Here come the (Armoured) Cavalry!

I’ve always had a soft spot for the M113 – lurching, unwieldy aluminium deathtrap that the thing almost certainly was! And given the nature of the Atlantic Alliance force as having late 60’s/ early 70’s level tech in a mid-1950’s World War scenario (thank you, Roswell), it was inevitable that sooner or later I’d have to get myself a few…

A bit of Google Fu later (papercraftsquare.com) and I had me a rather nice M113 papercraft template which I printed out straight onto cardstock. Now, I did botch the first one a bit – leading to a low slung “sports APC” look, but the addition of spacers covered by some armoured skirts seemed to do the trick, and had the bonus of giving it a more “sci-fi” look.

I’ve gone for the “ACAV” Vietnam-style look and I think it fits rather well – each mounts a heavy weapon in the forward turret and a light machinegun in the flank turrets. Eagle eyed observes will note this is missing on two of the machines – I need to do another Sgts Mess order…

From left to right – mounting Mk 19 grenade launcher, M2 .50 calibre heavy machine gun and 20mm autocannon – lots of yummy firepower to back up the dismounts!

Like these guys!

Some of you might notice a bit of a change in painting style – I’d gone for a heavily weathered BAOR type look previously, but after checking out this guy’s blog I just had to try my hand at some digital camo! It’s based on the 1970s DualTex scheme, and it’s just the kind of thing I can imagine UNIVAC coming up with – a kind of primitive-retro sci-fi idea, perfect for Apocalypse: Earth!

I also rather liked his way of doing headlights – so in my own cackhanded way, I copied that, too…

Shiny shiny.

Looking forward to getting these guys on the tabletop and deploying Buffalo 2-7 as an armoured cavalry force!