French Toast

A few weeks ago Dan Hoyt and myself played our first Great War game. Because right now, neither of us actually have enough figures to play on the full eight boards, we set up two and hashed out a basic scenario. German trench raiders had taken over an allied observation post and British and French units moved to retake it. Two sections of Germans with a flame thrower team stood against a section of French, two sections of British and a Lewis gun team. And without further fluff and filler, the pictures:

The Canadian and French in all of their glory

Smaller in number, German stormtroopers are destructive in close quarters

The two boards with added tank carnage for fun

The first section of Stormtroopers rush into position

The deadly flamethrower team takes position

The Canadians, arriving after the French, take position in the second line of trenches

In a daring move, the second section of stormtroopers leave their trench to assault the waiting French. Unfortunately, a Canadian squad was within range and came to help their cheese eating allies. The close quarters combat ended with the total loss of the storm trooper section and a couple of French casualties.

The euphoric victory in hand-to-hand combat was short lived as the flamethrower appeared from around the burning Whippet tank.

The flamethrower proceeded to have a devastating effect upon the French rifle section, killing all but it heroic Sergeant.

In a last hurrah before being shot, the Sergeant adopted a "Come at me bro" stance.

The flamethrower team also had a short lifespan, as the Canadian rifle section "lit" them up.

The game ended with only a single German storm trooper section remaining and its commander while the Canadians still had two rifle sections, its Lewis gun and a platoon command.

Double ... trouble

During the school year, I had very little time to actually sit down and paint models, thankfully, now that I'm done and have about 2 weeks of absolutely nothing at all to do, paint paint paint! Another rifle section of Great War French are ready to hit the table. Both sections are missing an infantryman equipped with a rifle grenade, which will be added when ever I get around to ordering some more figures. I'm rather happy with how they have turned out.

Première Section de Fusil under the command of Sergeant Chagnon.

Deuxième Lieutenant Gendron, the fearless leader of the Demi-Section A.

Deuxième Section de Fusil under the leadership of Sergeant Robin

Too good an opportunity to pass up

While working on an eight part terrain board with my good friend Dan Hoyt, I could not resist pulling out a rifle squad of my French and taking some shots. We flocked and added water effects to the boards after the shots and I will be sure to post up some nice pictures of the game we have planned on the 20th of April.

Les Poilue arrive!

This is a mini project that I have begun in conjunction with a Great War project that clubmate Dan Hoyt began over the Christmas break. While he has focused on building a compliment of Canadians and Germans, I decided to take a different route and started working on a contingent of French. While there are quite a few wargaming blogs out there that cover the First World War, very few of them (unless my googlefu is weak) have even a few French models. After painting up my first squad, I can understand why. The Sky Blue of the French post 1915 uniforms is rather tricky to paint. Unlike the Commonwealth and German uniforms, which can be easily done via the appropriately colored primer, the Sky Blue takes a good deal of mixing to get just the right color. I think I have accomplished this with the use of the Army Painter Navy blue primer, three different custom mixed shades of blue and the Army Painter dip method.






These figures are from Old Glories WW1 range. The first squad to make it of my painting racks is 11 strong with a 2Lt. as the demi-section commander. It still lacks a rifleman with V.B. (grenade launcher) which should be arriving in a pack of grenadiers in a few weeks.

The plan is to begin with painting up a Demi-Section or sort of half-platoon. The French organization for a platoon differed from those of the other combatants and is closer to what the German Zug was in 1913-1914. A full platoon (known as a Section) was on paper 83-84 personnel strong, with a demi-section being closer to what a British / Canadian platoon looked like. I will be using the organizational chart for the 1916 to pre-mutiny 1917 French cosmopolitan army. Breaking down a demi-section further, we find that there is four squads, two rifle squads of 12 and 13 men respectively with each squad having two men carrying rifles equipped with V.B.'s or grenade launchers. There is also one 7 men HMG section and one 8 man Bomber / Trench fighter section. In total, with the added command, a demi-section will have ~42 men.