Cold War Tabletop Wargaming

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/10973550

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Some time yesterday evening in Augusta, Georgia the Canadian Armed Forces engaged Iraqi forces. The Iraqi disposition is not entirely known but they were seen using significant air power in the form of A-10 aircraft and Soviet made Hind helicopters.

I’ve got some Team Yankee Soviet armor in my hobby pipeline and I would like to make them historically accurate while also visually interesting.

Is there a good resource to show my Soviet armor marking procedure, and/or a good reference for difference vehicle camos and when and where they would have been applied?

When I was first getting back into painting as a hobby I picked up a couple of 1/72 scale boxes of USSR and US troops cheaply. Kind of low quality sculpts but they were good practice.

Heres a full album from both boxes

The above link includes one of the most accurate OOBs for the Late Cold War NVA that currently exists. It sadly is in German, but still can help with many questions, regarding positioning, equipment etc.

Sooner or later i will compile a stickied post for ressources, similar to the post about minis, but for now i will some shorter single posts.

Edit: I linked to the wrong OOB. Corrected it now.

The above example shows a pretty important thing for us wargamers, namely that the same mistakes we make in camo painting also happened in real life too.

A pretty unique camo from the early 80s. The Leopard 2 seems to have been camouflaged with light spots (Maybe sand coloured).

Another piece of inspiration: This makeshift camouflage was often seen on West German vehicles until the 3-colour scheme replaced the earlier single-colour "Gelboliv". Done by vehicle crews it had no formalized pattern and can serve as a nice alternative to single colour German vehicles in your army.

West German Bundesgrenzschutz (Federal Border Guard) men firing an MG1 machine-gun. BGS troops used a derivate of Wehrmacht "swamp-camo" until 1976, when it was replaced by new green uniforms. Despite that some units have not received new green uniforms until the late 70s or early 80s.

Wargaming the West German BGS requires some kitbashing, which can be achieved best with Cold War West German troops, making use of the G3 rifles, the MG3 (Which stands in for the BGS MG1) and Uzis. An easy headswap with WW2 German troops can represent the older style helmets and field caps. Other weapons like the tripod mounted MG1, the medium mortar or the "Blindicide" recoilless rifle can be represented with WW2 MG42s, Wehrmacht medium mortars and Panzerschreck teams.

Two 3d printed Luchs 1A2 wheeled recon vehicles. Those two are on the lookout for East German troops, during a game of my custom Bolt Action Cold War ruleset.

Kanonenjagdpanzer "tank destroyer", M48 tank (I sadly could not get a correct M48A2Ga2 .stl so i used the M48A5 as a stand-in) and M113 APC of the German Heimwehr. All models are 3d printed and still unfinished.

Two 3D printed (Luckily my potato cam hides their layer lines) BRDM's for my late East German force. I chose the rather famous 3-colour scheme due to its projected increased use in the 90s, as i am often playing alternative history games.

This is a a CSLA T-72M painted in a three-colour scheme that slightly resembles the modern czech army one. The CSLA made heavy use of different camo schemes, which is apparent in videos of Warsaw Pact excercises. This camo-scheme can serve as an inspiration for a late cold war CSLA force.

A failed 3D print turned into a wreck. This West German Kanonenjagdpanzer did not come out as good as i wanted to, so i turned it into a wreck that can be used as terrain or objective marker.