More Leaders pt3 - French

 As I noted in my post on substitute figures, I don't actually have any dedicated WW2 French figures although I have boxfuls of WW1 French. I tend to use Adrian helmeted SCW figures instead as they look much the same and many of them were originally French figures anyway. Well, after the now numerous appearances of my General de Gaulle figure, I realised I 'needed' some French officer figures in Kepis for an upcoming game as they are so distinctive.

Another bunch of Skytrex figures, this time from the French command pack, which contained no less than 11 figures, which I think must have been an error. Slightly disappointingly, only three of them were in kepis, although it did have the inevitable pigeon team, like the Airfix WW1 set. Most of them were NCOS in greatcoats with helmets and rifles. Never mind, a cunning plan presented itself.

I just based up six of the figures as an extra pair of infantry stands. Five of these are Skytrex NCOs and the tall guy in the middle of the second base is Essex I think. He came out of my bag of spare gunners in Adrian helmets.

These will be useful supplements for my other SCW figures in Adrians, although they are very obviously wearing French style greatcoats too. My regular group seem to enjoy 1940 games, so it will be nice to have a few more proper French troops.

The three actual figures in kepis are these. Two of them with pistols and one with binoculars, they are all wearing greatcoats. I did the guy with binos in a kepi with a khaki cover (the most common configuration), a second in an uncovered kepi, so dark blue with a red top and finally one in an FFL kepi blanc. Yes I know only ORs were supposed to wear white kepi covers, but it is such an iconic piece of headgear.

Like the British and Russians, these were basecoated in Vallejo English Uniform, and then various details and highlights picked out with a pinwash around the equipment, inkwash on the flesh and a light drybrush.

Painting these finally finished my pot of Vallejo English Uniform! I've had this for years and it has painted hundreds of figures and provided mud on scores of vehicles. It was one of the first Vallejo paints I bought once my last pot of Humbrol Khaki ran out. I still absolutely hate dropper bottles as I prefer to dip my brush in the paint and not waste it on a palette, but this was great paint with lovely coverage and consistent colour right to the end. I could probably unscrew the top with a pair of pliers to get the last out, but I already had a replacement in stock as it is such a useful colour.

As a postscript, I've subsequently discovered that if I store the bottle upside down, there is still tons of usable paint in it. So a few more months life in it. Maybe you are supposed to store them upside down? Search me.