'Reconnaissance' from Byron: Recce from two Eras

For this first theme week I wanted to finally get a British universal carrier painted that I picked up to paint way back in Challenge #7 and never got around to, however I also had a modern Razr type vehicle kicking around from Spectre miniatures that I picked up to paint last year.  So, my crazy gamer brain decided that I should paint both as kind of a comparison from years gone by to modern.

First up is the universal carrier, which I painted up mainly with the airbrush to get the tones correct and lay down base colours.  I then painted all the details in, added decals and then started with weathering it up.

Even though it is a 28mm vehicle, due to the size I decided to base it to keep it safe from being bumped into things with, and since it is so tiny that it seems like it should be on a base.

The passengers are removable so that it can represent taking soldiers to the front of being just a gun transport. While I generally do not like removable crew, I think the kit would have benefited from the driver being removable in this case as the model could then be used as terrain or an objective piece.

Next up is the modern 4x4 off-road vehicle from Spectre miniatures.  While amazing looking,  this is one hell of a kit to put together though and I do NOT recommend it to anyone that gets frustrated at all with putting small parts together (Greg, do not go anywhere near this one!).  There are a lot of very small parts to this, and mine at least did not come with instructions, so it was a bit frustrating to build, but it is stunning looking (if small) when together.  To be fair to Spectre, the parts are amazing, tons of detail, and I am not sure anything this small and fiddly could be made and be easy to assemble.

I painted this one up very monochromatic as it is meant to go with my desert camo modern elite forces.  There is some colour shifts on it, and lots of layers of dust over everything which kind of mute the look, but it is there when you look closely.

The figures themselves are not removable once put in, and are a pain to even get in in the first place.  I would not want to ride in this thing with 4 people for fun in real life, never mind in a war zone!  They are packed in there tight.  I painted the soldiers in a desert camo pattern that is pretty rough since it was hard to follow a pattern with the many folds in their clothing, I do think they look ok though, especially with their snazzy orange shooting glasses providing contrast.

Normally, things get better over time.  We are used to looking back at old calculators to modern, old computers to modern, old cars to current cars, and almost always the new is better than the old.  There are exceptions to that (mostly with craftsmanship and durability) but most of the time new is better than old.

However, I think this shows one time where old is better than new, at least in my mind.  I don't know about all of you but I would far rather be in a universal carrier anywhere near a war zone than in that Razr.  I mean sure, the UC sides probably don't provide any real safety, but the illusion of something between you and a bullet sure would make me feel safer than literally having NOTHING between me and an incoming round!  I get that the Razr is faster, better handling, quieter, and in many ways better, I just don't fancy getting into in when the bullets start flying, do you???