C'est magnifique

Eagle eyed readers of last weeks post may have noticed that I seem to have acquired some 15mm 1914 French figures. This was the result of a slight eBay accident, which is unusual for me as I'm generally quite disciplined when it comes to shopping. I had a hankering for WW1 Eastern Front, but searching for 15mm First World War Russians ended up with me buying quite a large batch of French instead! Oh well, perhaps the Russians will appear later.

Oooo La La! There are indeed a few Frenchmen there. I had always rather fancied 1914 French, but the thought of painting all those red trousers rather put me off (I've had enough of that with my 6mm FPW stuff) . The bulk of this stuff was from eBay, from one particular seller who was astute enough to batch it all up into nice handy bundles of £20-£30 apiece.

Most of the stuff was infantry, consultations at the club revealed it to be Minifigs, the later figures which fit nicely with Peter Pig. I usually repaint second hand figures, but the paint jobs on these are pretty decent so I just did a bit of tidying up before rebasing them. 

Here are some more, in rather less dynamic poses, with a Peter Pig bugler added to one stand. I managed to stretch the three infantry batches I bought into a dozen (GWSH) battalions of four bases each ie a full division or in OP14 terms, enough for three Corps, which should be sufficient.

The infantry came with a few machineguns, again these are Minifigs, the sculptor being under the impression that the Hotchkiss was a belt fed weapon. Perhaps the loader has just lined up the strips very carefully. These are serviceable enough models though.

I also bought half a dozen 75mm guns. The Minifigs models aren't quite as imposing as the PP ones, but they look the part. I was going to try and wash these, but the light blue paint is very matt indeed so in the end I just did the wheel hubs and breech blocks to avoid staining it, then painted the wheel rims. I could have repainted the lot, but life is too short.

From the rear you can see they look slightly under scale, but perhaps they are just very tall gunners. Six 75s is also sufficent for three OP14 Corps.

One of the batches came with this rather magnificent mounted officer, here being announced by another PP bugler. 

Missing from the eBay stuff was any cavalry, so I bought a few PP French dragoons to make up a regiment. Nice easy figures to paint, albeit with separate riders (I usually prefer single castings in 15mm)  but they stuck together OK.

To go with the cavalry and give the line infantry a boost, I did a battalion of Chasseurs a Pied. These are PP 'advancing French infantry', and very nice they are too. Hilariously they are carrying far more stuff than the Minifigs infantry, but 'light infantry' always seem to have the biggest packs.

And finally, I got around to painting this mule mounted Maxim. It has been sitting in my painting box for years, and I've not idea who made it or even where it came from, but as I was painting up some horses anyway, I thought one more can't hurt. Now I need to come up with a scenario featuring a mule mounted MG team.

So, thanks eBay, that was a lot of fun. At some point I'll resume my search for Russians, but who knows what I may turn up instead.