Battlefront Cold War US Mech Infantry & MERDC Take Three!

What's that?  You haven't bought the US Cold War Infantry from Battlefront yet?  It's not often I plug for miniatures manufacturers on SOUND OFFICERS CALL, so when I do, it means something!

even has the angle head flashlight tucked onto his belt!

                       
I have the whole lot of my US Mech Infantry platoon basecoated in brown (per my M81 Camouflage technique) with the Luftwaffe green applied and today I tried my luck on a stand.  My crappy painting skills aside, these infantry are spectacular!  The detail is crisp and raised, and, extremely accurate.  This is coming from someone who wore this gear to field problems throughout college as an ROTC cadet and an over zealous youth playing army as a teenager (although sadly when I entered active duty the LBE had been phased out in favor of the intolerable Load Bearing Vest, or LBV....you try carrying 180 rounds on the front of your body and tell me it feels natural!).

Okay I digress.  So painting up the Battlefront infantry I'm noticing the detail is remarkable, and extremely accurate.  They even put the grenade pouches on the side of the mag pouches in the front of the troopers!

 The technique is pretty simple, and although it's more tedious than the battlefront example, I like the look better.  Basically, you basecoat in brown, splotch luftwaffe green all over the model in random spots, being sure to leave brown showing, then carefully add khaki "squiggles".  Technically you don't have to add the black, but these BF guys run a little large so I think I will add the black to be sure.  I also did NOT use my obscenely small detail paintbrush either, and they still turned out OK.

 I worked up a platoon leader or company command rifle stand.  Yeah yeah it's on my round bases but the surface area is pretty much equal to the BF small bases, and I'm using these guys for various rules sets also.

Thinking of putting an aerial on the RTO's radio simply because it will look cool.

 On to my most recent discovery.  Did you know that Olive Drab from model master makes an excellent "field drab" for MERDC?  Funny thing, I didn't know that either.  I tried it on my M109 Howitzer yesterday and realized I would have to repaint everything.  So I basecoated all my US stuff AGAIN and today applied the khaki lines to the M113 tracks.  Pretty nice colors I have to say.

 Lots of work to do on these tracks again like replace the broken 50 cals, paint the tracks, weather, etc.  But I wanted to demonstrate the difference in colors.  I will add the black "gull wings" next.

They'll look even better when I get the black gull wings and tracks painted.  

obligatory shot for scale.