Battlefield Taxi: The LAV 3!

The LAV 3, or Kodiak, is a Canadian made Infantry Fighting Vehicle made by General Dynamics Land Systems-Canada, based out of London Ontario. While it owes a lot of its lineage to the Swiss MOWAG, it has been thoroughly redesigned with Canadian requirements in mind. Americans may recognize the chassis, as it was further developed into the Stryker, a US Army vehicle derived from the LAV 3. The LAV 3 was also adopted by the New Zealanders, and is very similar to the LAV-25 and ASLAV used by the US Marine Corps and Australian Army respectively.

I’ve wanted one of these ever since I one as a kid, as they made frequent appearances at Air Shows, the Toronto Expo, and various other places. It just screams Canada to me, as this was the vehicle I saw the most of growing up, both in person and on TV during Canada’s deployment to Afghanistan.

I’m not much of a scale modeler though, and with my love of tabletop games I just prefer models that I can use on the gaming table. When Full Battle Rattle Miniatures, a Canadian based miniatures company making Canadian ISAF forces in 28mm, brought out their rendition, I had to have it.

The kit was an easy build. It comes as cast resin hull, turret, and wheels, and in my case I got 3D printed resin components instead of the metal cast ones. It took less then thirty minutes.

Painting it was supposed to be easy, but I’ve never had much luck with modern vehicles. My wash went all over the place, which shaded the recesses nicely but left tide-marks. Luckily, I found an old makeup brush, and did a drybrush which helped a lot. Still, I think I can do better. Once the store opens back up again, I’ll probably get another one.

I also dropped the turret! I lost one stowage rack to the black hole that is my floor, as the rack shattered into several pieces. Still, it doesn’t look that bad. I do need to do some final, detail touches, but its minor stuff really.

Lets have a look at the completed model!

I intend to use this both in Zona Alfa as set-dressing for my Canadian Zone that is in the works, and more offensively in Spectre Operations for missions in Chernarus. Lots of options to use the model!

I also found something pretty cool for Zona Alfa set-dressing; The Canadian Military has a unit called the Canadian Joint Incident Response Unit (CJIRU), a component of the Canadian Special Operations Forces Command. They deal with CBRN threats. There is an excellent article by the Royal Canadian Legion Magazine, https://legionmagazine.com/en/2009/09/the-dragon-hunters/, which goes into greater detail.

In my Zona Alfa campaign based out rural Southern Ontario, I imagine that the Canadian Military would expand the unit to include more regular infantry forces, to patrol and help maintain the Cordon around the Bruce Power Exclusion Zone. LAV 3’s would be very helpful in this regard, with its NBC protection.

But that is…not all I have for today! For the sake of keeping things on theme and separate, I’ll be writing another post on some other models I’ve been churning out! Happy Wargaming wherever you are, and have a great day!