch themes.  Honestly! I even started painting something else, in 28mm to boot, that was totally different.  So different, in fact, that horses were involved! Really! But then I started thinking to myself "well, what about one or two support elements to, you know, 'round out' the work I have already completed..." and such are the debris-strewn pathways of my hobby mind that I put down that other stuff and went back to the 15mm stuff - just can't seem to quit the Cold War!

Subjects from two NATO nations today - some support elements for my 15mm 1980s Canadians, and some tank-hunting helicopters for my 1980s West Germans.

Since it has been a few weeks since we last visited the Bundeswehr, let's start with the helicopters. These are BO-105s, multi-part 1/100 scale plastic kits from Battlefront, part of their extremely comprehensive lineup of figures for the 1980s West Germans in their "Team Yankee" game.

BO-105 tank hunting helicopters for the Bundeswehr

Where the Germans have some fine form when it comes to battle tanks, these BO-105s don't, shall we say, give off quite the same "menacing" vibe as, say, the utterly terrifying Soviet "Hinds".
Instead, the BO-105 has a kind of practical, workmanlike "well, anything is dangerous once you attach anti-tank missiles to it" sort of aura.

TOW anti-tank missiles are the killer armament of these helicopters...they are out to hunt tanks

With the Warsaw Pact and its 3 billion tanks facing you down, you do need to have as many economical anti-tank options as possible to back up your ultra-sexy Leopards! The BO-105 is a fine tank-hunting platform, capable of moving quickly, hugging available ground cover and obstructions to "pop up" and pick off enemy armoured targets with guided anti-tank missiles.

While plastic has its issues, bravo to Battlefront for bringing these models out..they'll be fun on the table!

I hate plastic kits, and these models certainly had their frustrations - in particular, the plastic rotor shafts are very weak, and true to form, one of them broke during assembly, requiring heroic amounts of glue to save.  But overall, I have to give Battlefront very high marks for the effort of getting the helicopter models from the different nations into "Team Yankee".  While some metal kits in the scale have been around for quite a while - and lets face it, metal is the only true, proper material for honourable wargaming figures - metal aircraft kits, especially helicopters, in 1/100 scale are not easy things to assemble or base properly.  By making these different helicopter kits, Battlefront has made the helicopters much easier to have (my ineptitude with plastic notwithstanding), and in turn added an excellent flavour for this setting. In our "Team Yankee" games the helicopters seldom survive, but their approach is always dramatic and tense :) I'm sure my tabletop NATO forces will appreciate the air support!

OK - moving back to the Canadians, here are a couple of support elements to "round out" my initial battlegroup from the 4th Canadian Mechanized Brigade Group.

M113 "Lynx" Recon vehicles for the Canadian Forces

There are two "Lynx" recon vehicles - a variant of the M113 APC that is a little sportier-looking than the average M113.  The Canadian Forces used the Lynx for various scouting, security and other purposes.  These models are from Armies Army - Keith, being a great guy, tossed them in as freebies after I ordered a squadron of Leopard C1s - "they will look great with your tank column" he said, and he was right!  While I thoroughly dislike the M113 in general, the Lynx at least has a sporty little look to it, and the turret-style bracket mount for the .50 cal is pretty neat too.

.50cal MGs in the turret-style mounting, and a little .30cal on the back for some extra fire support in the event of a sticky situation while out scouting...

Big "thank you" to Keith for tossing these in with my Leopard C1 squadron...they will round out my forces nicely!

As I mentioned in a previous posting, wargamers can seldom relate to recon assets the way real commanders in the field would.  These vehicles would be out ahead of the Leopard C1s, reporting back and providing vital intelligence as the battle was joined.  With an actual battle underway, as experienced on our tabletop, these poor Lynx vehicles won't last any longer than the Soviet BRDMs or other equivalents, but at least my Canadians will have some recon support, and the additional power of a couple of .50 cals to back up the infantry platoon.

M150s - APCs mounting TOW anti-tank missile launchers

The other two vehicles are M150s...these are M113 APC with a mount for a TOW guided-anti-tank missile launcher. High-end anti-tank hitting power is at a premium in any NATO force, but particularly so for the Canadians, who may have to tangle with Soviet tanks while the Leopard C1s of the Royal Canadian Dragoons are busy elsewhere.  These M150s provide the Canadian mechanized infantry elements with some theoretical heavy anti-tank power with quite a long potential engagement range.

