After a first flood of US material and men, that would have conducted to an inevitable US victory in the Vietnam war (immediatly around 1961..), some Vietcong Orion and Esci figures arrive on the battlefield for balance. In fact a recent trip to the north and to one of the last model shops in the country, Bigcat, made me restart the Vietnam period as I found the three boxes of North Vietnamese that Orion produces, the Vietcong Main Force, the Comunist Force (in fact the Local Force) and the North Vietnamese army. The figures are beautifully sculpted and extremely varied. Coupled with the old Esci they make very interesting units. PSR review of these figures was not a good one as Orion sent them some 1st test figures filled with problems which conducted to a bad review. I was lucky as I must have found later produced figures that have all these problems solved with clean and detailed castings.
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My old Esci figures provided more or less some 50 figures while the other 50 are Orion. I made each battalion of the VC Main Force with three companies of six figures each with a command stand and an engineer stand.
The mix of Esci and Orion gives plenty of variety. Two of the companies have LMG while another has the RPG. The old issue of some of the VC wearing the woven straw conical hat continues with the sources saying it was not used. But please, how can a VC force not use them if we could all see them clearly in Apocalipse Now? :)
The stereotyped black uniform was the most painted but a few blue grey and khaki jackets were also added as typical colors of the VC.
The pieces of terrain were made from two different types of ground vegetation and plastic palm trees given to me by my friend Carlos Briz.
Next: more Vietnam or a video on more WW2 aircraft.
They look good !
ReplyDeleteThanks Jacques, it´s nice to be back to Vietnam. There are plenty more models than 30 years ago which makes things easier.
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