I was looking for an APC solution for my Wolfhound Friekorps which would be as economical as possible. One of my goals with that army is to make it as cheaply as possible and use a lot of toy conversion. Using the Wargames Factory Shock Troopers is a good start because I can get a box of them from thewarstore.com for about $15.00. So far I have picked up a couple of boxes and some heavy weapons troopers so I only have about $45.00 spent on a heavy platoon so far. I also picked up a couple of $5.00 toy tanks so the entire army is still under $60.00. The problem is that there are far fewer toy APCs to convert than toy tanks. My first thought was to find some type of toy Humvee and convert it but I didn't really feel like that would suit the style of the army. I'm trying to build a mechanized armored cavalry platoon for under $100 so I needed a cheap solution. That's when I came across the idea of converting tanks into APCs. The Israeli Defense Force have converted a number of tanks to APCs over the years. Above is a Achzarit APC built off the hull of a Soviet T-54/55.
Here is another shot of the Achzarit from the back showing the added troop hatch. I really like this concept in particular for the Wolfhounds because it fits some of the things I have in mind for their background. They are not a very resource rich mercenary company but they do improvise a lot.
Here is another IDF APC called the Namer based on a Merkava tank. This is obviously a much more modern design than the Achzarit.
Here is a shot of the Namer with some U.S. soldiers using it during a test. It is a very large APC which I think might be good for the powered armor troopers I play to add to the army in the future.
This is an IDF Puma. More of a combat engineering vehicle than a true apc. I just wanted to include it because I thought it might make a nice project.
This is a VIU-55 Munja. A Serbian combat engineer vehicle also based on a Soviet T-55.
This is an IDF Nagmachon based on a Centurion Sho't hull. It is ugly as sin but I think it might be an interesting concept to design for a future project.
The IDF Nakpadon is based on then Centurian as well. It looks very heavy with all that reactive armor.
Another shot of the Nakpadon.
This is an Indian Tarmour based on a T-55 as well. It's also pretty ugly but looks like a simple conversion.
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Well I started working on my 2nd squad for my German Freikorps army. I'm pretty happy with the way it's turning out. I'm about 89% done with the base colors and I should have the wash on by the end of the day. I think they will look good next to my finished unit. After this I have a light assault unit and a Maxim machine gun unit to finish. I'd like to have one more regular squad and one or two more machine gun squads then I'd like to get some armored cars and tanks together for them as well as some trucks and light artilery. I think I'm going to go with mostly captured Mark IVs and Whippits for tanks and some captured armored cars as well. 