Cold War Gamer Hobby News - Autumn 2014

As the blog has recently recieved its 300,000th hit,  the first thing to say is thankyou to all who continue to read it and particularly those who take the time to comment as its always useful to get feedback on content.  The Autumn Magazine ended up with a lot more emphasis on the Soviet breakthrough operations and Soviet capability rather than British which are my intended target for that opperation. 

To my mind the big news over the last quarter has been the increasing credibility of a US cold war Army in 20mm for either the late 70's or any time during the 80's with Elhiem figures releasing a range of products that cover some key gaps in the market along with releases earlier in the year from S&S and Italiera it's begining to look like a very feasible project.  The US Army is I must admit one of the few that could draw me into a late 70's early 80's game providing as it does the opportunity to:

• Paint vehicles in MERDEC
• Deploy Sheridans
• Deploy M60A2s
• field troops in M1 helmets and a range of modern weapons

Matt has said he is doing the M1 helmeted troops next so hopefully we will see a Dragon Gunner with an M1 helmet materialise over the winter, great for US or Dutch.  The Autumn period has not been as prolofic for releases as the summer but their has still been an interesting amount of news

Hobby Den

Brian has been very busy over at the Hobby den building out the range of models stocked as well as making some fairly serious purchases including the BW Models range.  Personally having only just discovered the BW range I was sad to see it go but it now looks like Hobby den will be resurrecting a number of its models.

Brian has also become the European distributor for the modelcollect range which has got to be a good thing as they clearly are offering a very useful set of tank models which is rapidly becoming the definitive collection of Soviet Cold era tanks.

In addition a number World of War 1/72 Building Sets are now available from the shop covering a range of European town buildings and an impresivly large bridge.

Eagle Moss

Eagle Moss have produced a 2S4 which looks to be fairly basic from the imagery but very handy for a late 80's Soviet Break through capability.  Having now received two I can state that the hull is pretty weak in terms of detail but the mortar itself not only looks good but is detachable so easily married up with a different hull and great for setting up as deployed and ready to fire.  So a couple of conversions I'll be trying in the near future.

Elhiem

Matt @ Elhiem Figures has been working quite a major expansion of his cold war range adding seated and skirmishing Brits together with an extension of his Cold War US range that is producing  a much needed Dragon gunner, along with most everything else for late cold war US you will need and a promise of similar coverage in M1 helmets.  He has also extended his Israelis and produced some very handy RUC figures.

Cold War Brits Seated Drivers and Crew

A much needed 105mm Light Gun Crew good for Falklands or NATO flanks work.

Matts MPs would be equally useful for Northern Ireland or Winter of 79 Scenarios.

Cold War US

More RUC this time including a WPC, whilst these are marketed as RUC they clearly could represent armed police from the mainland as well, and would probably look good in some Winter of 79 scenarios.

Underfire

Underfire have been a little less prolific but have recently extended the RAR range.

S&S

Over at S&S Shauns focus has largely been on WW2 conversion kits but he has found time to squeeze in a bunch of Cold War goodies in the form of a T-55 BREM and a very attractive Marder with Roland, allegedly in the works is an ACRV.  As well as these pictures have popped out of what looks like a very early Unimog and a conversion kit for a short wheel base series 2 land rover.  The other hot  rumour is that he maybe working with troop of Shewe on a 15mm MT-55 which will hopefully get released.  None of these have yet to appear on the shop

T-55 BREM

Marder Roland

15mm MT-55

An early Unimog (I think) suitable for various  African as well as central European scenarios

and a conversion kit for a die cast series 1 or 2 land rover for a bit of 50's para action suitable for suez I would have thought.

Wargames Illustrated

The Cold War Hot version of war-games illustrated provided some interesting coverage of Cold War and Modern gaming which hopefully will be the start of an increasing amount of coverage of the Post War Modern period in the mainstream War Games press.

As far as models and figures go we now have good coverage of the period in 6mm, 15mm, 20mm, and 28mm with growing amounts of ultra modern and near future starting to feature within the manufacturing base.  The recent run of kits out of china from both model collect and S Models has started to fill the major gaps in the 20mm Cold War Soviet inventory which together with the improvements in ACE kits means that much of whats needed is easily obtained and built, as ever the stalwarts of the resin manufactures continue to fill the gaps. Is it a little early to speculate that Flames of War might kick off something for the Cold War, I would imagine that will provide a fairly significant boost to interest in the period and production of 15mm models.  All this coupled with  the number of new rule sets being released covering the Cold War and Modern period are all signs of growing interest and point to a good year for the period in 2015. As a complete Cold War aholic I can only say its good to see.

Wargames Ilustarated Cold War Hot overview of content

Model Collect

From their face book posts modelcollect seem to have both a Scud, a T80B and a BMP 3 in the planning pipeline all of which look like great additions to their range. The box art work for the T-64BV has also appeared which is at the top of my must have list so one I am looking forward to seeing land.  To be fair I have my eye on a scud as well.

Web

Red Star Militaria I found the Red Star Militaria site a month or so ago whilst looking for some reference material around Sun Bunnies and the Soviet Jack Boot. This is a very handy re-enactment site with a lot of useful and detailed information around a variety of Soviet Cold War Weapons and equipment.  It looks like the web site might be undergoing reconstruction at the moment, but when back in action a very useful site.

Books

If you have not seen it South Africas Border War by Willem Steenkamp has just been re pubished and there are some reasonable deals on Amazon at the moment, I picked up a copy for £15 new which is a steel for a book that has been out of print for a number of years and was selling for £275 a copy.  Its a great book on the border war and covers the conflict from 1966 -1989 well worth a look.

South Africa's Border War 1966-89 @ Amazon

Winter Magazine

So what will be appearing in Cold War Gamer over the next quarter, The bulk of the research work on Soviet Breakthrough is completed written up and posted and the force is getting to a point where it could do with an outing so task one for the new year will probably be a game with attendant AARs and Scenarios. That of course means moving the British forward.

I have yet to really settle on the main theme for next years efforts so will be giving that some thought over the next few months.  The biggest component on the Soviet side will probably be turning out a BTR regiment along with some divisional Air Defence and some Non Divisional engineering assets that would enable a reasonably serious river crossing exercise to be conducted.

That operation would pretty much pull together elements of Air Assault, Forward Detachments and Breakthrough.  On the NATO side I think the time has come to move the Canadians forward and I have pretty much got all the bits for the first of the Company Groups the other option is 6 or 24 Air Mobile Brigade which would follow on in the series on NATO Reinforcement Units and then there are the Americans but that I suspect will require a deal of reasarch, reading and purchasing before anything material pops out.

Whilst its a little Early for Christmas this is the last news post before the great event so here's wishing you all a dark and productive winter period along with a great mid winter festival of what ever type best suits your religious persuasion.