Clever casting work by Armies Army to allow the convenient mounting of a TOW launcher and gunner on the M113s

Some oversize decals from a 1/87 sheet to give some good Canadian flavour, eh?

Much fiction related to war with the Warsaw Pact (and thank goodness it is fiction!) features weapons like the TOW sniping Soviet tanks with clockwork-like precision - although it should be noted that some accounts, like Kenneth Macksey's fantastic "First Clash", are much more sanguine about such things. I am personally skeptical of the projected effectiveness of weapons like the TOW under real battlefield conditions (it would be no small thing to steer a missile towards a tank in the middle of the smoke, falling artillery shells and other horrors and utter chaos of a Cold-War-Gone-Hot battlefield, I expect), but I do really like the models. They add some additional flavour to my Canadian battlegroup, and extra character (and help on the tabletop) for the infantry platoon.

I popped the commander out to show a command vehicle, but let's assume the firing pose is for propaganda purposes only - I hope they wouldn't fire the missile while the poor driver was popped out of the hatch, right in front of the barrel!

The M150s are also from Armies Army (now available from Plastic Soldier Company).  As I said before, Keith did an incredible job bringing a very complete collection to market - I love when sculptors do that! Go buy this stuff and support these guys!!

So six vehicles in 15mm, should be good for another 36 points this week. About this time last week, I predicted it would be "time to switch subjects and show something else next week blah blah", but as you can see above, such pledges on my part are clearly worthless...so we'll just see you next week!

***

Song: Diamond Eyes
Artist: Shinedown
Album: The Sound of Madness

This is a sort of generic, driving hard-rock song from the late 2000s - great to listen to when painting tanks, AND when painting things that are made to blow up tanks!






Ah, what would a Thursday be without a visit to the cold war front lines?  These are absolutely smashing, totally agree with you on the choppers, they remind me more of Blue Thunder than Airwolf!

Great camo too, I'm not ashamed to admit that I'm somewhat addicted to checking out the different vehicles to see if you've had to get the same camo scheme on each one of each variant - must be mind bending to paint!  I love those little TOW launchers too - relying on some poor chap to stand at the top of a vehicle with little to no suspension and ask him to guide a missile towards a scary looking tank in the distance whilst it's training it's gun on you..... how could that ever go wrong?!?!?

Great stuff, 36 points it is!

From GregB: Cold War Canadian Continuation (36 points)

More Canadian armour for the Cold War - 1/100 models from "Armies Army"

Greetings to all AHPC participants and viewers! Sorry to have missed a week, but 1-to-1 scale matters had to take precedence over the brushes last week and therefore I had a big, fat, nothing to report last time.  This was, of course, all rather unsettling, as lack of any painting time tends to cause mental distress, paranoid sentiment that I may forget how to paint etc. so it is with considerable relief I can at least show you a few more items this week!  The theme is no surprise at all - continuing to round out the basic elements of my 15mm Cold War-era Canadian troops for "Team Yankee".

My prior submission had included Canadian Cold War-era infantry, but for the 1980s the infantry need a ride to battle, and for the Canadian forces of the mid-1980s in Europe this ride would have come in the form of the M113 armoured personnel carrier. 

Ugh. M113s. So, so lame...but at least the large decals on the front add a bit of clear character...

We all have painting subjects we dislike, but perhaps can't avoid due to the circumstances of the given period or setting, don't we? Well, for me, the M113 is one such subject.  Where painting NATO tanks tends to be a whole lot of fun, painting an M113 is like throwing some acrylic on a frozen turd. An unlovely box on treads, the M113 is utterly devoid of character, charm, personality or the slightest hint of fun. No turret. No cool vents.  You look at these things and wonder what the point is? Considering the debauched, comically-expensive-but-at-least-sexy-ish outcomes the western military industrial complex is capable of (see here for current example) the existence and near-ubiquitous deployment of this useless-box vehicle throughout Western forces and their client nations is a real downer from the wargaming perspective - the weaponization of the lowest bidder.  I know the Soviet BMPs were cramped, maybe not always quality, and had a spotty performance record at best - but at least they look cool, and are fun to paint...

