NVA Base

Hi,

So as part of gearing up for the Vietnam game my friend Mark and I are running at HAVOC, we need more NVA troops...a lot more. Mark picked up a couple of packs of Revell plastic NVA and it's my job to put together a company (40 figures) worth.

Mark warned me that painting the soft plastic Revell figures would be difficult. So far, I've just cleaned them off and put on a base coat of white gesso and it all seems to be going pretty well. Took me about an hour and a half or so to clean, trim and base coat all the figures. We'll see if I'm just getting lucky when I start in on color tomorrow.

Luckily, because all the players are on the U.S. side in the game, the enemy figures don't have to be painted to museum quality standards. In fact, a group of NVA might spend several rounds in combat unseen by the U.S. squads so some of them might not even appear on the board.

So my basic painting plan is:

1. Flesh
2. Olive drab...just about everything really
3. Kahki backpacks
4. Black belts, boots weapons.

Then I'll clip them from their sprues and mount them on to bases. I've got a plan for that too -- each 10 man platoon is based as follows:

1. A single leader
2. A single "grunt" figure
3. The LPD and RPG heavy weapons together on 1 base
4. 3 stands of 2 "grunt" figures each.

The way that casualties work in Charlie Company, this is a pretty optimal set up. It also means less overall figure handling when I move groups around.

I'm hoping to take care of painting steps 1 and 2 tomorrow. Updates as they happen.

later
Tom