Zvezda: BTR-80 Platoon

Lined up.

Painting vision blocks is like painting eyes on 28mm miniatures.  A real pain in the backside.

Just had to get that off my chest.

Anyways- here is a platoon of 15mm Zvezda BTR-80s.  I was very happy with the kits- they were 100% plastic, very easy to put together and had next to no flash.  As you can see they have plenty of detail and it is quite accurate (compared to various images I found on Google).

I rate them highly- and I like them much better than those T-72A tanks they make.  

Right side view.

Left side view.

I painted them exactly the same way I painted the T-90s and T-72s- aiming to keep the colour scheme consistent.  I was tempted to leave them in that flat Russian Green, but my OCD got the better of my laziness and I went ahead to fix them up.  I would've liked the tan bits to be more ivory coloured- in keeping with Google images- alas Army Painter Strong Tone is... strong.

Too many "gems"!!!

Although it was a bit of a drag to get them painted for such a simple and good looking model I have to say these are really up there as one of my most favourite toys.

The MNU boys will be glad they don't have to walk everywhere from now on and they even get some free fire support.  The 14.5mm machine gun with coaxial 7.62mm will be handy in suppressing Prawns, capitalist Americans and rabble rousing bandits with equal aplomb.  

With relatively weak armour (it's a kind of up-armoured truck really), I don't see it busting through enemy lines.  But parked hull down with its infantry squads fire and moving up on the enemy- I can see it's uses.  

Waiting for the drive-thru at McD's.

Thus ends my dabbling in Moderns- for now....  Prawn tech is going to result in some pretty cool innovations.