Commander popped out of the hatch to a) represent the platoon commander's track and b) add some character to the otherwise un-inspiring silhouette of the M113 APC

From a strictly Canadian perspective, we purchased cool tanks from Germany - why not purchase their awesome infantry fighting vehicles too? Really, anything that you will drive in a war - let's just use common sense, and buy from Germany! Sadly, no...you can't avoid the M113 if you want to paint Cold War forces from Canada. The stupid M113 was the core APC for the main mechanized infantry elements of the 4th Canadian Mechanized Brigade Group, and as such, they would have to be painted if I wanted to reflect the infantry in my tabletop forces...so here we are...

These models are from "Armies Army" (now available from Plastic Soldier Company).  They are mixed resin and metal kits.  While my love for Armies Army is un-diminished, and I salute Keith's valiant and amazing efforts to bring Cold War Canadians to life in 15mm, I must acknowledge that his M113s were...tricky...you won't have to look hard to spot the gaps between the tread assemblies and the fenders.  In this case I must sadly report that Battlefront's plastic M113s are probably the better way to go...

Adding to the M113 painting misery is the awful camouflage paint scheme Canada used on these vehicles in the 1980s. One of the colours seems like...I'm not sure..."Puke Green"? Come on, Canada! Sheesh.  Anyway, to counter the misery, I used a mix of decals from Armies Army as well as a useful 1/87 sheet for things like Canadian flags and license-plates.  The 1/87 decals are oversize for the scale, but they help the nationality stand out a bit more on the table, and help to limit the flavour of the odious camouflage.

1/100 Leopard C1 from Armies Army - with the "1B" marking I think he is the "Battle Captain" from "A" Squadron...although there is a high chance I'm wrong about that...anyway, popped out commander and blue flowers to indicate the MBT is part of the Squadron command troop.

Leopard C1 with dozer blade attached on the front - an excellent little touch from Armies Army!! It will have no impact in game terms, just a cool thing to include from a completeness perspective...

To wash the terrible flavour of painting stupid M113s out of my mouth, I finished off another pair of Leopard C1s as well.  Positively refreshing!  These are both from the excellent Armies Army, and another element of Keith's utterly complete rendering of these troops can be glimpsed by the presence of a dozer blade mounted to one of the Leopards in the photos.  One Leopard C1 in each squadron had a dozer blade, useful for various battlefield engineering tasks (in particular helping to prepare hull-down firing positions for the other Leopards).  Full marks again to Armies Army for bringing out such an utterly complete collection of models and figures!!!

Canadian armoured squadron, ready to roll out!

And so I have the very basic elements of a battlegroup from 4CMBG in place for "Team Yankee" gaming - a squadron of Leopard C1s and an attached mechanized infantry platoon from either the RCR or the Vandoos. All in this has been just about what...five or six weeks of painting? Of course in a similar period Dave would have painted 1200 Mahdists in 28mm, but still, zero to a useful force in that time period is not too bad!  Here is a photo of the battlegroup to date.

Basic battlegroup from 4CMBG - Leopard C1 squadron with attached infantry support - ready to stand fast in the NATO lines!

Whatever I think of the M113s, at least these fellows will have a ride to take them around the battlefield!

Points wise, this submission is six vehicles in 15mm or 1/100 scale...so, I think, 36 points? Jamie will get it sorted.

I have certainly managed to address my "Must.Paint.Tanks." craving over these past several weeks...might be time to switch subjects...who knows? We'll see what next week might bring...just hope it brings something!

Is that the faint lilt of the Canadian National Anthem I can hear in the background as I read this submission?  The sound of the swish a hockey stick makes as it whizzes towards the puck drifting through the air?  And the distant bellow of a moose?

Here's hoping nobody from the Pentagon is reading this as you pour scorn on Canada's very early attempt to "make America Great Again" by buying boxy and unsuitable vehicles instead of better German versions?

Enough tomfoolery from me, I like the M113!  I even like the green you've used....... They remind me of the Rhinos of the 31st and 41st millenia..... which is no doubt where the early GW designers got their "inspiration" from ;)  Although, if truth be told, I also dislike painting rhinos as they are just boxy and boring.... like you, it's the decals that are the fun bits so I'm pleased to see you found some to relieve your boredom, especially as I see you had to do exactly the same camo on each one!

