GSG9?

I wasn't entirely sure what to do with my Hostspur/Combat 'anti-terrorist' team. for some reason, I was expecting them to be in standard kit, but with balaclavas and CQB weapons, when infact they were in full 'SWAT' style kit, including utility vest, etc.

So, what to do with them. I did think about doing them as a generic SWAT/SAS CQB/etc team, but I wasn't sure if or when I'd ever use them in CWGH. But there isn't too much else to do with the figures, so I decided to atleast make them specific to the theatre I'll be operating in - in this case, West Germany (where they could be put to use combating spetsnatz infiltrators and Red Army Faction terrorists)

West Germany's 'Counter Terrorist' unit was called GSG9, and was formally part of their border guards. I flicked through a couple of books from the early 80's, and the general look was about this:

Whilst by the mid 80's (the earliest I can find is 1986) they were looking more like this:

I plumbed for the late, as I felt it would require less conversion, and was a lot closer to the look I had always associated with them from 'Uniforms of the Elite Forces' books from when I was a sprog. 

The conversion work was fairly easy - sculpting helmets (I didn't quite get the shape right, and they might be a little on the large side, but hopefully once painted up, they should look ok), removing gasmask pouches, and back dating their MP5s by removing the tactical sights and under barrel torches (I know they have them in the pics above, but it's an easy way to make the figures look more old fashioned)

Here they are (fresh from basing, still with stray bits of static grass clinging on to odd places) :

And a couple of more 'action-orientated' shots!

Now I just need to arrange for them to have some transport.....