Wednesday, February 22, 2012

Post Battlecry Hilarity!

With Battlecry 2012 done and dusted (and me almost caught up on sleep!), I thought I would steal a few photos from King Dan, as well as show off a few photos of my finished army. In terms of my experience I have to say I had a blast! This was my first EW Tournament in about two years (i.e. before the release of Blitzkrieg) where I played zee Germans at a NATCON in "the Hutt". Thanks to Gav for organising, thanks to my opponents for the games (wish I could have been a tougher opponent for a few of you!).

In terms of my overall performance.. it was not as good as I had hoped, but half of that blame lies with me being a little asleep at the wheel, and a little with some poor list choices! I really should have found a way to wedge in the Sapper Platoon, as well as some R-35s so that I had some maneuver elements.

Very excited about filling out the French, but I am also concious that I have many tournaments over the next couple of months and much painting to do!

Games in process photos
Sam's Panzers dismembering me

75mm SP AA about to deploy
 Battlecry 2012 French Legionaire Company
Company HQ


Infantry Platoon

25mm Hotchkiss AT Guns (only 1 platoon was in the Battlecry list)

Self Propelled 75mm AA (Dion de Bouton 75mm)


75mm mle 1897 Battery

75mm Staff Team

75mm mle 1897 gun
155mm C mle 1917 S Heavy Artillery Battery


155mm C mle 1917 S gun
The Defences!

The Rest of the French...
SA-37 47mm AT Gun Platoon


Tuesday, February 21, 2012

More new releases...

Have not had a chance (read felt awake enough) to put up my "post Battlecry" thoughts, so in the meantime here is something that made me chuckle...
I thought it was especially relevant since I am counting down the days till the Minuteman actually gets released... My Kara list must haves them....yeeeeeeesssss!

Friday, February 17, 2012

One more sleep to Battlecry!

If you saw my post on the Flames of War site this week, you would have seen that my EW French were looking dangerously close to being finished, but still needing a lot of work. Well thanks to Red Bull and 6am starts the army was finished at 6.30pm tonight with the last two HMG nests flocked and varnished!

To celebrate I took a quick shot at work of the last couple of weeks efforts!
I'll take some better photos next week of the entire army, in the meantime I need to win a few games in the weekend and determine what I will paint next for the army!

Monday, February 6, 2012

Early War French WIP

Thanks to a couple of long weekends I have managed to make some serious progress on my French - of course with Battlecry 2012 only a couple of weeks away the pressure is on. I have completed all my gun crews which cover two batteries of artillery, a platoon of 47mm guns, as well as finishing up my 25mm Hotchkiss crews. 

25mm Hotchkiss AT Gun Platoons

SA-37 47mm AT Gun Platoon

75mm mle 1897 Artillery Battery

155mm C mle 1917 S Heavy Artillery Battery


I still need to complete my De Dion et Bouton SP 75mm AA trucks, as well as my HMG nest (not to mention the guns to go with the crews - as you can see they are still very much unpainted other than a little primer). Hopefully my plan to resolve that issue will take shape over the next couple of days.... More photos later!

Sunday, February 5, 2012

On the Road to the EWGT (BattleCry 2012)

With the NZ Early War GT (at Battlecry) only two weeks away I thought this would be as good a time as any to cover my plans for it, and where I am at.

As with all tournaments I started with a hiss and a roar, planning an army to take along... and for once I even managed to make a serious amount of progress getting my French together for a Compagnie de Chasseurs Portes - thats lots of French infantry in super sexy Lorraine 38L carriers "zipping"" around the table. I say zipping because in Flames of War they are Slow.... However with 1 Front Armour and a pair of passenger fired machine-guns they are the business when it comes to delivering infantry to the front lines safely.

Lorraine 38L Carrier
Unfortunately life has been a little more complex than usual in my household with a very pregnant wife - seems to be quite in fashion at the moment round the office!

So I quickly started looking for a new plan, where I got to use the infantry I had already painted and also use as many of the figures I had already put aside for the project. I initially looked at a number of lists out of Blitzkrieg, primarily the motorised infantry but also the more traditional options as well but I could not come up with a list that I really feel in love with.

Luckily for me, in stepped Burning Empires with the Vichy French list. This offered me much of what I was looking for but fell short on the tank front. However with V3 on the horizon and French tanks about to get a huge lift (after Battlecry) I thought why play the tanks using V2 rules, when they will be much more fun later in the year. After a bit of too-ing and fro-ing (and a lucky bit of Wiki-foo) I decided on a French Foreign Legion company. How can I be playing Legion you ask... when all my guys are painted for Europe?!?!?! Well, that's where the Wiki-foo came in! 

Enter the 97th Group Reconnaissance Infantry Division. Cutting a long story short, the 97th GRDI was a French Foreign Legion force formed in France, using men from the 4th Cavalry Depot in Tunisia and the 1st Foreign Cavalry Regiment. They used a mixture of horses, trucks and motorcycles to get around - now I will be representing them on foot for Battlecry but maybe if I can convince Mike or Phil to do a little more work they would whip me up a specialist list some day... They were unfortunately over run by the German armour and suffered terrible casualties, but fought like an elite force, grinding the attacking Germans down.
For more info on the history of the unit check out these two links:
Wikipedia Link - translated from French as the English version does not contain anywhere near as much information.

So, how am I choosing to represent them on the tabletop?

Legion Troops
Compagnie de Tiralleurs HQ
Tirailleurs Platoon
Tirailleurs Platoon
Anti-Tank Gun Platoon (with 3 25mm Hotchkiss guns)
75mm Artillery Battery (with 4 guns)

Divisional Support
Heavy Artillery Battery (with 4 155mm guns)
Self-propelled 75mm Anti-Aircraft Platoon (with four De Dion et Bouton 75mm AA trucks)

Machine-gun Nest
with Minefield
with two Barbed Wire Entanglements

De Dion et Bouton 75mm AA truck
My theory is that I have tried to stick to common Legion troops as much as possible. The Heavy Artillery comes from the 7th DINA (which the 97th was part of). The MG Nest and fortifications are a little harder to justify - primarily they are in there as they do not require much to paint and tack up over 100 points!

The De Dion et Bouton trucks.... well they are just super sexy! I also needed a maneuver element and whilst they are not that resilient they give me some good mobile punch.... did I also mention that they are super sexy looking!

Tomorrow I'll have another round of WIP pictures of the army - its coming along nicely however I need to hope that my cunning plan to airbrush the 3 colour camo works, otherwise I have a lot of brush work to do this week and I really only have lunch times and a few hours next weekend to dedicate to it... so as Tim Gunn would say "Make it work!



Saturday, February 4, 2012

Colossus of Sardia?

Okay, so I was going to put up a post today about my slow progress to Battlecry, but my morning visit to TGN stopped me dead in my tracks as Privateer Press announced the coolest thing since the announcement of V3 for FoW :)
Colossals - released July 2012

Of course they also had some info on the RPG that's coming out soon as well.... just waiting for Mike to give in the inevitable and agree to run a campaign for us....

So.... more on the prep for Battlecry tomorrow I guess.