Wargaming the Iran-Iraq War - Team Yankee Iraqi Infantry

Why the Iran-Iraq War?

For my first post, I would like to share a project that I've both recently been working on, and one that I've been interested in for a long time. The Iran-Iraq War was a brutal conflict of the late 20th century, one defined by modern military equipment, yet using the horrific tactics of trench warfare reminiscent of WW1. This conflict has always fascinated me. The idea of MiGs and Tomcats zooming through the skies, but with mustard gas and human wave attacks occurring down in the hellscape below is a compelling one. Any fan of the Death Korps would have no trouble taking inspiration from this war. 

A classic image of the war: an Iranian infantryman dug in, guarding against Iraqi gas attack. Even the machine gun he is armed is evocative of past conflict: the MG-3 he is using is based on the MG-42 used to terrifying effect by the Germans in WW2.

Of course, I just had to reenact this conflict with miniatures. Originally, I sought out miniatures in 28mm, but no such luck. Being such a "niche" war in the hobby, no one had bothered making minis for it in 28mm. The closest I could find were 80s Soviet infantry, possibly good enough to represent Iraqis, and perhaps Rubicon's Vietnam War Americans kitbashed with AKs to represent the Iranians. But this was not a satisfactory solution for me. My 28mm purism carried on fruitlessly, until I finally took the leap...

Enter Team Yankee - Battlefront's 15mm wargame for the Cold War turned hot. I've known about TY for a while, and admired their models and their objective of representing modern warfare, something which is quite obscure in the hobby where historical miniatures are typically carrying either sword, musket or bolt action rifle - not usually AKs or M16s. However, for a considerable time, I insisted on using 28mm. It was the best for me, miniatures that oozed character unlike the blurry hordes of smaller scales. But if I wanted to have miniatures for the Iran-Iraq War, 15mm was the only good option, since TY made specific models for both Iran and Iraq.

I first bought the Iraqi mech company off Amazon. It was a good starting point. Followed by what else was available at the time: ZSU AA vehicles, and a weapons platoon to round off the infantry. I then bought Basij infantry for the Iranians. My goal with my first purchases was to acquire models specific to Iran and Iraq, namely the infantry. My reasoning was that with Battlefront's terrible stocking, it would be best to get these models before anything unforeseen happened. Other models, such as tanks, would likely be available most of the time since they are mostly Soviet vehicles produced in plastic. 

Starting with Iraqi infantry

I got to work on the Iraqi infantry first. In total, 55 infantry for the mech company, and 18 for the mech weapons platoon. I was pleasantly surprised to find an extra 2 figures in my mech company blister, which I decided to use as another command team. That brings us to a total of 75 figures to paint. But before starting to paint, I needed to know *how* to paint. For that, Osprey publishing's guidebooks were my first stop. They made a nice book on the Iran-Iraq War, showcasing the uniforms of both sides in both real photos and great illustrations. For my Iraqi infantry, I wanted them to have sort of a ragtag appearance with varied uniform colours, somewhat similar to the Afrika Korps during WW2. This was because I noticed a trend where Iraqi uniforms tended to become more green rather than tan as the war progressed. Since I wanted to use them for the whole 8 years of the conflict, I decided to use both tan and green shades to represent my force, along with camo patterns for some of them, primarily the Republican Guard. 

Speaking of the Republican Guard, they were Saddam's premier troops, armed with the best equipment the regime could supply, such as the newer T-72 tanks. The main bulk of my Iraqis would be the regular army, but I wanted a small detachment of RG to lead the charge. Of course, this is not strictly historical, since the RG would most likely conduct operations more independent of the army. But I was not going to buy another mech company to build a separate RG force. A small detachment, along with a couple T-72s in the future, would suffice. The RG primarily wore camo uniforms, sourced from myriad places - indigenous designs, foreign exports and copies. I mostly followed the patterns I saw in the Osprey book, along with a few other patterns described on Camopedia. Other than the RG, I also gave some camo uniforms to the occasional army trooper, just to make them more interesting and practice painting the camo before applying them to the RG.

Painting in 15mm

This was my first experience painting 15mm. As I mentioned, 28mm was my comfort zone. But with 15mm, I decided to do something new. I would primarily use speedpaints, and not highlight the miniatures. For 28mm, my usual workflow was to basecoat, wash, layer/highlight. It could take a long time to complete a model depending on how far I wanted to take it and how many colours there were. Most of this time was spent on highlighting the model, which I took forever to do because of my painting OCD. But with 15mm, I reasoned that this was too small a scale to bother highlighting. This would be a decision that turned out quite great for me. I was able to churn models out rapidly, completing large batches at a time. Yet, despite the speed of painting, the models still looked great, at least to me. 

