Thursday, April 1, 2021

T-62 - Soviet Heavy Metal


Somewhere in Germany circa 1979

Courtesy of my pal Tamas, I took delivery the other day of three Grubby Tanks T-62.  This brings my count of T-62s to six now, which with three left to go - is almost a full combat.  

The figures themselves are resin and metal and have their problems.  There's a bit of bubbling in the resin, which I had to attack with green stuff and I'm not sure the game was worth the candle. Regardless Tamas has done a lovely job on them and hopefully they will be storming across the North German Plain before too long.  

The T-62 equipped units in the 62nd Shock Army, which is the unit I'm sort of modelling.  Armed with substantial armour and a powerful 115mm gun, they were a match for the Centurions and M60s they were arrayed against.



Steel beasts unleashed

I had five minutes and threw a bit of set dressing together to snap some pics.   If there is one piece of advice I can give the budding Cold War gamer it is get yourself some toy cars in your preferred scale because they dress a battlefield like nobodies business. 

I had originally collected these with a view to using them with Battlegroup Northag, many many moons ago, but lost interest when they decided to shift to 12mm figures.  I've run a fair bit of Cold War skirmish stuff using Savage Worlds, Force on Force and Black Ops.  Of those Black Ops is the best wargame, but it is firmly a skirmish wargame and doesn't lend itself to tanks. 

Tom is making noises about Seven Days to the Rhine which is very much a tank heavy game and I do have a copy, so I might have a look at that.  Though between COVID and everything else, God knows when these will finally see the field. 

Not the best picture I've ever taken

I wasn't going to use this picture, because I'd framed it badly, but it does at least give you a decent view of the tanks. 


14 comments:

  1. Great set dressing and tanks. I look forward to seeing more of this.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. It was just me messing about. I don't really have a proper set of rules for the Cold War in 20mm, beyond Black Ops, which is very much skirmish.

      Delete
  2. The tanks look grand but that Eddie Stobart gets everywhere.
    I am a big fan of the Seven Days rules myself.
    Regards,
    Paul.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. They are very tank focused, which is no bad thing, but the infantry are a bit of undifferentiated mass. I should at least give them a test drive.

      Delete
  3. Hello there CK,

    I am looking to give Black Ops a go for sure and ‘back in the day, I used to game a lot of 1:300th scale Cold War turned hot style actions using either WRG or Combat Commander. Wall to wall Soviet tank phalanxes were the order of the day but yours truly fielded US Armoured Cavalry with the choppers - it was great fun!

    All the best,

    DC

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Wall to wall armour seems to be the order of the day!

      Delete
  4. Tasty. I really like what I see here

    ReplyDelete
  5. The first picture makes up for it. ..'79...... yup I was still in uniform then and while the cold war was receding, it wasn't over yet.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I was nine in 1989, but I still remember the Cold War being very much in people's mind from about the age of seven or so.

      Delete
  6. Late to the party on this post but have you considered the Battlegroup modern variant put together by Richard C before NORTHAG came out? Plays like the WW2 version, and keeps the action very much at platoon level with individual figures, etc.

    Those T62s are outstanding by the way.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. That's very interesting. Where would I find that?

      Delete