Well... I had another thing to show you...

The 8th Infantry Division is complete but now I am working on another 6mm Divisional project. The 24th Mechanized Infantry Division for Desert storm. Again I am re-using older pieces giving them a new and fresh paint job. A quite spiffy one If you ask me. The division is a bit more than half done (two brigades done, one to go, no artillery or support) but still a work in progress, so this is more a teaser than anything else. When operation Desert Sabre, the 100 hours war started the 24th Mech had two of its brigades, a separate brigade attached (the 197th from the Infantry School at Fort Benning, because the National Guard Brigade that was supposed to fill that role was awfully unprepared...) and a full Cavalry Regiment under operational control (OPCON). The division had all its tank battalion equipped with M1A1 Abrams and its three organic mechanized Battalions equipped with M2 (the majority A1) Bradlely. The two mechanized battalions that came with the 197th were still with M113.

 

what you have just seen is just a teaser of the whole force, the equivalent of one brigade in company scale or an armor heavy team in 1 to 1.

If I want to play in platoon scale...

 I just need to add one M106 mortar carrier (you can see it) and one more M1A1... to have a full Tank Heavy Task Force as 1-64 Armor. Now... you have also seen that there is a change in the style of the label attached to the bases... well I got bored to paint them and now I design them on my laptop and then print. Save a lot of hassle, plus the division badges are much easier to do this way!

All the sculpts are Heroic and Ros, and are, in my unbiased opinion, quite nice. They are not doing an M2A2 plain (they do the one with attached ERA blocks) but the A1 they do is quite nice

 Especially considering that I redid these so they have basically two layers of paint! (and yest I could have cleaned the flash... my fault...

 I think the command base is particularly nice. There is an M577 and an M1A1. Usually I drybrush the tanks, but for these two I instead picked up the edges. I think the effect is much better. The M2 were dry-brushed because they have more raised spots, but the relatively flat Abrams and M113 benefit more from the hard edge technique. Of course I then did the black-lining on everyone!

Yes I like M1A1!

Before disappearing again... I want to update you on my 6mm Modern Italian Project. Freakazoitt the Talented 3D modeler that did the Centauro has now done also the Ariete tanks.

Here you can see his work:

 They are available in a pack of 3 or 5 and to save money in a pack of 10 with 3 Centauro.

Have a look at his shapeways shop he does some very nice pieces (also some WW1 one tanks that are awesome) in different scale, 6mm, 10mm, and 15mm. Support his work!

For today it is the end. There are still some news lining up... but today was a quite bust blogging day. As the Commander of the Forward HQ I need to go away...