My friend Arlin sent me some photos of his African Army. He took some of the old Esci Soviet Block figures and did a few head and body swaps to create an entire new army of troops. The African continent was filled with dangerous revolutions, counter-revolutions, coups, invasions, and East / West conflict and colonial problems all during the Cold War.
No one makes figures for this but many of the nations and insurgents were backed by the Soviet Union. The 'legitimate' armies were often equipped as European or American forces at the time. The old Matchbox British Paratroopers and the Esci Vietnam US Army set would work well too. Just about any Roco vehicles will work other than West German armor, but West German trucks were certainly sold there.
This is a great place to mix up your "Mad Max" army with all kinds of unusual vehicle combinations. Many countries got vehicles from the colonial era, then Soviet, then US vehicles as they changed sides, so strange mixes of equipment from a fifty year time span are certainly possible. South Africa made a variety of high quality vehicles of their own design.
There are a number of good movies to inspire you for this era, two Wild Geese movies, Dogs of War, Tears of the Sun, and Hotel Rwanda, are some good viewing. The nice thing is that you don't need many buildings, vehicles, troops or terrain to have some pretty good games. And Western intervention, mercenaries, or Cubans are always possible to help their nationals to escape, to make a nice three sided game!
Thanks Arlin for some interesting figures. I hope someone can be convinced to make a set of these some day, an era full of wargame potential.
4 comments:
Nice work. I am going to have to steal some of those for myself. I have done similar using ESCI Warsaw Pact and modifying them with US Army helmets, boonie hats and so forth. For a cammo job, I painted them with a random mixture of US Woodland, UK DPM, plain khaki and a North Korean style of olive splotches.
A few head swaps can really change the look of figures. I think the Korean War figures from Imex have a lot of African possibilities too. Many have Ridgeway hats and a head swap would make some of the Soviet Bloc types into Cubans.
Mike,
Remember the "Buck naked Boys" terrorist group from Sierra Leone who had their AKs and went naked, which must have made carrying extra mags most problematic.
jim.
I remember then, they said being naked was a way to scare their enemies. It does cut uniform procurement costs, but wearing rank insignia must hurt.
Perhaps a few of those Ancient Greek guys could have an AK-47 grafted on?
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