Operation Urgent Fury Range - 20mm Hotspur/Combat figures

Seeing as a chap was offloading his Hotspur 'Urgent Fury' (Grenada) figures cheaply on eBay, I thought I'd take the opportunity to pick some up to use in Cold War Gone Hot games... As the pictures on the Stonewall Website aren't all they could be, I thought I'd show what was in each pack ( as well as giving a rundown on kit, etc. I did a size comparison the other month...). Casting quality is ok - there are a couple which look like they'll be a right pain to clean up, and a few bits of flash, but generally they look better than the civilians I bought the other month...

FUR4A - US Marines

5 figures - 1x M16/M203, 4xM16. Figures are in M1 'tinpots' and Kevlar flack jackets. A couple have LAWs thrush through their backpacks the figures are good, their poses conveying urgency and looking 'busy'. There are sleves rolled up on a couple of the figures, but there isn't too much to say that these chaps are in a tropical clime, so they should work very well in Europe...

FUR5A - US Marine command

6 figures - 2x3 individual poses. Figures are M16 armed, (and IIRC one has a radio - although I can't remember which!) Again, poses are good,and the figures are in a mix of long and roll up sleeves  kevlar flack jackets and M1 'tinpots'...

These guys are nice figures, buuuut, they have the failing that most of the Urgent Fury figures have - a distinct lack of support! These guys only have a single M203 for fire support... RH models do some (post-nam) guys in flack jackets with M1 tin pots, so I'll be relying on them to fill in the gaps. Otherwise, It's going to be converting Vietnam figures in flack jackets into the right sort of flack jacket!

FUR2 - US Army Rangers

5 figures - 1x M16xM203, 1xM21 sniper, 3xM16 (1 w/ radio?). These guys are in the Ranger garrison caps, and are (as you would expect) without body armour. Atleast one has a LAW stuff into his pack, like the Marines... 

Fire support for these guys is again non-existant, so I be turning to Liberation figures once again, but they are a lower priority than the Marines (and in fairness, they aren't really a priority either!) so for the time being they'll make a nice advisory team for my Partisans.

FUR1 - US Seal Teams

5 figures - 2x Silenced MAC-10, 1xM240 SAW, 1xM16/M203, 1xM16/CAR15. Most have Boonies, although 1 is bare headed. These guys are wearing combat vests (from what I recall). They have their sleeves down, but I'm not sure how much the floppy 'bush' hat was used in Europe... not that it's going to stop me :) With a good mix of weapons, I'd say this fire team was pretty much complete1

FUR8 - Grenada Command-~Cuban Advisors

6 figures - 2x3 poses (4xAK, 2xMP (Uzi? Czech SMG of some sort?)) One pose is in a Soviet M40 helmet, whilst the other 2 are in garrison caps. One of the AK wielding figures has a Radio backpack. Clothing is fairly generic combats, and they have Soviet style webbing... One set of 3 will become partisans, the other set will be put to one side until I need some Mercenaries/Cubans/Africans/South Americans...

FUR6 - Grenadan PRA

5 figures - 4xAK, 1xAK & RPG. The figures are in a mix of Soviet M40 and garrison caps, and have the generic fatigues and Russian webbing of the comand figures. Not too much else to say about them really... These guys will be adding to my partisan forces, but probably in a generic enough scheme that I could wheel them out anywhere from 70's South america to Bosnia...

And, as with the other forces... The Grenadans/Cubans are a bit lacking on the support front. Atleast the RPG gives a bit more potential fire support than a UGL, but even so... If I was going to add to these forces, I'd use some of the Platoon 20 Arab wars figures (for the M40 helmets and genra-Sov kit), and some of the generic peak cap/M40/Cuban Liberation figures...

All in all - well worth the money I paid. the figures are nice and well realised, and if I'd bought them off the web store I wouldn't have been disappointed. The only complaint (and I've made it before) is the lack of support weapons! It would be impossible to put together a squad of the correct composition using just Combat figures... 

Painting update - (20mm) Partisans, CIA & more!

Here's the latest work - It's a real hodge-podge of stuff, including the Elhiem tasters, and a couple that Rolf at Liberation (http://www.rhmodels.com/) sent through... Apologies if the photos aren't up to my usual standard - the darker mornings mean I've been forced to rely on natural light, and this time I had a brain fade about bringing in one of the spot-lights...

The latest Soviets off the paint desk - the Elhiem RPG man in body armour (I'm guessing for Afghanistan?), and a Liberation motor-rifleman in one piece camo suit... 

The Liberation figure again, bossing around some Platoon 20 infantry. Luckily the figures mix very well, as I'm planning to mix them within squads to round out all the options for Force on Force!

The latest additions to the Brits - a Liberation squad leader, and the Elhiem CG gunner shown a while ago in my review. ..

Shown here with my only other Infantry! Both figures are a little larger than the 'small' Platoon 20 figures, but it shouldn't notice on the table top. I'll probably keep the Elhiem Brits in distinct sections rather than mixing them in though...

