On to Wurzburg!

Just to show that merely because I am no longer painting LW BOTB Germans, my level of insanity hasn't decreased, I have started a new project.  I am jumping on the Team Yankee bandwagon only a few years behind the times.  Yes, I know it is not as shiny as it was when it first came out, but it has an undeniable attraction.  Massed Russian tank waves have a charm all of their own.  Growing up in the 1970s, I played my fair share of the SPI wargames, many of which were devoted to the theme of a Warsaw Pact invasion of Western Europe.  I remember getting the Modern Battles Quadrigame from the local hobby shop and playing it extensively over the years.  While all of the games were good, the one that I liked the best was Wurzburg, which examined the Soviet invasion of Western Germany.  In this game, a Soviet Combined Arms Army has to be fended off by one US Mechanized Infantry Division, later reinforced by an Armored Division.  Particularly stirring to me was the cover picture for the game, featuring a US M551 Sheridan tank in a threatening pose.

From the Modern Battles Quad, one of SPI's finest!

 Now, one can argue that a Sheridan was more a threat to its own crew than the enemy, but with that picture my fate was sealed.  In fact, when Battlefront came out with a Sheridan model for its Vietnam range, I felt compelled to buy it.  From Wurzburg it was only a hop, skip and a die roll to other addictive Cold War games, such as Fulda Gap, The Next War, Hof Gap, Seventh Corps, etc., all designed to play out the invasion.  While I am currently building a Soviet force, I am going to use the old Wurzburg game to set the stage and terrain for the ensuing skirmishes between the Soviet 27th Guards Motor Rifle Division (GMRD) and the US 3rd Mechanized Infantry Division, both units which were featured in the game.  It should be fun, and if nothing else, won't require any bizarre camouflage to paint on the vehicles.  The Soviet tanks and armored personnel carriers are green.  Not expecting their vehicles to last that long, green is good enough.

As for my force, I am working on BMP-2s and T-64s as the backbone of the army.  It is difficult to tell just what Soviet Division had what tanks and when they got them.  The 27th GMRD may have actually had T-80s by the 1985 (the nominal start of WWIII).  Right now, Battlefront only makes T-64s and T-72s, and the QRF T-80 pales by comparison, so I will use T-64s.  It looks neater as well, and that is important.  I am also using BMP-2s, as I think they look better than the BMP-1, and are also more powerful.  I think the 27th GMRD did have this vehicle, so proxying the tanks should be acceptable.  If I used the 1970s as my starting point, the T-64 would probably have been more likely, but the BMP would have been the APC of choice.  So, this is a decent trade off, even though the US force won't have Sheridans in their Armored Cavalry Squadron.