Those Leopards are as brilliant as always and that's a mighty fine looking (historical buffs look away now......) battalion/brigade/chapter/brotherhood/cabal that you've pulled together in this time - I dread to think how many Soviet tanks this lot was supposed to hold back though!

From GregB: Cold War Canadian Infantry - and Bonus Leopard C1 (64 points)

More Cold War Canadian troops in 15mm!

Hello to all of the Thursday viewers of the AHPC! I'm actually on vacation this week, and while the weather in my locale is fortunately stunning, it is a little bit unsettling to not have picked up a paint brush in just about a week...seems wrong.  To help me cope, I managed to finished a few more Cold War 15mm figures last Friday, so I would at least have something to share this week! And so here is an infantry platoon of Cold War-era Canadian troops in 15mm, with a bonus additional Leopard C1 tank.

Platoon command stand - officer pointing, radio operator beside him

Tanks are a tonne of fun, of course - in the case of the Leopard C1, about 40 tonnes or so of fun! But it is the hard-slogging, ground-pounding, digging in-and-assaulting-and-hunkering down infantry that take the ground and hold it at the end of the day.  The Canadian Battlegroups of the 1980s would be counting on their Leopard C1s, but the mechanized infantry were the heart of the effort - troops from the Royal Canadian Regiment and the Vandoos.  So I wanted to add some infantry - plus they paint super-fast so I could finish them before we were out of town...

Here is a bit of a retro item - a .30cal MMG in support of the platoon

The infantry figures are from "Armies Army" (now part of the excellent Plastic Soldier Company).  And they are a treat! Just wonderful castings, made from metal, as all proper wargames figures should be.  They are sporting Canadian infantry weapons from the 1980s cold-war era - FN rifles, Carl Gustav anti-tank weapons, and support from a .30 cal MMG and a 60mm.  The latter two elements are sort of retro-classic weapons, but it seems the Canadian Forces tended to make use of older weapons for quite a while longer than some other NATO armies.

Three sections of infantry - and the 60mm mortar is on the right at the front - poor chap, has to carry it by himself it appears :)

As appropriate for Canadians, the infantry are sporting colder-weather jackets - an excellent touch, in my opinion! I can't say enough good things about these castings.  I purchased an entire companies' worth of the troops, and look forward to painting them all up.  Huge kudos to Keith at Army's Army for making these a reality - for a nerd like me, it is exciting to have the chance to collect these lads and game with them.

View showing some of the webbing - note the Carl Gustav AT weapon on the one base in the foreground

Of course, these chaps will need some M113s to ride around in - those will hopefully appear later in the Challenge.

Another Leopard C1 - this one from the Plastic Soldier Company

The tank model is a 1/100 plastic Leopard C1 from Plastic Soldier Company, with an FN MAG from Peter Pig swapped into the cupola MG.   This gives me 10 Leopard C1s...on my way to having a whole squadron for the gaming table. These fellows have already seen action on the gaming table (with many of the recently-painted tanks suffering the fate of all newly-painted models - it was a rough "win" for the Royal Canadian Dragoons)

More Canucks ready to chip in for NATO

Points-wise this is...well, that's what a minion is for!!! There are 29 different 15mm infantry and one 15mm tank, so that should get me maybe 64 points? Jamie will sort it out...

I'll leave you with a photo from Palm Desert, California, USA - we did a six-mile hike in Joshua Tree National Park yesterday! The landscape was beautiful and surreal...so glad to have a chance to visit...

The Palm Oasis in Joshua Tree National Park, California, USA

Next week will be rough painting-wise (why won't work just pay me to paint figures?) but hopefully will have something new to share next Thursday - even just one figure...Cheers for now!

Not painting for a week and you still have something to show us?  I'll just be over here in the corner with my shame if anyone needs me...!

Cracking submission, I'm also a big fan of infantry and I do like them at 15mm scale as you can really get a feeling of volume without them being too small to see.  I most enjoyed FoW when there were sizeable infantry contingents on the table and these are just the ticket.  Lovely job on the camo, the helmets are especially striking.  I'll take your word for it on the weaponry as without a bolt gun in sight I'll admit to being a bit lost when it comes to small arms!

