Musorians on the Move!

SITREP:

1930Z MUSORIAN FORCE ELEMENT DETECTED CROSSING MUS/AUS BORDER.
CONTACT LOST WITH FORWARD RECON ELEMENTS FOLLOWING DISPATCH OF FOLLOWING IMAGES.

LIKELY ELEMENTS OF MUSORIAN 4TH REPUBLIC GUARD.  

SF ELEMENTS MOBILISED TO CONDUCT INITIAL ASSESSMENTS AND SPOILING RAIDS.  MORE TO FOLLOW.
 Hi everyone!
Well, I am finally getting back from being on hiatus again - although 'hiatus' is a strong word to use in this instance, as I have been quite busy with painting up my models.  Since last report I have actually completed a full Australian Special Forces troop section; a small USMC raiding force - and a majority of a Musorian strike element as shown below!  These models have even had the opportunity to be put on display and shown to the public here up North in Townsville, so with luck I will begin to stimulate some interest in the 6mm community up here.  

 For the models, I decided to base this particular force around the concept of the Musorians being more or less a "not Syrian/not Iraq pre-Gulf War" group - they are the big players in the region, but not so big that they would be willing to operate alone... there will eventually be a Russian element within the Musorian forces, much like there will eventually be a Chinese element within my Kamarians.

The left image shows the main armour used by the Musorian Republic Guard - the T-72M TURMS.  I had the idea to do some slight modification to a GHQ T-72M (India) pattern after looking at 'TACOBAT's efforts on doing the same thing *here's the link* on his Modern Warfare blog, I was suitably amped up to make my own.  However; as they are supposed to be in Australia, I wanted them to look a little different... and so I went with a Hull Red with German Camo Dark Green and Khaki 'dabbing' to give the look of a dedicated camo scheme.

On the table, they look amazing!  The ERA blocks were painted sand yellow for the purposes of 'breaking up' the model.  I like my units to have something that distinctly breaks the model into segments, be it the weapon barrel or some other distinguishing feature... it helps to make the board visually appealing to passerbys as well.

 Next to be painted were my T-55MV's and EE-11 Urutu's - they will be utilised in support of the infantry and there will eventually be a dedicated T-55 unit supporting the T-72s.  The use of Explosive Reactive Armour in Musorian use will be dedicated only to the Musorian Republican Guard units... 'normal' units will have T-55Ms, T-62s, T-72s of various build without ERA; and some T-90s.  The T-90s *the Indian GHQ variant* are the exception to the rule and are molded with the latest Russian KONTAKT ERA - in setting they are like the real-world sale of T-90 tanks to the Syrians, being used to fill a gap that existed between capabilities and necessities.

The non-Russian elements of my Musorian Republican Guard; the EE-11s, GCT Self Propelled Guns, and AMX-VCIs, will eventually be supported by EE-9 Cascavel recon vehicles and some more AMX-VCIs.  I enjoy having some mixture in the army; as the Republican Guard of Iraq also utilised such unusual combinations - a lot of Arabian armies seem to have more equipment purchased as real world examples of "rule of cool" than any actual desire to maintain logistics or maintenance commonality - so why should my forces be any different?  :)


I particuarly like how the GCT howizters and the VCI's finished up, I think they are the best examples of the painting style in the army to date!

This is the majority of the vehicles for my Musorian Republic Guard element - however I still need to finish a troop of BMP-2 IFVs, some EE-9 Cascavel heavy recon vehicles and some air defence in the form of some ZSU-23/4's which will likely be fitted without their radars so they can work as heavy fire support vehicles for the army - after all, if four 23mm cannons can't get rid of the threat, then you probably should have brought along a different tank! :)

Parting shots... (for a few weeks anyway!)

Hello all!

Well, the pack of the place is almost finished (he says as he looks around at a nearly fully assembled study still... ssshhhhh, don't ruin the mood with fact now! ;) ) and with the move away happening soon I thought I'd get one final sneaky bit of painting in.

Although my Aussies will have a number of imaginary elements in the future, I wanted to make sure I still had the basis of the 'true' Aussie army under the make-believe equipment I'll add to it.  Part of that includes the very nice M-777 artillery piece.  Purchased a few years back during a program that originally called for a mix of towed and self-propelled guns to replace our old M198 155mm and M119/ L118 'Hamel' 105mm artillery pieces.  Eventually the self-propelled contract fell through, so we brought more M-777s... that will be a story (and models :) ) for another day.

For now though, I have my first two M-777's to show you...

 Aussie M-777's, from what I have seen, remain mostly in the dark green colour shade that they are used with in US Service - the picture below shows them off in reality - credit to a Mr. M Barritt for the awesome shot, no idea who you are but it was a very helpful photo!

Anyway, for my models I tossed and turned between Vallejo's German Camo Dark Green and Luftwaffe Camo Green.  Eventually, I settled on the Luftwaffe Camo green - as it gave me just a tiny bit of brightness, which is inherently needed at such a small scale to help pick out differences.  There is also the rather distinct silvered/chromed element of the barrel... I used a Vallejo Gunmetal Grey colour, as it gave me just the right tinge of colour.

Camo netting:

Some of you are most likely wondering what I used for the 'camo netting' as well - all that is, is a regular piece of first-aid bandage that has been snipped to size, given a thorough thrashing through some 'camo' style paint colours (in these cases a base of Mahogany Brown and Khaki respectively) and then given random markings with Green Grey, Black Grey, Russian Uniform and Khaki to make 'camo' patterns.  The support struts are four staples that have were first bent straight, then cut in half to give me eight struts in total - four for each base.

Gunners:
The gunners come from GHQ's WW2 US Artillery crewmen-summer range, a few models had 'undershirts' on, whilst others were shirtless.  The shirtless blokes are painted in some 'flesh paint' mix I made a long time ago in my 40k painting days... so no idea what that is... and I used a random brown for the undershirts (we usually have brown undershirts in the Aussie services).

The pants are all camo painted, but it is a bit harder to see here.

Anyhow - that's my painting done for the next few weeks... have to obviously load everything up, get to where I am going next and then unpack and sort it all out!  :)  It will take a little bit, but give it another few weeks and you'll see another progress report soon.

My goals for next time are to figure out how to make a 'Carl Gustav' recoilless rifle using GHQ figures... I THINK I have a plan for this... but trial is needed... watch this space!


...no seriously, watch it... because I'm adding more pictures of the artillery ;)  Til later folks!