Wargames Unit - British 1980's BG Armoured Squadron, Challenger 1

I started building this unit a long time ago, the first break in production was a fairly long wait to get the stowage sorted, the particular issue being crew figures. Then it spent an age waiting for the paint job to get completed. Primarily because I was not sure where the black lines should go, which is a bit of a sad story. I finished it off this week with quite a drastic revision to the painting process over the original British units and I am reasonably pleased with both the finish and the fact that it can be used alongside the rest

All my units are built for a Rapid Fire adoption to enable Cold War Games to be played out using that rule set and rather than the traditional 1:5 Ratio we use 1:3 for vehicles and major equipments giving me 4 vehicles in a 12 or 14 tank Squadron so capable of representing either of the two Orbats I saw deployed at Squadron level with no change.

The vehicles are all from Revell, stowage is all Green stuff bandages and plasticard. The crew figures are from the ex CMSC range now produced by Wee friends. Crew are portrayed in coveralls with the kevlar crew guard helmet which really places them in the latter part of the period.

The changes on the painting front other than using an airbrush included sealing the paint job with a semi gloss coat prior to weathering and pin washing and applying enamel based filters and washes, using the humbrol enamel wash range and Tamiyas flat clear acrylic paint which all went off pretty well.

I used decals from 4 different sheets of the TL Modelblau set and have accepted the limitations of using the yellow sets as these give better contrast with the Cam scheme, Whilst their will be enough decals to do both the Armoured Regiment and the Mechanised battalion on those sheets I will have to buy more if I want the mech boys in yellow.

This is the first of a number of Squadrons of CR 1 that will build into an armoured battle group, probably 3 in total that I will use as either a 3:0 or a 3:1 Battle group.  In addition to the CR1s I will get a couple of Scorpions, a Sultan for BHQ and probably a CRARV if I can source one from Cromwell. There are probably a couple of Orbat posts to pop out around the Armoured corps as I would also like to generate a Divisional Recce Squadron later this year in order to support a variety of the lighter role reinforcement battle groups.

The Revell model is a great vehicle probably one of the best detailed kits I have built, sadly let down by the smoke grenade discharger units, which I have yet to find an after Market replacement for, although some of S&S's FV432 ones whilst wrong would probably look better than those supplied with the kit.

Squadron two is already built but yet to be stowed and Squadron three needs ordering. The armoured Regiment will play the Brigade Reserve for a couple of Big Soviet deliberate attack games that I have a hankering to play and will probably have to take on the Soviet Air Armada at some stage which would be used to block reserve deployments.

Other Posts of Interest:

Review - Model 1/72, Revell FV 4030 Challenger 1
ORBAT - 1980's British BG Part 7, The Infantry Battalion

ORBAT - 1980's British BG Part 4, Recce Group

Jezamonous' 2010 22 Armoured Brigade Build Thread

Revell 1:72 Challenger I Tank @ Amazon

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