My semi-magical-semi-mystical Calcutronalator tells me that 64 points is absolutely spot on so I'll put you down for that.

From GregB: Cold War Canadians in 15mm, eh? (54 Points)

Canadian Leopard C1s in 1/100 scale for "Team Yankee"

My pent-up interest in Cold War armour has been well and truly unleashed in this edition of the AHPC! I haven't painted this many 15mm tanks in several years, and it has been a lot of fun so far. I love tanks! After a couple of weeks of working up my West German Bundeswehr forces, we turn today to another NATO member - my home team, the Canadians!

During most of the Cold War, and particularly the mid-80s period envisioned by the game "Team Yankee",  Canada's contribution to the forward-deployed land defences of West Germany was the 4th Canadian Mechanized Brigade Group. They were based in the Central Front zone and were intended to act as a reserve for the US VII Corps or German II Corps. While the 4th CMBG was mostly a mechanized formation, with stout infantry of the Royal Canadian Regiment and the "Vandoos" trooping around in M113 APCs, the cutting edge were the Leopard C1s of the Royal Canadian Dragoons.

RCD FTW!!

The Canadian contingent was not a large force overall compared to the other NATO elements in 1980s Western Europe, but it was well-trained and would have given a solid performance if called on, I have no doubt.  As I have mentioned in my other Cold-War-Gone-Hot postings, thank goodness (at so many levels) that this is all fictional, as several friends, including a few Fawcett Avenue Conscripts, served in and around these formations...

Leopard C1 troop - 1/100 models from "Armies Army"

In NATO reserve, the Canadians could expect to be waiting for a Soviet breakthrough, and be sent to block it. NATO commanders would expect them them to stop and hold these Warsaw Pact elements for 24, 48 hours or longer, while other NATO formations rallied and counter-attacked.  The Leopard C1s of the Royal Canadian Dragoons would have been key to these expectations. So for me any "Team Yankee" type games with Canadians would start with getting models to represent the Leopard C1s.

Armies Army models - showing the lovely casting of the low-light TV system over the mantlet, and the FN MAG on the cupola

The Leopard 1 was a widely exported tank, and trying to make sense of all the countless small variations that seem to emerge on the different versions used by different nations (Canada, Belgium, Denmark, Australia, Italy, Brazil, and more) gives one a headache.  For example, one of the most widely-used variants is the "Leopard 1 A1A1" - WTF??? It's like they were varying them almost as soon as they came off the assembly line! Did some country out there use a Leopard 1 A1A1A2.5??? Maybe! I'm scared to check...

And while I'm not much of a rivet-counter (or so I like to believe, at least), I still get bugged by little details, small things here and there that still stand out on even small model.  Get them right, and bang, it all "looks" right!  Get them wrong and it's...well, it's OK...but it just bugs me...

Leopard C1 in 1/100 scale from Plastic Soldier Company - the FN MAG on the cupola is from Peter Pig; the decals on this tank are 1/87 - and the Canadian flag on the front plate is my own useful identifier for tabletop purposes...I don't think they actually had a big marking on the front of the tanks like that...

In the case of the Leopard C1s, two such "little details" nagged at me.  One was the targeting system mounting on the main gun mantlet - a container for a low-light TV and other gadgetry designed to help the gunners engage targets in darkness. On the Bundeswehr Leopard 1s this is a box-shaped gadget, but on the Canadian C1s it is a sort-of rounded cage. Why? Well, the Canadians had a different camera/targeting system. The other "little detail" is the cupola MG.  On the Bundeswehr tanks this is an MG3 (a.k.a. MG42), but the Canadian Forces had a 7.62mm MG, I think was the FN MAG, mounted up there.  Even in a very small scale like 1/100, the MG3 has such an iconic silhouette that the vehicle looks German.

Should either of these things really matter on a 1/100 scale model of a tank? Well, no...but...yes! What is wrong with me?  I'm such a DORK.

Another view of the PSC models...the targeting camera is not as detail as it is on the Armies Army model, but still great and well done to PSC for thinking of those sorts of "little things"...

