Watch Am Escargot: French Armour III - Somua S35 Platoon

I managed to get hold of a can of Matt varnish and finished off the platoon of Somua S-35's for Watch Am Escargot.

The models are QRF and dipped with Army Painter Strong Tone after being base painted. The dip has done a good job muting the colours Battlefront suggest for French armour which look far too bright in the Flames of War Blitzkrieg book.

2014 Painting Target: 145/1000

Watch Am Escargot: French Armour II - Somua S35

The bulk of my French force for Watch Am Escargot comprises of QRF Somua S-35's and I have managed to finish off the first.

The model was a bit rough with some pitting along the right hand side, but after being painted and dipped it does not look too bad. The Battlefront decals certainly help.

The bulk of the platoon should follow when I get hold of some more Matt varnish (hopefully tomorrow) and here is the A&A card for the tank.

2014 Painting Target: 140/1000

Watch Am Escargot: French Softskins II - Laffly S20TL's

I managed to finish the other three Battlefront Lafflys yesterday evening...

I was very impressed with the models which have painted up well with use of dip. All the models come with a couple of soldiers to sit in the truck and an optional AA MG gunner (I decided to use him for the HQ truck, but not the rest of the platoon's.

Next job, finish the Somua S-35's and start work on the Germans (I suspect need to order some more infantry from Peter Pig so will pick up the odd French I need at the same time).

2014 Painting Target: 139/1000

Watch Am Escargot: French Softskins I - Laffly S20TL

Back to the 1940's French and the first of the Laffly S20TL trucks. This is the Fusiliers Portes platoon HQ vehicle and a one piece casting from Battlefront.

As with the Hotchkiss H-35 tanks, I base painted the models and then painted Army Painter Strong Tone dip over them. The end effect is very pleasing and a simple process even if you have to wait 24 hours for the dip to dry.

The remainder of the platoon's trucks are almost finished and the dip drying on a platoon of Somua S-35's, so expect more 15mm Watch Am Escargot goodness soon.

2014 Painting Target: 136/1000

Watch Am Escargot: French Armour I - Hotchkiss H35's

I managed to finish the first French AFV's for Watch Am Escargot today, a platoon of three Hotchkiss H35's. Two are early model H35's and one H35 model 1939 (more commonly known as the H39).

The models are from QRF and in this day of injection moulded plastic and 3D rendered quite charmingly "old school". They might not be up to the straight line standards of the latest releases, but I like them and they fit nicely with the Peter Pig infantry. The tanks are quite small at 42mm long and I am pondering basing them.

As the main bulk of the force will be Somua S35's painted in the more common three colour 1940 French camo pattern, I wanted the light tanks to look a bit different...

In the end I opted for a two colour green pattern based on the Heller 1/35th kit box illustration (below). I am not sure of its historical veracity, but there was so much variation in how the French painted their vehicles in 1940, it is quite possible that this "Dark Green" over pre-war "Army Green" is accurate. Whatever, I liked it...

The models were base coated and then painted with Army Painter Strong Tone dip. The decals are Battlefront, and despite the oddity of the blue circles in the French roundels being separate from the red and white were very easy to use and not as fiddly as some 15mm decals can be.

2014 Painting Target: 135/1000

Watch Am Escargot: French Infantry III

The final (for the time being) French infantry for Watch Am Escargot are a couple of bases of Bold Captains (or Command Rifle Teams in FoW speak...)

Here is the Bold Captain card:

I also painted up a Staff Team (FoW term) for the Artillery Divisional support should I want to use the French with FoW (my forces should make up a 1400 point Escardon de Combat when finished).

In an attempt to use the Peter Pig miniatures I had rather than buy any more (well apart from the Grenadiers I intend to order later this week) I used an infantryman, a surrendering German and two French officers to create a little vignette.

2014 Painting Target: 132/1000

Watch Am Escargot: French Infantry II

I managed to finish off the remaining three Watch Am Escargot 1940 French Rifle/LMG bases today...

As previously, they are 15mm Peter Pig figures bought many moons ago for a long forgotten project, based on FoW bases.

And here are all four of the bases together...

And their Axis & Allies card...

2014 Painting Target: 122/1000

Watch Am Escargot: French Infantry I

I have just finished a couple of test pieces of French infantry for my Watch Am Escargot 1940 Axis & Allies project. They are based for FoW but can be used for a number of systems.

