WWIII East German Armour & Infantry

The Nationale Volksarmee that never set off

An eight-color line-up for modelers building the East German army as it would have taken the field in a clash in Central Europe. After the Soviet units, the NVA counted as the best-equipped force of the Warsaw Pact: its inventory held T-55AM2 and T-72 tanks, BMP-1 infantry fighting vehicles, SPW-60 armored personnel carriers and 2S1 self-propelled howitzers. The combat vehicles wore a uniform olive finish, while the infantry was recognizable by the Strichtarn pattern, that is, dense brown dashes over an olive base.

The palette is built straight onto that. In it you will find base green and khaki tones, beige and a medium brown for the dashes themselves, a field gray-green for parts of the gear, a matte blue and a light gray for collar tabs and rank insignia. A black-gray serves as the shading tone in place of pure black, which on a figure in a small scale takes the depth out of the folds.

The paints belong to the brush range and cover even in a thin coat, so the individual dashes of the camouflage pattern can be drawn with the tip of the finest brush without the coat underneath showing through. The surface stays matte once dry, which suits uniform cloth: a sheen breaks up the visual depth of the folds.

The use of the set reaches beyond a single army. The shades of uniforms and field gear across the Eastern Bloc of the 1970s and 1980s largely overlapped, so the same palette will also serve for Polish, Hungarian or Czechoslovak soldiers of the same period.