Mounted police...

As some of you may know, last February I ran a Riot scenario for Ghengis con in Denver, CO.  (Mike from Rebel Minis put up a nice write up here.) It was a hit and I was asked to do it again this fall, but was unable to. I am excited to announce a return of this game in February 2014.

So, with all of the research I have been doing for this type of scenario, I discovered some things I had been missing from my law enforcement (LE) troops. Some departments have mounted crowd control forces. Things like this:


So I searched around for a suitable 15mm solution, and there were none to be found! Plan B involved me searching through my existing minis to see if I could find something close.  That's when my eye found some mounted men on horseback I bought from Rebel minis to use in my Red Dawn scenario in Ghenghis Con this past February.  I ended gaming the convoy ambush scene and didn't do the Hind helicopter chase scene, which was the original thought.

Think of this guy as an extra in "The Postman" with Kevin Costner.

I contacted Mike at Rebel, and he hooked me up with 20 horses and riders, and that is where I started. The horses are kitted out with a two front saddle pouches, two rear saddle bags, and a bedroll behind the saddle.  Most of those had to come off, as riot saddles are pretty simple.

These are the riders, the useful half (lower!) and the half I threw away (upper!).

I then removed the lower (from the waist down)  part of the riders...

giving me this!

I performed the delicate surgery on these riders using an x-acto razor saw as the nippers managed to mangle the first one and forcing me to putty it in order to look good!

After snipping the cops at the torso it was time for super glue!

The problem was that in all the pictures in which riot police are mounted, they do not carry shields (like roman cavalry or medieval knights) nor do they brandish firearms (so the shotgun and pistol toting officers in the pack were not useful for this purpose). I needed to repurpose some of my existing officers that I had already mounted in stands of three.  I tried to pick ones easier to replace, and some who were nearer the edge of the stand. While the picture below isn't super clear its easy to see the silver in the stands, those are from the new pack.

In the next installment....painted!

Snow Marpat on my Marines!

There are few uniforms as distinctive as the USMC's MARPAT (MARine PATtern, based off of the Canadian Army's CADPAT). It was such a departure from the old Woodland Camo pattern used by the US armed forces for decades before.

I had to paint up a USMC Quick Reaction Force for a Ghengis Con scenario.  It's an arctic scenario, so how do Marines fight in the snow? A little research later, I can tell you the answer is: Snow Marpat!

And one of the best places to do research is a website called Camopedia.org.  Its a camouflage specific website and they have patterns from all over the world and also into history.

Breaking out my Peter Pig 15mm moderns, I found a squad that would work for me.  It turned out I needed to do a little research on my USMC TO&E.

I decided on snow marpat uniforms, coyote gear, woodland marpat helmet covers, and white snow boots.

Here's the final result: