War in Whirarwistan

Whilst having the enjoyment of constructing the mother of all pergolas my mind has been musing over the subject of my mini-Force on Force late '80's US/Soviet clash in some dusty Third World country (the fictional Whirarwistan found somewhere around the border of Afghanistan, Iran and Pakistan).

Having sat with my Ecsi US Infantry and spent some time researching various Infantry Platoon TO&E's I've decided to go with a Mechanized Infantry Platoon which needs less infantry but did require the purchasing of some M2 Bradley IFV's. Not fancying making up kits for the four IFV's needed I did some browsing on pre-paints/diecasts in the end settling for the Altaya/Amercom/Deagostini M2 (Saudi Arabia 1991) in a nice desert yellow over green camo. With a little work they look like they can come up nicely as can be seen on this Polish blog.

I also decided to pick up a box of Revell Modern US infantry as the Esci box doesn't contain any M249 SAW gunners and it will add a bit of pose variety (and also should give me enough figures to expand the Mechanized Infantry Platoon into a regular one. A good half RRP deal on eBay covered this.

For the Soviets I have decided on a Motorised Infantry Platoon, it might not be 100% accurate using the Esci Russian Paras but we'll see how they look and what options I can find for Soviet troops sporting berets. APC wise I decided I wanted a BTR rather than BMP look and settled on the Easy Model BTR80 "Imperial Guard Troops" version. Again, a similar sand/green look to the Americans but one I like.

I've yet to decided on whether to get any tanks at this stage but various M1's and T72's are widely available so this isn't a major concern. I just need to find some 1p's to base the infantry on now! :-)