15mm modern armour- starting a Russian force

I found Zvezda's 1:100 tanks tucked away in a corner of my local hobby store, and picked up three of each of the BTR-80s and T-72Bs.

You may be surprised to find out how few vehicles I have in my miniatures collection. I'm happy painting infantry, even horses, but I'm rarely happy with my AFVs. I can never get the effect I'm looking for.

So, whilst the inspiration was upon me, I decided to get my tanks done in a factory production line. After assembling the Zvezda miniatures, I put together five Battlefront T-54s I had picked up in their recent Vietnam sale. The plastic tanks are much, much easier to assemble than the resin/ metal ones! One of the T-54s was missing a gun barrel, but I'm too impatient to wait, so I assembled it anyway. I left the wheels off the second and third BTRs.

The project so far

I've got a Matchbox diecast I threw into the spray queue as well (it's been sitting around for two years!), which will be my test piece to experiment with. It's already got a few coats of paint on it, having had an earlier aborted paintjob.

Matchbox Rocket Launcher straight out of the box