Xarepunk's Armed Forces: Team Yankee Soviet Parade

Two weeks ago, I was re-working on my Soviet Tankovy Battalion for Team Yankee and used this opportunity for a parade ground photo shooting.

What I had to do, was to finally magnetize my tanks, which proved to be more difficult, than suspected. As I glued in the plastic rods from the original sprue in the first place (which work, but are kind of a loose fit), I had to remove them, in order to glue the new Neodym magnets in. Bad thing was, this plastic glue works too well! With pliers I only got most of the rods off, but not the base, which sat in the whole for the magnets. Therefore I used my trusted Opinel knife (15 years old!), which helped to remove at least half of those sticky bases, but the knife's tip broke off...

One ESSENTIAL tip: magnetize right away or wait!!!

So I settled with glueing the magnets in anyway, that's why some of the turrets look a bit crooked. But it's okay, I'll blame the Russian "quality" work^^

Here's the 1st Company of T-72s:

8 T-72s of 1st Company

It was a rainy day and the light was bad, but this shows nicely the characteristics of Soviet Green, sometimes more greenish, sometimes rather brownish

I try to take care, that every tank was a commander figure to emphasize the impression, that it's not just big metal machines, but actual people fighting here!

2nd Tankovy Company with Battalion Commander

The same again in the greenish light

Podpolkovnik Yuri Borisov in his T-72B with ERA-Armour (made by Zvezda)

That makes 16 T-72 tanks in total, divided in either two or three companies, as I see fit. A heavy hitting force on the offensive, but very brittle when confronted with Chieftains, Leopard 2s or American Artillery! I hope to reinforce them with the new upcoming T-64s.

Next up is my newly acquired artillery, a half-battery of three 2S1 Gvozdikas/Carnations plus an observer in the nice BTR-80 produced by Zvezda.

The half-battery ready to spread terror (or smoke)

2S1 Carnation with raised barrel

The BTR-80 forward observer

And last, but not least, a small platoon of Red Army infantry with BMPs and SA-14."Strela-3" Gremlin manpads. At the moment it is just a platoon of 8 stands and 5 vehicles, but I might expand to 16 stands with 10 BMPs to include the excellent PKM machine guns.

The platoon ready for action

The Leytenant in close-up with his troops

The Strela-3 comrades wait for NATO aircraft to pick off the sky

BMP-2s

Concerning the BMPs, I prefer to use BMP-2s, because of the better AT-4 missile and anti-helicopter autocannon. But they have magnetized hulls, so I can switch to BMP-1s whenever I like. That is the nice thing about Battlefront's plastic kits.