October Update 4 – Size matters….

This post is mostly about the first few Syrians I’ve finished, a few issues re basing and my quandary over using GHQ or not!

First up, Syrians. I’ll be expanding the Syrian part of my updated Painting Master Plan soon but to start I went for a batch of T-55s. These are Skytrex models and I’ll be discussing the choice more below but here they are anyway:

I did a little Googling around camouflage and as far as I can see pretty well anything goes! Vehicles supplied in original Russian Green and then painted by each unit. Although the light sand and light grey patterns were preferred a unit could just have sand stripes, blotches, big stripes and with the grey sometimes added as well. And some vehicles stayed in the Russian Green! So plenty of variety possible. These are painted White, then Russian Green, then Pale Sand patches applied, then Sepia Wash, then Pale Sand highlight – all Vallejo Model Color. I then added a three letter arabic number and white stripe and a couple of coloured markings on the front. Just enough to give a little contrast.

As my IDF were bought based with ‘real’ sand I quite liked the look so decided to stick with it. And also because I don’t want to re-base the IDF! I’d done some sample IDF of my own to compare with an M3 AA:

But I’d forgotten that for these I’d painted the bases light brown first. The edges were left a plain MDF and sanded a little to smarten up. When I did the Syrians I forgot that the sand would not cover the green and brown splodges all over the base from the painting process – I stick them to their base to paint. This meant that the sand came out a little darker and also the splodges showed through a little even with two layers of sand. Not a disaster but annoying. I also left the new bases with their laser cut burnt brown edges.

I don’t want to have to sand all the edges off but I’m not sure whether to leave them like that, do the IDF a similar colour, or paint ALL the bases a consistent mid/light brown? We shall see.

Now, on to the GHQ quandary. I’ve touched on this before but to recap, pretty well all the IDF I bought are GHQ and very nice models they are too. Now my experience with the few GHQ I’ve had for my other Moderns is that they are noticeably bigger than other 1/300th ranges (as you would expect 1/285th to be) but when I compare the GHQ T-55 with the Skytrex ones there was negligible difference and for the difference in price the Skytrex model is simple but quite nice.

I’ve compare other models. The GHQ T-62A versus the Skytrex T-62:

My understanding is that the GHQ models is considered too long anyway but there is not a lot of difference. I also compared a GHQ BTR-60PB and an Heroics and Ros BTR-70:

Now I have compare a GHQ T-80 ERA with an H&R similar and the GHQ is way bigger. So, is it all down to which models you compare? Is there a variation in the accuracy of the scale of some GHQ models?

Having finally taken the plunge for some GHQ I am very impressed with the quality of the sculpts and the casting. Excellent detail. No flash. But are they worth the extra? In a lot of ways I think yes. But where I’m going to need a LOT of T-55s and T-62s I will be going the Skytrex route!