US Army in Europe - Cold War Infantry

This is the first look at a new sub-project I've slowly been building up for a while now - some in boxes, some put together and some, finally, painted.

Rather than jump straight into armour - I thought it best if I have a crack at conpleting some infantry first.  Years (2007 I think) ago I had picked up a few of these boxes:

There's a excellent review of this set here at Plastic Soldier Review.  Needless to say, whilst I liked some of the figures I could never really get past the soft plastic nature of them.  I thought I'd spend hours painting them, just for the paint to rub off...  So they sat in their box for 7 years or so.

Then about a month ago, browsing through Hobbyco in Sydney I stumbled across these:

Finding Preiser infantry sets retail in Australia is akin to winning the lottery.  So I grabbed these and quickly put them together.  There's another excellent review of these figures at Plastic Soldier Review here.

Then I also got my hands on a few of Elhiem's great figures.  Right now he only has a limited range specifically for US Cold War - so I got some of them, and I also got a couple of other sets - like the 1990s US Ranger sets that have M16s etc.

So anyway - I've just finished painting some and having been a while, decided to post them up here before even putting some grass on the bases... lazy huh...  All figures have been painted in what I'll call my simplistic Woodland Cam.

So I'll start with the Revell figures - I've only used a few to fill in specific slots missing or needing additional weapons in the Preiser set

The Dragon gunner is possibly one of the most useful figures in the Revell set.

A couple of good useful poses.  M203 Grenadier.

SAW gunner and RTO

Now onto the Prieser.  The box gives you 2 exact same sets.  I didn't use the female soldier in the set, and did one set by the book and tried to mix up the second set a little for some variation.  Here's a sample:

HQ or Platoon Command troops - looking suitably confused.  Love the poses here - where else do you get a guy scratching his head?  Unfortunately - the pointing NCO is the only figure with a M203 in the set.

Walking chaps - or should that be dudes.  Middle dude has a SAW.

More walking guys with M16s

Now onto some Elhiem figures.  These are not the Cold war figures - I'll be using them in a tutorial soon.  These are IBA03 as far as I can remember.  Not perfect for Cold War mid 1980s - but good enough for me.

Finally for comparison purposes - here one from each manufacturer:

From Left to Right: Prieser, Elhiem then Revell.

So that's it for now

Thanks

Richard