6mm Heroics and Ros Rapier assembly for Moderns, (CWC)
Putting together a surprisingly tricky bit of kit
Having needed a Rapier battery for some time to round out my Modern British force for Cold War Commander, I finally got round to buying a Heroics & Ros Rapier unit at Warfare 2013. This has sat in my to-do pile for some time as I puzzled how to put it together, and eventually I asked for help from the nice people on the BKC Forum. and here is the outcome:
Rapier in action
But the mystery of how to put it together starts with the set of sprues. This is almost all of the kit... fairly obvious that the missiles stick on the sides of one of the units, and they two units go into the trailers.... but where are the wheels? And what about those odd looking things over on the right hand side? Where do they go?
Here is the explanation of what each piece actually is and where it goes. If you are struggling to read the text you can click on this image and you will be able to see it in a bigger format. So, no separate wheels, and the funny looking bits off to the right don't glue onto the main missile or radar unit at all
And this is the most confusing extra sprue. Again these are not part of the main assembly at all either, they are separate (apparently wheeled) units which accomany the Rapier batters and may well be stand-alone generators of some sort. So they just get glued to the base next to the infantry crew
Rapier at the Olympics
inset text
The end result is here - based on a 30mm x 30mm square card and magnabase base. A real-world set up would have the radar tracker and optical tracker about 5-10 metres apart, then a 20 metre gap to the launcher unit all set up in a 1-2-3 linear fashion and with a generator dug in for each 'trailer' unit.
Given the small scale of 6mm kit, I am never too fussed about getting the colours totally accurate. These have been painted in Army Painter Army Green (which handily comes in spray and Vallejo-sized bottles which exactly match the spray) and then the equipment - but not the men - have been doused in Army Painter Dark Tone, then matt varnished.
Here one of the separate generators can be seen at the front of the base.
The two chaps carrying the extra missile have been given a somewhat half-hearted swipe of brown to give a vague impression of cammo. Well, it's 6mm after all...
I also gave the missiles themselves a blue band - I did find this in at least one picture online, and it adds a tiny bit of colour and interest to what otherwise would be a very plain looking unit. The observation/radar type thingy can also be seen here and as there are three of these in the set, if you don't want to build 3 batteries of Rapiers (which is rather a lot for a CWC sized force ...) you can use the other two on recce / FAO / FAC bases as well.
Then, after posting this up on TMP, I found out that the observation-type thingy was deployed the wrong way round, and is actually cast with a bloke looking into the back of it, and also that the blue bands denote training rounds - not really ideal for preventing Europe falling under the Soviet yoke! So, I've swapped round the radar things, and repainted the missiles with yellow bands... so they should work now.
This just about shows the bloke peering into the rangefinder thingy. The reason the wheels are not visible on the deployed trailers is apparently because the wheels were always removed and stashed under the 'trailer' or moved into the generator pit before launch, as missile back blast is not that good for tyre tread! So, they are missing for a reason, not because of any casting error. Nice to know!
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