I’ve noticed a lot of hobby modellers seem to base their collections around one conflict in particular, such as the excellent Hotel Zugando I have really enjoyed reading recently. This makes a lot of sense, its gives your collection a good consistency and lets you tell a trail of stories that focus on your setting. However, instead of a single country, I’m going to take another tack.
The Shadow War is the battles hidden behind the headlines, often hidden from plain sight by a collection of seemingly unrelated. Primarily fought by special ops teams, secret PMC teams and intelligence operatives, The Shadow War occasionally draws in front-line troops when the situation demands more of a sledgehammer than a scalpel. These battles are close fought events on a variety of scales, taking place everywhere from the former Soviet Republics to the seemingly friendly nations in the Middle East to Brazilian Favelas to the very streets of Europe and America. The sides are more shades of grey than black and white, and today’s allies could be the wolves at the door in a matter of days.
On a practical sense, my aim with The Shadow War is to create a set of teams inspired by both games and films that could be easily seen in all sorts of locations. These will start with the Spectre models I own but I hope to add some additional figures from both Eurkea’s and Empress’s range.
In terms of progress, I’ve managed to get a start but sadly I’ve run out of both bases and airbrush propellent so there will be some delays before the US guys will be hitting the field. I’ll mention the titles of the various groups I’m currently thinking of doing, with more details coming soon.
- Task Force Wolverine – The Scapel and The Sledgehammer (US Army Special Forces)
- Task Force Tiger – The Seaborne Strike Force (US Marines + US Navy Seals)
- Operation Wingate– The Watchers in the Dark (SAS + British Army)
- Grapevine – The Conflict Factory (CIA SAD and it’s Paramilitaries)
- Lion Shield Industries – The Unknown Factor (South African PMC)
- ?? – The Bear (Russian Army Special Forces)