I am not feeling painting at all lately, but I continue to pick sections to read in Tony Bath's and Henry Hyde's campaign books. I am enjoying the process of coming up with campaign rules for North Pole '42 (they need to be absolutely simple as I cannot be bothered with extensive record keeping - I'm leaning towards something like wilderness travel in Basic/Expert D&D) and also thinking about how I want to approach the Italian invasion (attempted invasion?) of France in June, 1940.
Oh and I'm having fun coming up with a map, city names, personality names, etc. for a simple campaign between my lizard folk and my medieval Deetail figures.
However, one glaring point came to the fore in all of this, and that was my lack of LMGs and HMGs for France and Italy. To the interwebz! Specifically BrickWarriors.com
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| The French are outfitted with outdated, yet distinctly French, Chauchat LMGs, The HMG is difficult to place (for me) but I'll assume it's also outdated. |
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| Nobody seems to sell a minifigure Italian HMG/MMG, so this US one will have to do. The Italian LMGs look the part, but I don't know what model they represent. |
You might notice I don't know a whole lot about the equipment of either army. That's intentional. The more I know about a period, the less I enjoy games played in it, unless the rules factor in the things I know. This way I can be happy with rules that just feel right, without my usual worrying obsessing about if they are accurate reflections of the material I've read/watched.
Idiosyncratic? Probably.
Both sides had their first outing with the new kit last night (no pictures, sorry, part of my policy to play more games without thinking about blog posts).
The Italians - a platoon of three 5-man squads, 1 mortar and an L3 - attacked a French village defended by two squads, a medium howitzer, and HMG. The French ultimately were overrun. Rules used were 1BC Toy Soldiers mostly as written.
One of the various Hotchkiss MGs possibly? Anyway it looks good.
ReplyDeleteThank you, Ross!
DeleteIf I tell you the origin of the French HMG I hope I don't ruin your gaming fun. It's a Hotchkiss M1897, M1900, M1908 or M1914 as they were all very similar with only minor differences. -And you're right; for WWII it was outdated, but I know it was in use by the French resistance during WWII. This was also the first HMG the Norwegian Army got back in 1905 when it armed for breaking the forced union with Sweden.
ReplyDeleteThe Italian LMG is a Breda 30.
Thank you, Roger! I can just squint and pretend they are correct :D Fascinating bit about the French HMG and the Resistance (I may need some minifigures for that!) and the Norwegian Army.
DeleteNice "little" update John! These figures are really starting to grow on me. I never realized there was such variety and they have a charming quality about them!
ReplyDeleteThanks Brad! The facial expressions really help individualize identical torso/leg combos. I have another 20 or so heads with various bandages and wounds for some grizzled veterans!
DeleteThe fact that these figures arrive "pret a jouer", straight out of the box, is very rewarding
ReplyDeleteAs someone with a love/hate relationship with painting (I had virtually no painted solider figures as a child - just various shades of green "army men" and an occasional gray one, and red, yellow, green and blue cowboys and Native Americans, until I started buying Tamiya 1/35 boxes), their "toy-ness" makes my happy.
DeleteFun stuff, John. ETSY and other 3-D printing sources have been some help in finding certain wargame items. Presently, I'm working on Spanish Civil War [my equivalent of your Italo-Austrian WWI project!] and am trying hard to let it be fun and not worry / obsessing overmuch about historical details. As I'm basing figs individually, and uniforms were often a "beg/borrow/steal what you can" situation, I will feel free to mix and match my squads. But, yeah, where's the fun / history balance sweet spot?? Something to think about...
ReplyDeleteDon't think I've heard of the 1BC Toy Soldiers rules...
Thanks, Alex. 1BC is ancient (in Internet terms) - http://www.alliancemartialarts.com/1BCToySoldiers.pdf
DeleteIt's one of the first sets of rules I encountered when I started wargaming in the early 2000s. It's simple, infantry only, but I regularly enjoy it especially with some of the optional rules it includes - that said, the lack of SMG is weird but you can easily house-rule that. Vehicles can be added - Roger (commented above) has used FUBAR to provide them, and I use GASLIGHT vehicle rules modified to use the 1BC "to hit" values.
I find the hard part about balancing history / fun is that I'm not great at setting aside what I've come to learn about a conflict when the playing starts. It explains in some way, I think, why generic fantasy and sci-fi (admittedly with 40K models, but I don't know anything about the lore, that's my son's wheelhouse) have been appealing to me more and more lately.
Whoa, nice figures. I'll have to look into those.
ReplyDeleteI can agree with the "game without blogging at the same time" thing. I've found it slows the game too much and makes it less enjoyable if I'm constantly snapping pictures and making notes.
Thanks for commenting, Jennifer! I get so much joy just looking at these figures. If you want Germans and US they are easy and inexpensive to come by on Amazon, Etsy, and Ebay. If you want anyone else, it's a bit harder, but they are out there. There are some very expensive customs available too, but those are too rich for my blood.
DeleteA long, long time ago, I used to have LiveJournal, and there came a point where every event I went to started to become a post while I was supposed to be enjoying it. Gaming had become that as well and I felt like it was time to regain the fun.