The plough is now finished, with the chains painted (same base colour and drybrush as the tank), and cables added from copper wire, the
Tamiya handle and a bit of thread to tie the handle to the brush guard:
Those cables still need to be painted here, of course. (On the M1, the handle was usually tied to some fixture on the left rear of the glacis plate with a cable or strap of some sort. This seems a likely alternative for an MBT 70-type vehicle.)
Here’s the whole vehicle with those bits painted, finished as far as I’m concerned other than crew and stowage:
And said crew and stowage:
The crew is
from Master Box, a set of Afghanistan figures, but I put Hornet heads onto them. Most people seem to build Gulf War tanks with crews in standard BDU uniforms, which is generally correct for Desert Shield, but not the ground phase of Desert Storm — tank crews were given nomex (fire-resistant) coveralls and slim tankers’ body armour just before the ground war started. Those are still in use today, so modern figures can be used for Desert Storm as well.
The stowage is from various sources, mainly
Tamiya. The roadwheel is from an Italeri Leopard 2 with the bolts cut off and holes drilled to match MBT 70 wheels (ten bolts vs. eight). The style of the wheel isn’t quite the same but the diameter is, so it looks right, I think.