The popularity of the period and scale sparked by the entry of a large player like Battlefront has inspired the creativity of some of the smaller figure companies to step up and offer more models. Plastic Soldier Company issued a box of plastic Leopard 1s that could be built as the "C1" variant used by the Canadian Forces. "Armies Army", another fringe-ish producer of cool 15mm figures did even more, producing, in late 2017, a full range of Canadian infantry, Leopard C1s, M113s, M150s (APCs with a TOW launcher) and even the Lynx recon tracks. WOW. So of course I ordered a bunch of everything...so here we go...naturally the Leopards were first under the brush...

There are nine tanks in the photos here - three are from the Plastic Soldier Company, and the balance are from Armies Army.  The Plastic Soldier Company models are a treat to assemble, and they have options for the little targeting camera on the mantlet to suit the Canadian variant, which is just great for a nutter like me! Only downside if the cupola MG is still the German MG3, and that is the only option on the sprue.  I worked around that by swapping in some FN MAGs from a pack of Peter Pig 1/100 IDF Centurion Shots that I haven't painted yet (long-abandoned Lebanon project - don't ask).

The Armies Army vehicles are a mix of resin and metal parts. I love that the Armies Army variant comes with all of the proper accessories - the FN MAG for the cupola, a well-sculpted thermal jacket on the main gun barrel, etc.  PLUS he sells you tons of stowage, something I will add more on later. But they are slightly trickier to assemble - you don't get the razor-sharp precision you do with the plastic kits from PSC. With the treads in particular there were a few challenges...but in all, the Armies Army effort is just so cool because it is so utterly complete - well aligned to the mind of a wargaming nutter like me!

AND, major bonus, you can get DECALS! Yes, the little things that really finish off the models! The downside is that, other than the maple leaf on the turret, the decals are hard to see, as they are small and the black stencils don't show well on the green.  Or, they might show in the photos if I ever purchase a light box - but, if you ever see me buying one of those, you'll know I have finally painted every single figure and model I ever want to paint and have moved on to less important things...but anyway...

Ready to roll out against the Warsaw Pact, eh?

It's just as good that most of the symbols don't show up too much...the Canadian forces used a series of call signs, numbers, letters and symbols on their vehicles that would leave ancient Byzantine commanders asking "Are you sure? Seems a touch complicated..." Mostly I just wanted to be sure the Maple Leaf showed up on the tabletop - and it does!  One of the tanks you see here does have larger decals than the others - these are from a 1/87 scale decal sheet, while the rest are from Armies Army 1/100 decals.  I reason the one with the larger decals is just an extreme patriot of some sort, and I'll use it as a Squadron commander or something.

And so, we have a couple of troops from the Royal Canadian Dragoons ready for action on the gaming table tonight! As newly-painted models, what could go wrong?

Keen to try any of these models yourself? I would say "go nuts" with either provider, but to further confuse things (so appropriate for a post about Leopard 1s and Canadians), Plastic Soldier Company appears to have acquired Armies Army...while all involved are excellent folks to deal with, I'm not precisely sure what plans PSC will have for the Armies Army Leopard models. But I do recommend BOTH products. 

Furthermore, Battlefront itself has hinted at providing figures for Canadians later this year, part of a rules expansion to be called "Free Nations" or something similar...but if you are like me, and you don't like waiting, go visit PSC right now!

Enough blather! Bottom line, nine 15mm vehicles painted here, should be good for another 54 points or so.  With that, I'm off for a little bit! All the best to the Challengers, keep the great submissions rolling in, it's all very inspiring.

I love it!  Your commentary on what you did and didn't like really made me chuckle.  I don't think anybody reading this will be unfamiliar with the process of things feeling "not right".  I hope you also went through the "talking yourself into the fact that nobody will notice and therefore it'll be alright" even though you know you'll never be happy with it and so changing your mind the next day?  And I like how you nonchalantly mention that you just happened to have exactly the right MG in another pack lying on the shelves of holding ;)

I like the highlighting you've done on these, dark green can be such a bear to highlight without looking cartoony and I think this is just right.  The usual excellent basing work and the decals really work to make them "fit" on the tabletop.

As ever, a pleasure to see the story behind the painting and 54 points winging their way to you over the interweb.