Cold War Gone Hot - In The 1950's

As mentioned before, albeit sometime ago, I fancy getting some Cold War type games in in the future. My initial plan was to re-visit a setting we played at my old club many years ago, set in Germany in 1985, using 6mm figures at the time. But the more I thought about it, the less attractive it became as it felt like I would be covering old ground again, which of course it would, but I wanted something with more flexibility. I considered Korea, and may still do, but it doesn't really grab me and I didn't fancy painting up some new forces for a setting I might not game that much.

Then I saw a series of games on the ever excellent Sparker's Wargames Blog, and I thought why not a sort of 'what if?' set in the 1950's. Afterall I could easily use my existing British and Soviet forces for the core units, then add in appropriate armour as required. So the seed was set and I went about sorting a few ideas out, which resulted in an order with Pendraken that I picked up at Colours. This consisted of a load of late WWII and 1950's armour, but as they are still in their bags, not really worth taking a photos of!

One thing I struggled, with and I think I mentioned it recently, was finding some 1:100 scale aircraft for wargames. Whilst the post-War period is better served than WWII, it is still limited and at time pricey. So I went down the diecast option route and found the following at very reasonable prices.

The start of my ground attack aircraft for NATO and the Warsaw Pact.

US Sabre F-86. Whilst not really a ground attack aircraft, it will work perfectly well for me, heretic that I am!

A Chinese marked Mig-17. Whilst not Warsaw Pact, again I'm not too worried aobut this at the present time.

The classic Me-262, which will be re-purposed for my setting.

The Setting

Ideas are still somewhat fluid at present, but broadly Stalin is dead and the power vacuum that is left causes armed conflict to break out somewhere along the East and West German border. Tensions have remained high since the end of WWII, so the Allies have kept on the Wehrmacht to help maintain the peace, to reduce the need from manpower from their respective Countries. The new Wehrmacht is supplied with a mix of British, German and American equipment, much of it of WWII vintage but with better power plants etc. The Soviet Union is pretty much as we know it, but maybe Poland, or East Germany, tires to break away, leading to said conflict.

Well that's it so far and frankly I'm enjoying this 'childhood memories' approach where we simply used the toys we had at the time and had fun playing games with them. This is something I'm trying to do more of, but admittedly struggle when it comes to WWII, as I do like to have broadly correct kit for my settings. Elsewhere with the ImagiNations approach, this really isn't an issue.

Right, enough waffle from me as I need to focus on the forthcoming CWD! As always thanks for reading and any and all comments are appreciated!

TTFN.