Cold War Commander - First Bits

Hey Internet,

Third post tonight. Yeah.

I managed to get the first few bits of my Cold War Commander force finished tonight. My small but incredibly heavy box from 'Minifigs' turned up this-morning and I spent a bit of time this afternoon cutting bases out of plasticard the easy way (grumbles!), cleaning flash off stuff and glueing my fingers to models.



I did some painting too. A few days ago I got some Japanese 1/144th scale models from Hong Kong. Got them on Ebay cheapy-cheap. For the cost they are very nice in honesty. They are nasty rubbery plastic, but the details are ok, and most importantly no one makes a model of a T-10 in metal.



I got them based up and sprayed, then game them a good lick of paint. They are a simple four-stage directional drybrush followed by a nice sloshing of black ink from my jam jar of black hat black wash. Not kidding. The ink is good, but the pots they sell it is are craptacular, so when the top shattered, I put the stuff in a jam jar. After that dryed, I just painted the mallet covering and the lights and sights and finished off with a bit of matt varnish to fend off the shinyness of the wash.



I know they are boring soviet green, but they kind of have to be. I think its quite a nice shade of green - nice and bright - much better than the green I did for my Flames of War Soviets. Bases just need flocking, think I'll go for a darn good scattering of a flock and staic grass mix to make them look at home on the green fields of Europe.



I also put some stuff together. It was rather a time consuming process, lots of bits with a fair bit of flash, plenty of mold lines to remove and stuff. I also had to cut out the bases. The models are nice after you put a little work into them, very chunky and gratifying. My only issue would be that the road wheels on the BTMRs are separate and as such required the filing down of eight wheels worth of mold lines and flash, before starting the arduous process of attaching them to the hull. Cant help but feel that it would have been better to have cast it as a single piece  but perhaps that just wasn't possible from a production point of view. Not a biggie, just means that it takes a good 45 mins to put each one together.



The T-62s are very nice models. No problems whatsoever with these, apart from the usual need to hack out the flash between the road-wheels with a scalpel. That's just a problem with most tanks though.

I'll probably have a bash at painting at least one of these two Formations tomorrow. Will post up again when I do.

MM.