Spectre have returned from their trip to the States and we’re already seeing a glimpse of what’s coming soon thanks to the WIP channel on the Spectre Discord.
It’s hard to overstate how important the Spectre technical releases (both the original in early 2017 and the SF variants later in the year) were to both this blog and to the business as a whole, providing a set of modular pieces to assemble a vehicle at just the right level of power for the skirmish game of Spectre Operations.
However, time has moved on since 2017 and the variety of vehicles and the upgrades (some of which have been especially outlandish) has continued to grow. It seems that Spectre is now looking to fill in the gap with a new set of releases.
A big theme of the next generation of technicals has been increasing levels of armour protection that has been attached by various methods to regular civilian vehicles. We had a taste of this upgrade in the Patreon back in August last year, but this version has been further modified, with new additions to the bonnet, covering the wheel arches with plate and full-size door protection. The fan favourite the ZU23-23 has been updated too, adding an armoured bathtub enclosure around the gunner to give him a little more protection from the incoming fire.
The other preview is of a very interesting vehicle that seems inspired by a particular Yeman Army Land Cruiser conversion. It mounts a recoilless rifle in a turret over a covered rear section (the WIP is missing the rear section but I assume it’s coming). This actually gives it a bit more of a professional visual, still a modification but potentially ideal for giving your local forces some firepower (that turret is just asking for a PKM) without graduating to a Humvee or another purpose-built vehicle.
Overall, this is a great preview of what’s coming up. I’ll be very interested to see what the next step in Project Technical is, including just how bonkers we’re about to get – for example in Yemen, someone decided to mount a Vulcan on a technical so there sky is the limit.