WW2 French

Most WW2 wargamers have heard of the French involvement in the war but this is usually related to the 1940 campaign where they suffered a heavy defeat from the Germans in a six weeks campaign despite some very strong performances.  Unfortunately most of them have not heard of the French army of the 1944-45 period where they put in a fine performance to attempt to wipe out the stain on their honour from the early war and they make an interesting change to wargames armies that normally consist of British and Commonwealth forces or Americans.  These 28mm figures are from BattleFront Miniatures produced and sold by Stronghold Miniatures but have some minor converstions of head swaps to add Adrian helmets, berets, kepis and French scarves to make them more French.  The Sherman tanks and half tracks are from Corgi.  Sorry for the poor quality of the photos I'll try and take some later when I take some shots of my early war 20mm army.

These Greyhound armoured cars are from Solido

with modified crews from a number of manufacturers.

The later French army is difficult to find information about but this is one book that I can recommend.  What I like about the French is the amount of insignia and marking as well as personal flags that they carried on into the early war.

More Crimean Magic

My mates Aly Morrison and Dave Andrews of Great War Miniatures have just announced the release of these little beauties which will no doubt be making an appearance in some games on this site at sometime in the future.

CRC1 Dragoon command. Officer in full dress, mounted drummer, Officer in cap

CRC2 Dragoon command. Officer, bugler, standard bearer

The only thing that's stopping me from running out and buying some is the unpainted lead pile that is blocking the door.

French and Turkish command

Finally for the French here is a command vignette that I finished for our Alma game last year and has never been photographed.

Here are the Turks making sure the French don't get it all wrong.

The chap on the left looks very like one of our LOGW group.

What I like so much about the French is the multiple use you can get out of them as long as you're not a member of the Fashion Police or the Button Brigade.

My French will happily be shooting Russians in the Crimea, bayonetting Austrians in Italy in 1859 and surrendering to the Prussians during the Franco Prussian War.  As if that wasn't enough, the Zouaves and some line troops could also be used in the American Civil War and the artillery and Chasseurs can double up as Piedmontese and Papal troops for fighting with and against Garibaldi.  I was even thinking of painting up some machine guns and using them for the very early WW1 battles, or perhaps that's a war too many?

French Infantry

Over the Christmas period I managed to get some painting and basing done to combine my figures with Aly Morrison's and some of Jack Glanville's troops that I've added to my collection.

The Chasseurs are all my painting

The last two pics show a battalion in reinforced line.

French Artillery

As promised I've finally managed to get around to getting the camera off my wife but unfortunately I've never really learnt how to use it properly so my pics are no where as good as Barry's.
First up are some shots of the artillery battery I had just finished basing.

Some sappers building defences for the guns

I've already started the second battery but it will be a while before it's finished.

Crimean Update

I've not managed to get a game since the Necromunda game but I have been busy wargames wise by finishing off my French artillery battery, started painting some Mirleton Bersegliere and written two scenarios, Oltenitza and Cetate for inclusion into the forthcoming Crimean supplement, Four Empires.  I've a couple of days off work so hope to get started on the scenarios for Eupatoria and the Ingour river.  Some of you Crimean fans might notice a slight Turkish biase to my scenarios.

Just need to get the camera off my wife and I will try and post a few pics of the recent painting.

Blast from the past

I managed to get in a third game for the year and infact we got two games last night so it went well.
Colin Jack had been asking last week if I had a set of Necromunda rules which he wanted for another period so we decided to get all out gangs out to remind us how the rules worked.

My Delaque gang defending the Necronews press plant

Guarding the front door to allow the delivery boy back in from his destroyed delivery vehicle

The first game we fought was a straight forward gang fight between my Delaque gang,

Colin Jack with his Eascher 'girlie' gang and Hugh Wilson with his Ratskin gang.

Eascher advancing through the ruins

Rummaging around the military scrap yard.

Hughes Ratskin gang under cover

The first fight saw me taking up postitions around the press plant to make maximum use of my firepower while the other two squabbled amongst themselves but surprise, surprise, they both headed for me to make best use of their hand weapons.  Fortunately the girls suffered a number of shooting casualties and bailed out of the fight leaving Hugh with his rats to face the music but realising charging across open ground into my crossfire he also bugged out giving victory to me.  Unfortunately for Colin his gangs leader and another ganger both died after the battle which should have left him at a serious disadvantage in the next game but it didn't turn out that way.

The next fight was a scavenge for loot, eleven pieces were scattered around the area which had to be found and brought safely off table.  Each piece was worth a certain amount of points but there could also be a chance that some could be booby traps, those would be three of the ones that I found, Doh!!

Rats out searching

Unfortunately for the Rats they wandered into my line of fire and with four of them down the rest failed their leadership test and bugged out taking their one piece of loot leaving the Delaque and Girls to shoot it out for the rest.  As usual my dice rolling let me down badly and with my leader down the rest left with nine points of loot but Colin had fifteen points of loot so ended up the winner.

My heavy weapons that couldn't hit a barn door

Hughe's rats hiding to avoid been shot to bits.

Both games were great fun and we have decided to get the gangs out again and start a proper campaign with them.  When we first fought Necromunda many years ago we had 36 gangs in our campaign while the campaign Colin ran had about 16 gangs in it.  We both had newletters to keep everyone up to date on what was happening and also gave me a chance to distort the truth and generally slag everyone off which was great fun and even got us mentioned in White Dwarf a number of times and got us invited down to their studio.