A grandiose term being used by most people to indicate the non standard deployments their armed forces are currently engaged in.  Most armies train for high intensity conflict and are structured accordingly.  COE is probably better described in the words of Viscount Slim "we make war as we find it, not as we would like it".

Peter Pig produces a range of 15mm figures for their AK-47 rule set; amongst these are modern USMC figures.  I had just watched Blackhawk Down at the same time that Mongoose publications released battlefield evolution and thought that this would make an ideal skirmish type game even though skirmish isn't normally my thing.  So a load of packs of infantry later and ....nothing happened,  I have one squad painted up at that is about it.  The rest has joined the unpainted lead pile and I will get round to it later.

I have just "discovered" Ambush Alley and what a cracking game it appears to be.  So the 15mm figures below are in the middle of being rebased.  I am also going to give the white undercoat job a tryout on the spare infantry to see if that can speed up the painting.  Mind you out of the 100 or so figures I have, AA (already into Gamespeak!) only needs about 15 or so (for the first couple of scenarios).  As usual, after sorting out I find that I have enough figures for:

• 3 Complete USMC Squads which is enough for a full platoon
• Platoon HQ
• Sniper Team
• A couple of M240 MG teams
• AT-4/SMAW figures
• RTO for a USAR platoon

Oh, and loads of spares.  No insurgents though.  That will be rectified at Colours when the Pig Man will be getting a visit.

Armour doesn't feature too much (that I can see) so I will be reusing the 1/144th scale dragon stuff that I got for CWC.  Put it on a base and it isn't TOO much out of scale. (Might treat myself to a couple of in scale HUMMERS though).

The ones I have painted up a while ago came out alright and fall into the TLAR (That Looks About Right) category and meets my gaming needs.  You may have seen these before on the AK47 Page @ Peter Pig.

Need to refresh the optics on the last guy.  I have no ideas why I chose a blue as opposed to Red/Orange.

On to Ambush Alley.  I have way more figures that I need so I can use a couple to experiment on.  This group of 7 (I have no idea why 7) will get the white undercoat treatment, two colour cam (the two browns and not the base colour) and then a sepia wash from GW.  This will see if I can get MARPAT to work (from a TLAR principle) at this scale (plus might try my arm at some decals for the arms!).  Decals at this scale? Why not I have done them here and those were a lot smaller.

American Forces are here and will become the gallery of finished items

Insurgents in here and will again become the gallery of insurgents and freedom fighters from the different operating areas that AA takes me to.

Painting Digital Camouflage will cover my attempts with the odd piccy thrown in here to keep up the interest.  Like this one.

Armour etc are on History of a Battlegroup, another project not yet finished but this is a taster.  It has had a base coat and one wash so far.  I have found that a bit of rough handling has resulted in the LHF lighT cluster going adrift somewhere in the garage.

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More to follow (as usual).