Saturday 26 October 2013

20mm WW1 French (Part 1)

We've already met my 20m WW1 British and Germans, so here are my late war French. The bulk of them are based around a load of Revell figures obtained from Ian Russell Lowell via Tim originally painted up as 1940 French. I fleshed them out with some Airfix and HaT stuff. They are organised for Great War Spearhead but with a view to higher and lower level actions too.

Two battalions, each of four bases, a mixture of riflemen plus an officer, bugler and Chauchat team.

The same figures from another angle. I do like the Revell officer figure.

Various officer/leader/low level HQ types including the inevitable Airfix bloke with a flag and the goofy officer pose. The nearest figure is a repurposed HaT gunner. I like the bugler.

Support weapons; trench mortars and hotchkiss MGs. Slightly awkward poses for the MG crews but at least it is obvious what they are.

Pioneers cobbled together from various figures, Aifix men with shovels and sacks, kneeling gunners etc.

Bicycle troops! The first two are Airfix and the last is one of Ians conversions.

Higher HQs, including the Airfix bloke with pigeon and bloke with telescope figures. The chap with the fine moustache is an oversized metal figure which turned up from somewhere, but ideal for ordering yet another futile assault on the Anthill.
The basic uniform colour for these is Vallejo Mirage Blue, which someone tells me is wrong but it looks like the French WW1 uniforms in both the Imperial War Museum and the Musee d'Armee in Paris, so good enough for me. Brown leather webbing and tan assault rolls. They have mainly been out in divisional strength in games of Spearhead, Square Bashing and my own Drumfire.

5 comments:

  1. Excellent. The beginning of WW1 is kinda the cur-off point for my interest in French soldiers (1890-1910 is my favourite period) but I do enjoy the fact that they went to war still wearing a lot of the more colourful pre-war uniforms. Beautifully painted, well down.

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  2. Thank you both. I prevaricated about 1916-18 French for a long time as they are of such limited use for other periods, but they do look rather grand.

    My red trousered Frenchmen are in 6mm and aimed at 1859-1871 ish.

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  3. Well painted, they are a great looking unit

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  4. Thanks Al, they actually look a bit flat in the photos, they have a bit more depth irl.

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