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.