The Last Post

The South London Warlord blog has moved to Wordpress on the main SLW site, address is over here

or, in cut n' paste format http://www.salute.co.uk/blog/

Cold War Imagi-Nations

There is quite an active band of 6mm / 1:300 Moderns players at SLW, and as an alternative to  playing actual forces against each other, one of our members decided to build a Cold War Imagi-Nation based on the Order of Battle (and camouflage) of the Polish army in 1939, and using the modern equipment of the manufacturers they used in the 30's (so Vickers tank of 1939 becomes "What's the available Vickers tank of 1979"). The result is the OOB over here and here are some pictures.

  

Vickers Mk 3 Tank Company 

Armoured Cavalry Regiment  - Panhard M3 APCs and AML 90 Armoured Cars

Well, another club member who has an odd penchant for thinking about what medieval Byzantium may look like in any period you care to name, followed suit and built Byzantium's imaginary forces in the Cold war, taking a lead from the forces of the Cold War "border neutrals" like Austria, Finland and Yugoslavia. The army Order of Battle is described over here  and here are some pictures....

Byzantine Thematic Brigade Tank Co - T-55 tanks and Daimler Dingos with AT-4 Spigot AT missiles. Finland and Yugoslavia both found it politic to use predominantly Soviet equipment well into the 70's, but mixed it with own-design and increasingly Western equipment.

As with all Imagi-Nations, borders are quite vague - so vague in fact that these two nations find they are in dispute over their joint border, and tensions are rising - there are fears that there may well be a full  scale border "Incident" in the very near future....

So you want to build your own Imagi-Nation? 

Imagi-Nations are great fun for combining equipment you otherwise don't see together, or "what if" organisation structures, and 1:300 scale means even building a decent sized force is not exorbitant (in Fistful of TOWS, one model or one infantry stand represents a platoon sized unit, so a battalion is usually c 9 - 12 models). Even less so if you build it out from a core force, say a Soviet or US supplied core force in this era. 

How do you do it? Simple - Invent a country, imagine a history, build an army, and assert your right to rule :)  There are fellow Iamgi-Nation enthusiasts in most periods, TMP has a section "Modern What-Ifs" where they gather for this period.