Painted 20mm goodness – Picture heavy

A while ago, I received my latest batch of painted 20mm goodness from Robert, the fine follow of Northumbrian Painting Service.  I also mailed off my next batch to be worked on as well.  So, what did I get!?!?

First off, let’s start with some of the more mundane stuff.  Here is a group of civilians, mostly old Hotspurs (now Stonewall Figures) and the two male figures in the back row are from Liberation.

This next batch of figures is from the seedier side of town with some thugs and roughs.  They are all the old Hotspurs.

Now these Geezers are not to be messed with unless you got some serious bottle.  Most of the figures are Elhiem, but the short ones in the middle are Platoon 20.

In an area full of these types of Geezers, you want to have a good bodyguard to protect you.  The figure is from Platoon 20 and the car is from Oxford Diecasts.

Here is a large lot of willing volunteers to stand up for the Queen or against her.  This is a group of various mix lot of armed citizens, criminals, cops, or ex-soldiers for the UK Meltdown scenarios.  All of these figures are from Liberation.

Just like the last group, but this time they find a supply of Mk III to Mk V helmets to wear.  Again, all of these figures are from Liberation.

Of course, those previous blokes would either be supporting or facing down the British Army as seen in this next picture.  These squaddies are wearing their Lightweights and Mk IV/V helmets and could be used for Regulars or Territorial’s for the ‘60s up to the early ‘80s.   They are all Liberation miniatures and I am waiting for Rolf’s release of more figures in the Mk IV/V helmets to round out the platoon and support teams.

In effort to show the masses the steadfast resolution of the Iron Lady, the follow two pictures are of another section of squaddies in riot formation.  In the second picture you can see the difference between the newest section (left) to the previous section (right).  This new section has DPM smocks on so I can tell the difference in the sections in a game that has two riot sections involved.  I still have one more section of riot gear squaddies, but I am going to be swamping heads to have some figures not wearing the NBC respirator to represent Big Men.  These figures are from Eureka.

Speaking of NBC respirators, it would not be very much of a Cold War feel of things without seeing the iconic picture of soldiers in NBC protective clothing.  The nice chaps at Elhiem have provided us with British squaddies in their Noddy suits to give me a proper Cold War feel to my Anarchy in the UK project.  Hopefully, one day they will do some nice 1970s-80s looking Americans in their MOPPs suits…that will be the real bee’s knees!

Now on the subject of Cold War Americans, this next photo is of US troops with the iconic M1 steel helmet and the M14 rifle.  While the M14 rifle is more remembered for the early 1960s for the US Army and mid-60s for the Marines, it still trooped on in US Army units in Europe until 1970s and in some National Guard units up to 1980!  Yes, they are still around today as in modified sniper rifles, but I am talking about straight up, line unit weapon.  So what can be more Cold War, the crap has hit fan image other than an Army National Guard squad armed with M14 rifles showing up to battle zombies or Soviet paratroopers.  These figures are from Liberation.

All of this talk about iconic images makes you wonder who is going to take photographs of it?  Well, no fear!  For here are members of the Fourth Estate to get it all on record, thanks to Liberation Miniatures.

When the press is not getting photos of Cold War warriors, they like to be the first on the scene of various incidents and crimes.  This next group of blokes will be sure to give them something to film.  Three of the previously shown Platoon 20 baddies decided to take some hostages.  The hostages are also from Platoon 20.

But those baddies forgot that good guys also wear black!  So in their black uniforms, here are the coppers to bring order to those baddies.  Yes, they are very much modern police and outside of my scope of the 70s, I just am not having much luck finding 20mm British police.  They also have a prisoner in his orange jump suit.  The police figures are from Under Fire and the prisoner is from Platoon 20.

But sometimes the regular boys and girls of the Metro are just not enough to stop the baddies, so that where Agents Bodie and Doyle from CI5 come in with some help from the ‘Old Man’.  The not-Bodie & Doyle minis are from Elhiem and the ‘Old Man’ is from Platoon 20.  The cars are from Oxford Diecast.  I want to point out to any hardcore “The Professionals” fans, the two cars actually have the same plate numbers as the cars from the 1980 season of the show!

But even CI5 just can’t get the job done!  Sometimes the baddies are really, really good and it takes a very talented agent to wrinkle the problem out.  That is when MI6 sends in their best agent, 007 – Bond, James Bond in his Aston Martin DB5. (Cue the strumming guitar!)   Bond is quite well supplied by Q Branch to get the job done from a Walter PPK to a rocket launching gyrocopter.  Bond is also quite handy at turning the tables on the villains of SPECTRE like using a captured Moon Buggy to make an escape.  But Bond especially loves to “borrow” one of his follow swinging agent’s cars to drive around London. (Bond is from Platoon 20; the Aston Martin DB5, the gyrocopter, and the Moon Buggy are from Kyosho; and the Austin Power’s Jaguar is from Oxford Diecast.)

Finally, I am not really sure that even James Bond can stop a horde of….ZOMBIES!!!!   Yes, 60 zombies to fester and bite brave defenders of old London town.    They are all Elhiem except the small headless child in the front, which is an old Hotspur civilian boy who’s head broke off over the years.  Oddly enough, I never got around to throwing it out and when I was sending off the zombies to be painted, I thought that it could be used for another zombie figure.

But there is one more post script to this entry and that is even after the zombie plague destroys most of civilization, there are always some survivors just trying to irk out another day as a living human.  These figures are also from Elhiem.

So there you go, some more painted goodness from Northumbrian Painting Service and I will leave you with two pictures for our moment of Zen of scenario ideas…

Be seeing you…

Sapper