15mm Desert pocket armies - British stage one. Bumper 700th blog post edition!

Blimey, 700 posts, that sounds a lot. If only I got paid per word! As fitting such a momentous occasion, I'll cover my current big project.

 As mentioned in an earlier post, I'm doing some 15mm WW2 desert forces to supplement my 6mm stuff. As I haven't done a multi-army 15mm project for years, I'm (supposedly) starting small, just doing enough stuff for a 'Neil Thomas' type army to cover smaller scenarios at various levels of representation. Even starting small, doing all three (British, German, Italian) armies is a bit daunting, let alone adding in the Indians and Australians.

This is stage one for the British. It took a surprisingly long time to get here as I hadn't realised what a steep learning curve painting larger scale desert stuff would be. Whereas I've been painting European and Russia front stuff for decades in larger scales, I've only ever done desert warfare in 6mm apart from a brief foray into Command Decision in the late 90s in 15mm. 

If ever I regret selling an army, it was my old 15mm Command Decision British Armoured Brigade and Support Group. I can remember painting hundreds of (8th Army) knees, and I had an entire motor battalion with all its trucks and carriers, back in the days when Peter Pig tanks cost 3.50 each. Hilariously I also bought a second hand DAK force to go with it, which I later sold, although I kept the tanks, guns and transport to form the core of my 1940 German force, while I sold the infantry. 

Anyway, no point crying over spilt milk. Well I will. A bit.

First up the infantry. These are all Peter Pig figures as after my 90s experience, I can't really imagine painting any others, and they are always such nice figures. 

The actual 'infantry' are these 12 bases on the left. Each group done as a rifle base of three figures, a rifle/command base of three figures which includes an NCO and an LMG base. So in theory this will do for a rifle platoon at 1:1, a rifle company at 1 base per section, a rifle battalion at one base per platoon, an infantry brigade at one base per company, and infantry division at one base per battalion etc etc.

Normally I'd aim to do a Command Decision sized regiment/brigade (so three battalions at 1 base = 1 platoon), which is what I did for all my previous 15mm WW2 armies, and for the Russians, I did an extra SMG battalion as well. I have so much to paint though, that for now I just kept it to one battalion. 

I'll aim to grow this in future.

The other bits are support elements aimed at various levels of game from tactical to operational. There are four HQs, four engineer stands, a pair each of Vickers guns and 3" mortars, and couple of spare blokes with binos (from the Vickers pack) to act as FOOs. The numbers are partly a function of the PP pack size.

Transport is somewhat modest. Three Bedford lorries and a couple of carriers. That will do for now. I do have masses of British transport already, but I cant quite bring myself to use green stuff in the desert, Tunisia apart.

The Royal Artillery element. A pair of 25pdrs and a pair of 2pdr Portee. Again, I have masses of green guns already, but no good for the desert. That will do for an NBC scale artillery Regiment and AT company. I do have a wicked thought about repainting some existing guns in SCC2 brown, which with a heavy dry brush would do for both Europe and the Med. A lot of British artillery was still brown in NWE in 1944. The same goes for transport as well. Mmm, I shall think on. 

Finally, the nightmare which is British desert armour. So many types in service in such a short space of time. For the first tranche I went with Crusaders, as you can't really go wrong with Crusaders. I also have a particular fondness for the death ride of 22nd Armoured Brigade at Bir El Gubi, and you need lots of Crusaders for that. Six Crusaders is enough for Bir El Gubi using one hour WW2, at two models per Regiment. 

I also got a couple of Valentines, as I like Valentines, but in retrospect I should probably have gone with Matildas. I was thinking Gazala rather than Operation Crusader.

Finally the odds and sods. The Dingo can do double duty as recce or some sort of armoured HQ type thing. The Humber is there just because it would have been neglectful not to have any recce at all.

Thats it for stage 1. Stage 2 will be to paint all the stuff I bought for stage 1 but couldn't face painting. Primarily some Stuarts, 15cwt trucks and some Quads for the 25 pdrs.

 After that I need some early cruisers (A9, A13 etc), Matildas, more armoured cars, more carriers, more infantry, more guns, more transport and more HQ stuff. Plus some later campaign heavy tanks - Grants and Shermans and some heavy artillery.

Still, lets walk before we run. Got to do some Germans before I tackle that lot.

I'll run through the individual models in more detail as part of my 'modelling' thread of posts, and I imagine this project will generate many future posts. Thanks for reading and see you all at 800!