French LMG Team

It is a long time since I painted any 15mm and it is not my favourite scale from a painting point of view. Not small enough for micro techniques, too small for larger scale ones. Consequently I decided dip was the way.

French LMG Team

The figures are Peter Pig, bought many Fiasco's ago, and are nice miniatures, the dip does a good job in picking out the detail. I went with the block paint, dip and some drybrushed highlights technique and think it has worked quite well.

French Observation Team

The remaining French are currently dipped and drying for 24 hours, so hopefully there will be a load more done this week. Next should be the French AFV's...

2014 Painting Target: 110/1000

Watch Am Escargot: Allez Les Bleus!

A couple of years ago I had a great idea (!) to play some beer 'n' pretzels games using the Axis & Allies Miniatures rules, unfortunately I couldn't find the bag of early war French I had bought one Fisticuffs many moons ago and other projects took over.

Whilst looking for the (still elusive) Pirates, not only did I find an almost complete platoon of 28mm Fallschirmjäger (the few required figures have now been ordered from Crusader), but the long lost bag of early war French! I had thought this contained tanks but it didn't, it was chock full of French infantry - and German! Good job I didn't buy any...

So listening to the football in the radio I am currently sitting sorting out little pink bags of infantry to see what I have and planning some AFV purchases from QRF who currently have a 15% off sale on until Sunday. I intend to base the infantry up as per Flames of War as this will make them more useful (and sellable if I decide to get rid of them one day).

Watch Am Escargot: Les Rostbifs

In between painting orcs I've been making baby steps on the road to Watch Am Escargot and with my head stuck in Sean Longden's Dunkirk: The Men They Left Behind, I decided that it wasn't going to be 1940 with some element of the BEF. Reading that the 51st Division were attached to and fought with the French has led me to picking up some Battlefront BEF in the form of the BEF Infantry Company and BEF 2 Pdr packs (the idea still being to use Zvezda plastic British tanks when released).

Battlefront BEF Platoon (photo Battlefront)

I did look at the Peter Pig BEF first but the website lacked photos of the basic infantry and wanting my BEF to have gas mask pouches I plumped for the Battlefront figures. After ordering them I discovered the Forged in Battle BEF sets which look pretty good but I am happy enough with the Battlefront figures though maybe the Forged in Battle BEF Highlanders might be bought if the project takes off.

Forged in Battle BEF Highlanders (photo Forged in Battle)

Wacht Am Escargot?

A few years back I had one of my "ohh shiny!" moments at Fisticuffs and ended up coming home with a pink carrier bag chock full of 15mm Early War French from Peter Pig (don't ask...). Currently sat somewhere on Lead Mountain I hadn't given them too much thought until I hear that Zvedza were planning to release a Matilda I and Hurricane for their Art of Tactic game sometime in 2012. I mentally filed this information away until the ducks started to line up following Mark Hamman's post on his blog about his Wacht Am Weekend Battle of the Bulge project.

It was Mark and Maff's idea to have some small beer 'n' pretzels games using the Axis & Allies Miniatures rules that caught my imagination as I didn't want to go full tilt into something like Flames of War at this stage. I've never played the game but having downloaded the rules for free from the WizKids! site here, I was quite taken with the simple mechanics and that looked like they'd provide a fun old school type game (in the 'Airfix' tradition as Maff put it).

The only problem was that whilst the rules were free the unit stats were on the cards that came with the miniatures (which I didn't want to buy as I already had miniatures to use). Mark and Maff however came to the rescue pointing me in the direct of the Axis & Allies community who have developed some house rules (here), importantly all the stat cards for the house rules (here) and loads of other units including anything from dinosaurs to the Red Skull (here).

So having solved the rules (and stat card) issue all that remains is the miniatures. Tentatively I'm going to look at knocking up some small Blitzkrieg era 15mm forces later in the year when I take some holiday (note to self, take more than one day off in the first six months this year!), looking at blitzing through the forces in a week or so (well, how long can 15mm German really take?!).

All I have to do now is find the French to see what I bought and then draw up a shopping list of Germans (and yes, the Zvedza plastics will probably be the route for AFV's I think I can get away with an Ausf G variant of the Panzer III in 15mm...)