My Small 1/18 Desert Army

[granch]

Hi Guys,
I've never had the place to display my Elite Force collection. All figures and vehicles are stored in my man's cave. So, today, I decided to get the most of it outdoor. Hope you'll enjoy. I've made from each sort of figure an 8 men platoon, missmatching the heads to have no twins in each unit. All are less or more customised.

OK, I know, they are not strictly lined up. The terrain makes it difficult. It's also why they don't have any heavy backpack.

We can imagine that the scenery is something like the relief of troops before they go home, so the colonel has to thank everyone. Note that to avoid any political problem, I printed the symbol of the air force infantry battalion in which I served in Switzerland, it belongs now to history:

An African UN detachment is passing there:

We also have the visit of a British Army patrol:

[normandy]

Wow, thats very impressive granch!!! Looks great!

[slogan]

Very impressive display. Well done!

[holensock]

AWESOME!!! Great collection!! Great dio!!! Thanks for posting!!!

[blackblast]

I like each time i see your pictures, all of them are great

[Studly]

Looks Great Mate...Well Done.


Cheers
Studly

[Eddy10440]

Looks great dude!

[YT]

Nice!

[tmanthegreat]

That looks awesome! Just something cool about seeing all the figures and vehicles in a formation. I love the General figure as well... Great work

[Razor17019]

Nice job!
Razor

[grockwood]

A major achievement. Hope you didn't make them stand in the Sun for too long.

[Axis Nightmare]

You have fantastic terrain to work with and make the most of it. I'm trying to imagine how much time that had to take to set-up. Was there a specific real world location you had in mind for the scene? Or did I miss that part?

VERY well done, sir

[flayrah]

Quite the busy little corner of the world you've replicated there! Great job!

[granch]

Hi Guys,
Thank you all for your messages. It gives me the motivation to continue to find new ideas.
Axis Nightmare, there is a quarry not far for my home where they grab out sand and gravel. Of course, it's forbidden to go there and during the week, they are workers and big machines. So I go only during the week-end. This place is a small landscape with many different caracters: flat like a desert, cliff like mountains, after rainy days that erased the machine tracks, you also have small temporary lakes in the bottom, where the site is more clayey with a wild, pioneer small vegetation growing. It is also easy to make a short road portion with a shovel and a brush. Well, it gives inspiration for many installations, the place looks a little bit like what we can see on pics from Afghanistan or Irak, exactly what I need for my BBI collection. As an other example, I have showed here some time ago a RQ-11B diorama:

[pickelhaube]

Looks great I can just imagine the time it took to set up !!!

[Light.Inf.Scout]

That is awesome

[rschaap]

How did you get them all to stand up? I would be worried that one would fall over and take the row with him. Did you use the figures platforms?

[alf]

Whaoo I love those dio man I'm addicted !
it rocks pusher man

[DocTodd]

Very cool where did you get the UN vehicles?

[granch]

OK, here are some tricks:
- Standing figures: I stick needles in the (prewarmed) feet (so they are softer). Using platforms is a longer job, since BBI figures don't have any holes. Then you would have to dispose all the figures and pour or blow sand to hide the platforms and finally brush the sand that falled on the figures with a soft pinsel. I'm not so patient...
- UN vehicles: I bought some 1/18 die-cast white jeeps and SUV and sticked self adhesive letters. The UN symbols are taken from Google Images and simply printed on self adhesive paper or cloth (you can find special paper to make badges for meetings on your printer, not so bad to make flags). It is also possible to find UN decals and stickers on eBay, but they are mainly for smaller scales than 1/18.
- The UN Armoured Fighting Vehicle is a white painted Power Team Elite model, chinese Type 92B IFV, the Chinese have an UN peacekeepers battalion with such vehicles, have a look here: http://eng.mod.gov.cn/DefenseNews/2015- ... 579404.htm
- The houses shown in the RQ-11 dio are made of styropor plates, roof of corrugated cardboard.
- I can guarantee that no figure has been hurt or misstreated for the scenaries, with exception of the needles in the feet for standing purpose!

[rschaap]

When I made this scene I ended up balancing the figures on their feet. It was a pain getting them to stand like I wanted. I like the idea of the pins and how you made the structures.

[granch]

rschaap, I remember your excellent convoy diorama! If you had no platform and no pins, it was surely a hard job. Small soldiers can stand, but only on a flat and horizontal ground. But even then, their backpack is often too heavy (like the one of the old, nice bearded SAS figure from 21st Century) and a light breeze is anough to lay them down... so it is an advantage to seat figures on vehicles for a moving scenary.

[rschaap]

Thanks granch. You never fail to amaze me with your dioramas and conversions.

You were right, it took a while to set up the figures. I had to reposition them a few times before they stood on their own. The pins would have saved me quite a bit of time. Thankfully there was no wind. My next diorama I will use the pins.