Terry's Terrence

I always got a bit of a chuckle about the Army knick-naming the Taliban as Terry or Terrence, sort of a sideways nod to the Vietnam era VC being Victor Charles.

So I had to smile when I was contacted by a nice Gent named Terry who asked me to paint up some Taliban to go with some modern(ish) 15mm British infantry I had put on ebay.

Terry wanted about 20 infantry, a couple of heavy weapons and a Toyota pickup painting, and after we agreed a price he sent me the models.

Mostly they were MJ Figures Mujahadeen range. This was something of a surprise to me as I had thought the range was one of those lost to the mists of time, but happily not. I used to have some for my AK47 armies back in the second sheet metal age when God's dog was a pup, and I always had a soft spot for them, particularly as they did (or rather do) a superb ground mounted 14.5mm AAMG that looks great on its own bit also sits nicely in the back of any Toyota or similar. To be honest the infantry are a mixed bunch. Posing tends to be ok, detail not so great and proportions are err "varied" but even so they include some great figures in addition to the 14.5 including a lovely radio man and commander. They were originally designed to represent Afghans fighting against the Soviet invasion during the 80s, so there are a couple armed with bolt action rifles, but most carry AK type rifles, plus the obligatory RPG.

There is also a couple of Old Glory command and weapon crew figures. I was less enthusiastic about these as the details were a bit soft and they seemed overly bulky, but as with the MJs there is some interesting poses, particularly the guy resting his laptop on a rock - obviously posting his latest vid to YouTube! I replaced the OG RCL with a spare PeterPig one as frankly I couldn't be arsed to stick the damned thing together, even though it was probably a more "correct" model. All in all the OG contingent look Ok

Terry also sent me a Toyota pickup - again from MJ, which has some sort of missile system on the back. The pickup was cast in resin with metal wheels, and went together easily. It was clear when looking closely that MJ have taken the rather sensible step of getting the master made on a 3d printer, which gives it a very pleasant sharpness to the whole thing and nice details. It may well challenge the PeterPig one as first choice in future, indeed the only thing that would stop that is that it is missing some details like windscreen wipers, which makes it look a bit off. Anyway I was feeling whimsical so decided to try and give Terry some options. The missiles fit nicely, so I drilled a small hole in the floor and popped in a magnet, ditto the base of the missile launcher. The 14.5 would not fit in as it was, so I made a false raised deck out of plasticard and put a magnet underneath, so the 14.5 now sits in there nicely, and as a bonus an old PeterPig RCL was dug out from the spares box and also magnetised so Terry can fit whatever loadout he likes. I quite like the results :-)

Actually the last element is also from Old Glory and these are superb. OG do a set of Taliban on motorcycles, and Terry asked me to paint three up. Initially my heart sank as I already had a couple of these myself but I had always been put off from painting them. I was presently surprised when they turned out to be rather nice, the only fiddly bits being the gaps between the rider and pillion.

So there is Terrys Taliban. I hope he likes them. They were interesting to paint, even if they don't have quite the same level of details we have come to expect from our 15mm today. I may even have a search through the spares box and see if I can put a couple of units together. Sadly I suspect this sort of lit will see a lot of real world action in the next few years.