"My Tabletop War Has Expanded Secretly Into Laos" Topic

This spring and summer, I went a bit extensive searching and gathering figures to use for Vietnam. Not your typical US or NVA and VC figures either.

I concentrated on all the troops for either ARVN, south vietnamese government, or the CIDG and Mike Force, the civilain Irregular defense force and reaction troops that were eployed by the green beret in camps types. Even some choices for Ruff/Puff regional and popular forces for local defense.

In the course of my wandering and searching, I found a lot of different figures that I thought would fit, and Deadhead helped me out quite a bit by posting all of my comparison pictures of the various groups.

This time I am going to explain what I have gotten into of late to expand your war past the borders of Vietnam.

Choices for Hmnong.
Look to Warbases at their Indonesian paratrooper range in the fatigue caps. Short little dudes with M1 carbines, even a Garand rifle, BARs, a light mortar, bazooka and even a few leader figures. There are even some similar troops with VZ52 rifles if you want variety or don't mind a bit of converting.

They also have some very similar arab irregulars figures for Aden that are dressed similarly but I have to ask how they compare in height before I jump all in for them.

Royal Laotian Army troops.
I stumbled over the Brittannia range of the Malayan Emergency range at Grubbys Tanks and started thinking. I had some of their Ghurkas I converted for Mike Force and they metal was soft enough to cut easily and made the arms pretty easy to bend with some pliers into good form for holding their neewly converted M16s, so seeing the Malayan Police figures got me on a roll.

The Malayan police set has four figures that are in light webbing kit, short and wearing berets. So I blackmailed Andy at Grubbys Tanks and got a couple pounds of them in weight. One figure already comes with an M1 carbine, so you can convert them to either lighter or earlier equipped M1 carbine troops or later and heavier kitted lout M16 troops.

The Laotian army itself was pretty divided into ither ethnic Group Moblie(s), GMs or into some paratrooper and commando type units.

Like I said, an earlier GM look, convert to M1 carbines and paint a green or OD. An elite commando or paratrooper look, convert to M16 and paint either ERDL or french lizard cam.

To top them off, Warbases makes a two figure set of Indonesian leaders taht match up perfectly with thte Malaysian police figures.

Additionally, Andy sent me various MPLA figures that are quite similar in appearance, dress and stature to the Malay police figures and I am looking into figuring out how to get a couple more.

The last group are my Thai Unity Battalions. Thailand rotated through Laos quite a number of 'Vokunteer' or mercenary battalions over the course of the war in Laos. A cadre of Thai troops trained and lead the volunteers. Usually it worked out that the Thai troops did the heavy in place fighting defending fixed positions, think Verdun with claymore mines,,, while the Lao GMs and Hmong did the hitting and harassing of the flanks in more mobile work. Occasionally the GMs might be called in to back up the Thai defences when things got really heavy.

I covered some of my conversions of 1st Corps US marines already in the various ARVN comparison posts. I converted them by swapping in M16s. They are not much taller than the various ARVN figures and they have the look of a teenage wearing their fathers clothes and helmet so they actually look pretty good.

Too many ideas, not enough table space.

Oh we need some photos. This is brilliant, at a time when every forum is saying how things are getting quiet (and I don't mean just TMP). I dunno, are folk just staring at their phones, instead of talking to a human being (or checking while they cross the road). OK enough old fogie rant.

If you want some pics to show all this I think you have my e mail. I would feel privileged to show your work. It takes me about 10 minutes max, I am retired and, so, unlike my former UK surgical colleagues, I am not on strike.

We're not cleared to know about the secret expansion into Laos!

Thank you Oberlinder.
That actually got a good laugh out of me.

Even if I am not contributing here with new stuff, how glad I am to see any input. This is great

Just looking at pictures, the baseball hat CIDG figures I converted from BlackTree US with M1 carbines, would make pretty good proxies for Laos and Cambodia too.

Just leave them geenric OD Green sounds like the best bet.

I am waiting on delivery of some 3D printed M1 carbines. If they pan out in size ok, then I have a cheaper source of carbines than just The Assault Group.

I have those figures from Gaddis/Battlehonours USMC Raiders and Company B Alamo AScouts I might be abale to convert into other troops for Laos too.

The height and girth make them look like teenagers compared to everyone else, the ability to convert with the new carbines and if there is enough 'meat' to scalpel out of their hands to do the conversions will be the deciding factors.

The height and girth make them look like teenagers compared to everyone else

Well, a sizeable chunk of US forces were teenagers. Two of my older brothers went over straight out of high school.

While the average age of US casualties was 22, that still leaves a large portion of the bell curve for teens. About 1/6 for the Army, 4/10 for the Marines.
link

Quite a number of comments exist on how the troops used by Laos although they might have been seventeen or older, looked like western twelve years olds in comparison.

THe look I always want to see in models. Skinny guys (not with UFC fighter arms especially), dwarfed by their helmets, weapons the same size as Caucasian infantry and, above all, the tight, tailored, pants/overalls/ trousers (whatever the term, according to your origins) and Asian features are nice.