The first batch of Iraqis: an AK and RPG team.

Before painting, I used an airbrush to apply a first coat of black primer. Then, I applied a second layer of white primer. It's somewhat like a zenithal highlight just that I thoroughly covered with the white primer rather than just hitting the model at certain angles. This was to make sure I had a nice coverage for the speedpaints. I primed and painted the models on ice cream sticks, with 6 figures on each stick. For prone figures, I just directly glued them onto the base and painted them from there, I felt that it was easier this way. 

For the uniform, I used Vallejo Xpress colours: Khaki Drill for tan uniforms, Plague Green for green ones, and Landser Grey for a more faded green. For a more khaki uniform, I used Army Painter Speedpaint 2.0 Desolate Brown. For the webbing, bags and weapon slings, it was either Khaki Drill or Desolate Brown, just making sure that I was not using the same colour for both the uniform and webbing. 

I must say, Vallejo Xpress has amazing coverage when used correctly. Through some rage-inducing experiences, I have realised that to use Xpress properly, you need to REALLY shake the bottle, which gives you a smooth finish and less bubbling. I added agitator balls to the bottles, and used a cheap vortex mixer to really mix the paint well. Then shake it a little more with your hands and make sure you can hear the balls moving freely (giggity). AP 2.0 is more forgiving with the shaking, but I find that the coverage is not as good as Vallejo, and coffee stains are more frequent. The reactivation problem still exists too, albeit to a much smaller extent. When correcting mistakes using white paint, you will observe the underlying speedpaint reactivating and making the white change colour. But it's not that big of a deal since I'm mostly working with darker colours. 

For the skin, either use AP 2.0 Warrior Skin or Xpress Tanned Skin to represent the Middle Eastern phenotype. Thin with medium and apply more coats for a darker skin tone. For the weapons, wooden parts were done with Xpress Mahogany, and metal with Hospitallier Black, or Black Templar if you have the contrast paint; black was also used for the boots. Apply acrylic gunmetal to give the weapons a nice metallic finish. Other acrylics I used were for the helmets and RPG warheads/other green weapons, which makes them look more "solid". I used Vallejo's Iraqi Sand and Refractive Green for the helmets, and just Refractive Green for the weapons. If you want, you can use packing foam to add chipping to the helmets with some dark brown paint, which stands out on the tan helmets but less so on the green ones because of their darker colour. Lastly, apply a thinned wash of AP Soft Tone to the whole model which ties everything together and shades the acrylics. 

For the camo, uniforms were done using Vallejo/AK acrylics. Speedpaints are not good for painting camo patterns, unless you are painting something less "solid" like the German Sumpftarnmuster. I applied a variety of patterns, but most were for the RG. For the army troops, I did something like 1 camo-clad figure per ice cream stick of 6 to make sure camo wasn't too common. I did the opposite for the RG, about 1-2 normal uniforms per ice cream stick. At 15mm, there is no point being too precise with your patterns, the key is to get the colours right, and just roughly represent the shapes of the pattern. 

Finishing touches

For the desert base, I used Warlord Games' desert sand. This is a very nice-looking sand, perfect for Middle Eastern warfare. Then, I glued some arid static grass and grass tufts to make the base more interesting. Finally, a few coats of varnish airbrushed onto the models - first coat was Vallejo polyurethane to create a strong protective layer, followed by coats of AK Ultra Matte to give the models a nice matte finish.

The completed work - Iraqi infantry ready for the frontlines

The full infantry force

Mech company weapons - Milan, AT-3, SA-7

Regular army troops

Republican Guard detachment

Final thoughts

Overall, these models were very enjoyable to paint up. Speedpainting and avoiding highlights makes painting extremely fast. The camo on the RG was also surprisingly fun to paint as the Iraqis had so many camo patterns that I could experiment with. Looking ahead, I'll either start on the Iranian infantry, or start painting my Iraqi vehicles. My plan is to create substantial forces for the Iran-Iraq War, but not too much to avoid spending a fortune or having too many models to paint. It's likely that I'll get about 5 tanks, about twice that number for support vehicles like APCs, and 2 helicopters per side. My goal here is not really to build strong forces for playing TY, but rather a nice display collection.