Something a bit different - a CIA 'Black-Ops' team (converted from the Elhiem MACV-SOG team, through resculpting their head gear). No real planned use for these guys yet, but I fancied doing them! They might be stand-ins for NATO special forces if the relevant fog of war card is drawn in game (despite having different weaponry!), or they might be used as 'advisors' to stiffen partisans or help 'not-Snake Plisskin' blow up the Leningrad nuclear reactor... 

Liberation 'Eastern European Rebels' painted up as Partisans (The furry hat guys I'm planning to use as Poles to try to distinguish/add-flavour to the forces)

Combat (ex-Hotspur) Partisans...

Elheim Partisans (slightly converted MIKE force figures, & a female zombie hunter) As the MIKE force figures are slightly shorter and thinner than most, I will be using them to represent adolescent fighters (and probably messengers too) I wanted them as 1) I'd always liked the figures and 2) I wanted to add some more antiquated 'Western' gear to the mix (in this case a BAR, a few M2 carbines and a couple of M79 bloopers). The lady in the long coat looked too cool to resist, and I'll probably be using her a leader/officer type (I'm tempted to call her the 'Valkyrie' for some reason...!)

A line up showing how the figures match up height-wise. 

From the left: Liberation, Elhiem (Vietnamese), Platoon 20, Hotspur/Combat, Elhiem (Western)

And then when all mixed in as a group (the guy with the stocking over his head is the P20 figure in this case)

The Partisans so far! 

And, as John was remarking at how many figures I seem to be churning out, before starting this post I moved another 5 figures from the paint station to the basing pile...! 20mms certainly paint up a lot faster than 28mm, that's all I can say!

Painting update - (20mm) Polish Solidarity IS-3

Well, my Polish 'Solidarity' partisans have got their heavy support up and running at last :) For those that missed the original post - I wanted to include an IS-3 in my CWGH games as I think they look funky. The best way I could find to do this was for my Polish anti-communist partizans to 'liberate' one of the two IS-3s that the Soviets had given Poland in the late 40's as a gesture of communist solidarity. These tanks were just put on display, and never saw any use (Poland had over 100 IS-2s at this time). 'In setting' the tank would have been loaded up to be moved for re-painting (and looking at it, boy did it need it!),  instead it was re-purposed - the only repainting it got was having the Polish army eagles replaced with flags! I decided to keep the rest of the weathering light, as otherwise with the rust it'd look more like it should have been on the scrap heap...

A poor picture of my attempt to put the solidarity emblem on the side of the tank

No idea what stats I'll being using in FoF, although I'll probably start with a T-55 and make it worse :)

GSG9?

I wasn't entirely sure what to do with my Hostspur/Combat 'anti-terrorist' team. for some reason, I was expecting them to be in standard kit, but with balaclavas and CQB weapons, when infact they were in full 'SWAT' style kit, including utility vest, etc.

So, what to do with them. I did think about doing them as a generic SWAT/SAS CQB/etc team, but I wasn't sure if or when I'd ever use them in CWGH. But there isn't too much else to do with the figures, so I decided to atleast make them specific to the theatre I'll be operating in - in this case, West Germany (where they could be put to use combating spetsnatz infiltrators and Red Army Faction terrorists)

West Germany's 'Counter Terrorist' unit was called GSG9, and was formally part of their border guards. I flicked through a couple of books from the early 80's, and the general look was about this:

Whilst by the mid 80's (the earliest I can find is 1986) they were looking more like this:

I plumbed for the late, as I felt it would require less conversion, and was a lot closer to the look I had always associated with them from 'Uniforms of the Elite Forces' books from when I was a sprog. 

The conversion work was fairly easy - sculpting helmets (I didn't quite get the shape right, and they might be a little on the large side, but hopefully once painted up, they should look ok), removing gasmask pouches, and back dating their MP5s by removing the tactical sights and under barrel torches (I know they have them in the pics above, but it's an easy way to make the figures look more old fashioned)

Here they are (fresh from basing, still with stray bits of static grass clinging on to odd places) :

And a couple of more 'action-orientated' shots!

Now I just need to arrange for them to have some transport.....

Painted 20mm stuff...

The glue/flock is finally dry, and so I've been able to get some pictures of the other stuff I've been working on recently... 

First up - another HO railroad model, again repainted using the original colour scheme...

A group shot of my British Para section (and I must apologise for the pictures from here - they are in the rather odd format of being broken up by pack, as I had promised Tony at ERM some pictures for the website...)

Here are the Brits so far - enough for a section of Paras, a 2 man blow-pipe SAM team, and a couple of Infantry chaps.

The start of the resistance - Liberation miniatures armed civilians...

More partisans - this time Hotspur/Combat figures. I've left off arm bands on these guys, as they might also be used for other things

Here are the Soviet Motor rifles (and a pair of partisans in red arm bands)

I've got 2 packs of these painted up, but only took photos of one... 

There are some more Hotspur figures on the painting desk (partisans & some converted GSG9 guys) along with more houses and a T-72.... At some point I'll be putting an order in to Liberation for more partisans, more Motor riflemen and more Paras... I think it's fair to say that I'm happy with my decision to pursue this project in 20mm, and realistically I think all my future modern gaming ventures will be in 20mm... (The Elhiem PMCs have caught my eye, and I am tempted to get some Afghans to give my Soviets a slightly different challenge)