Could not agree more about the 12 year old look, especially if rural origins.

The resin print carbines came in today.
Might be 1/56 but on the too tiny side.

Another plan foisted!

Trust me, most makers are not that bothered. Few can agree on what 28mm means in "scale" terms. Your carbines will be fine, but I will admit that too small is worse than two big.

Well certainly in miniature humans anyway.

Woops, I meant too big…28mm is meant to be 1/56 but many ranges are nearer 1/48 scale.

They do offer the carbines in 1/48 so maybe I'll try again.

In the meantime, I rediscovered the old Iron Wind Metasls 'elite anti- terrorist fighter figure', and am on my way to another platoon of Thais in baseball caps with M16s.

Insert evil laugh here as I pet my cat.

This really is an imaginative project. Must need a lot of research and with limited resources (by definition, for a secret war). Much thought has to go into finding obscure figures.

Heck, anyone can do Hue or Khe Sanh nowadays. This is something completely different. We MUST see some photos then. Happy to post here for you.

For resin printed, you should be able to request the length you want. That's an easy change to just type the desired % scaling from the original file size before printing.

I would think so, but I suspect that if you open yourself up to sales that some of these guys that print must get inundated with requests of strange one off projects by guys like me.

Coolest and oddest thing I have found is a 1939 soviet rucksack on shapeways, that is a perfect match for the ARVN two pocket indiginous rucksack. this will come in handy in putting on some of my Warbases ghurkas. The have open backs and the traditional braces look way too '37 or '44 pattern. I am sure I will sprinkle a couple on the various thai, Laotion and Mike force figures.

How do you become so expert in such an obscure subject? Cool set thing is knowing what backpacks were used by Laotian soldiers. A great quote at any wargames convention would be "the traditional braces look way too '37 or '44 pattern".

I will stick to French 2eme DB or anything from a certain Sunday in Belgium in 1815.

One day we must have photos, even if just off your phone (heck, the white balance on by new phone beats my old SLR anyday. Depth of focus is the problem still though)

I am not sure if you have heard the expression, 'rivet counters' used before. In north america, it describes the model train enthusiasts,,, usually in a bit of a derogatory way as meaning someone who is too darned exact to actually enjoy the hobby much.

Rivet counters are people who suffer from obsessive compulsive disorders when it comes to their hobby. Maybe a good thing in a sculptor or a model maker,,, but for someone just enjoying the hobby might be a bit of too much to bear.

I suppose everyone has their own special area where they are a 'rivet counter'.

I suppose 38 years in the army have put me a bit on that path of over conformity. Then again growing up next to a big US city, five minutes across my border, you have to experience the joys of a US gun show to understand the fun of rifling through great huge bins of surplus stuff to really enjoy it and become an expert on the benefits of an Alice pack vs a tropical ruck vs et ceteras,,,. Besides, surplus twenty year old US kit was like science fiction level advances compared to the absolute junk we were issued.

When all else fails, read, auto-biographies, unit histories, Ospreys are fun. Laos and Cambodia don't have anywhere much like the Vietnam side of the war when it comes to books. Although I did get one auto-biography by a Laotion soldier and am waiting patiently on another. Some fair reads are out there like "Americas Secret War in Laos" and "FANK History" by a fellow named Conboy which are great for general histories and lots of gems for unit details and rotations.

Maybe I just like the more obscure sides of wars.

Not sure I count myself as a rivet counter for figures though. I am too bad off in vision, could never paint to the advertising detail some guys on here show us and am just about happy for myself when I convert a figure and let the glue fill in the gaps.

Maybe on the information side I am a bit of a rivet counter though. The historian side,,, sure.

Here is a fun example.
A few days ago someone posted a beautifully painted example of a 106mm recoilless rifle on a mule utility vehicle. I mean it was really nicely painted.

Except one figure was placed behind the venturi lock vent of the rear of the barrel.

This is where all that time in the army made me turn colours and burst out of my trousers like the Hulk. I mean sitting behind the recoil vent of that thing! The NCO training soldiers aspect and the range officer side of me wanted to come screaming out like Godzilla and knock that guy off the end of that weapon by force of volume and then give them punishment like moving a small mountain six foot to the left to reinforce the saftey mistakes after going through the loading drills for maybe 72 hours straight.

Anyway,,, I just mentioned that it was very well painted and mentioned the back blast that just might cut their torso in halves.

So, I guess that I am learning to let it go,,,.

Cheers Everyone, keep the boards going and active.

It could just be a suppressed creative side.

I would think so, but I suspect that if you open yourself up to sales that some of these guys that print must get inundated with requests of strange one off projects by guys like me.

When I've made requests for scale changes, the printers have been happy to oblige. The original file is set at a certain size. Opening the file in a slicer to print it, there are fields to type in the desired percent scaling. The file automatically opens set at 100%.

The only work involved to make a change is a brief bit of math to compare the original length with the desired length to compute the percentage change to type in.

Problems only emerge if you try to print files extremely larger or smaller. The range of difference you're looking at has no technical difficulties.