Tuesday 28 July 2020

ColdWar 1983: East German Nationale Volksarmee I

After adding them to Lead Mountain five years ago I re-discovered the two packs of 28mm Nationale Volksarmee (NVA) troops I bought from Under Fire Miniatures for ColdWar: 1983 recently and whilst I should be finishing off sixty odd Ancient Germans for Infamy, Infamy! I decided to paint the eight figures I had up.


The East German army had a very distinctive uniform featuring a camouflage pattern called Strichtarn, very small brown lines on a greyish-khaki cloth painting which is a daunting prospect until you look at photos of the troops from the time and see it is invisible apart from in close ups! So no minute brown lines for me!


For a change I decided to paint the figures up using "old fashioned" techniques block painting the miniatures before giving them an ink wash and then layering up the highlights. Made a change not to get the tin of Dip out and reminded myself I can still paint ok!



The M56 Stahlhelm worn by the NVA is also very distinctive, based on the (very) late war M45 design, the design being so similar it almost led to a bit of a SNAFU...

I thought had re-discovered 16 NVA troops sitting around and had almost finished block painting them when I began to ponder whether they were East Germans at all given the off discrepancies in equipment and unusual weapons! Whilst they appear to have been sculpted by the same designer, it turned out eight of the figures were in fact alt-WW2 types in M45 Stalhelms from the OOP C-P Models Storm of Eagles line. These have been put to one side for another day! :D

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