The Christmas Bounty Arrives: Italian Front Acquisitions

Because, like many of my fellow war gamers, my hobbies are rather, shall we say particular, my family typically gifts me money for holidays, with the instruction to spend it as I see fit (though, not to be used for practical things. My mother is quite clear about that.) I decided to parlay it this year into a round of collecting for my WWI Italian Front project. (please disregard that I'm a year behind on my plan!)

The first to arrive:

The eyes freak me out.

These figures, acquired on eBay, were painted by a previous owner and I will be repainting them in my particular style (and in my preferred colors) when I finally get started painting this project. I had them in my watch list for ages and the price dropped like a rock so I snagged them.

They will be used to represent the arditi (grenades and knives being their favored weapons). They are from an out-of-production Dulcop set that includes alpini and bersaglieri. Ross Mac first alerted me to the existence of the Dulcop set a few years ago now, and I have been watching for them to come up for  reasonable price on eBay since! 

Both sides are getting machine guns in the form of 1/35 plastic kits. While I would have preferred to use the Irregular 1/32 sets (the German MG team can easily make a passable late war Austro-Hungry MG team), the cost of shipping made the plastic ICM kits more manageable for my wallet.

Peppermint inspects the troops

They will be under scale, but I do this with my WWII figures and it doesn't bother me in-game or even in pictures. It only bothers me theoretically. 

The Italians don't have their own specific model kit, sadly. So, I will begin with a 1/35 ICM British Vickers team that I will give Adrian style helmets and maybe swap the Vickers for a Fiat-Revelli  (both the helmets and mg courtesy of ICM's set of Italian accessories). Despite an estimated arrival time of late February, they arrived yesterday!

In keeping with the toy-soldier nature of my games, rather than worry about correct artillery, I've decided to go with Britain's guns. There are two different models pictured below with Armies in Plastic figures.

Although they aren't identical, I like the idea of different caliber guns. Now, it's just a matter of which models come up the cheapest on eBay..

At this point, I'm collecting forces to meet the One Hour Wargames Machine Age organization, replacing Cavalry with Assault Troops (sturmtruppen and arditi)- 3 infantry figures per unit initially - making them useful for The Portable Wargame, OHW, and similar. Like my colonial figures, they will be individually based, allowing me to play a variety of rules with the same figures..

Taking another of Ross's suggestions, I opted to go in on two Wings of Glory planes. The Italians are the first to equip with a Macchi M.5 flying boat: 

I really love the pre-painted models. Detail I could never replicate.

If I find I enjoy air miniatures games (I have two air board games that I enjoy: Battle Over Britain from Minden Games and GMT's Enemy Coast Ahead starter scenarios), then I can always acquire more of the planes. Since it isn't likely, for now, to be more than a side show, the pre-painted Wings of Glory planes are more than worth the time saved not having to paint them

Finally, because I stumbled on this article about WWI Italian combined operations, I ordered a copy of The Battle of the Otranto Straits: Controlling the Gateway to the Adriatic. Combined with inspiration provided by Archduke Piccolo's lovely ships , I have an itch to try some naval miniatures gaming as well - although I will probably go with commercially available miniatures, rather than attempting to build my own. I know painting is involved, but a coat of grey seems do-able.

Unfortunately, I noticed this morning that the post office tried to deliver my book to some unknown ZIP code, which I can only assume is either a handwriting issue of the seller, or a mistake at the post office - eBay shows the correct ZIP, and clearly, quite a few things have been delivered to me successfully. Hopefully, I can get this resolved - it was a nice copy at a good price.