1985
The first mean kitty.
I’ve started assembling and painting a 1/100 (15mm tabletop scale) West-German armoured company featuring the Leopard 2 – our main battle tank since the early 1980s – and support vehicles. It’s for a game set in an alternate history where the Cold War turned conventionally hot in the mid-1980s – a history which fortunately eluded us.
The challenges here are 1.) to accurately replicate our german NATO camouflage pattern, which is exactly the same on all our Leopard 2s, 2.) to pick out all details, including gear straped on the machine deck or the blue-tinted glass of the periscopes and laser-range-finders without going over the top and avoiding any fancy stuff and bling, since that would destroy the no-nonsense look real-life military vehicles need to retain in model form, and 3.) to dirty-up the tank in a believable way, for which I studied lots of photographs of the real thing and also referenced my memory from when I was in my early teens in the 80s and saw the real kitties when they had their yearly excercises. To add another level of detail and realism, I even made and added the two thin radio-antennas to the turret.
This command tank is my proof-of-concept of sorts and I quite like how it turned out.
Very nice! I was in 4 CMBG in 1985 so I can vouch for the cam and look of the vehicle. Unfortunately, we were stuck with Leopard 1A4’s until we went to Afghanistan, and then quickly procured bigger kitties!