WWI Hobby Updates as Opposed to Updates on the Actual Event Which Ended a Long Time Ago

In between near constant D&D with my son (or that's what it seems like - we play a lot now. We just played four days in a row thanks to the Labor Day holiday weekend), I have been assembling and painting my WWI Germans to pit against my French. 

They are ICM WWI German Assault Troops in 1/35. As with Legos, I've discovered I enjoy putting figures together. Not painting them so much,but assembling them is relaxing.

To accompany the additional troops, I thought it was a good time to paint up another monster. I grabbed one from my plastic and lead pile (this one is metal!)

I have no idea who makes this figure - it was given to me six or seven years ago.

It has a very Ray Harryhausen look to it. I've painted it to the Games Workshop table-top ready standard. That is, base coats, wash, second base coat. I didn't do any highlighting on it. 

 

I have a second similar one on the paint table that is even more Hasrryhausen-esque.

 

I'm fairly certain this, and it's unpainted fellow, is intended for 28mm/Heroic 28mm use, but it works great with 1/35. Incidentally, this seems to be true of a lot of monster figures - they work as human-sized or slightly larger than human-sized in 1/35. They tend to be a little short compared to 1/32 to be intimidating unless there is a horde of them  (like my 28mm lizards).

In addition to painting, I've been playing lots of test games - having returned my WWI figures back to single-figure basing but still trying to reduce the playing surface - 24" square or 24" x 36"-ish playing areas. The rationale for the small area is that WWI units are more compact than WWII generally. A company in WWI has roughly the frontage of a platoon in WWII. I'm also not super interested in maneuver on the table - I can handle that off table on a map (any excuse to make a map is a good excuse)

For rules, I've been trying:

• Bayonets & Spades, a fan-made variant for Bolt Action 2nd edition, which you need as well to make use of the variant.
• Contemptible Little Armies 3rd edition (CLA going forward), 
• H.M.G. (by Agema). 

The scenario I have been playing is pretty small for any of those sets - a single unit of Austrian infantry and an MG hold a trench against an Italian assault of three units. Simple as it is, I enjoy it every time.

A turn or two into a Bolt Action WWI game. Both sides have suffered some losses. This is the first time I have added craters to no-man's land. They provide "soft" cover.

The unit sizes vary based on the rules. 

 

The Austrians use 10-figures in Bolt Action as the minimum for a section and nine figures for H.M.G. as a company. I use 10 for CLA  but it's not prescribed by the rules nor do the rules prescribe what the units represent - based on my research, 10-12 figures is pretty typical to represent everything from a section on up, with company and battalion being prevalent.

 

The Italians use 8 figures in Bold Action and H.M.G., for a section and company respectively, The minimum Italian section in Bolt Action is 5 figures for all but Arditi, who require 3 figures -I chose 8 because it looked better to my eyes and matches H.M.G. Speaking of, in H.M.G., 8 figures is a Bersaglieri company, a regular infantry company has 15 figures. Again I chose10 in CLA - for the same reason as I chose 10 for the Austrians.

Caught up in the action up close! Bolt Action again.

Similar moment from a CLA game.

CLA again, just because I love the coronet! (It looks to me like it has valves, making it not a bugle)

There are good things about each set of rules.

Worse, I enjoyed all of them! What a terrible poblem to have. 

I guess I'll just have to play more games.

Weird World War I : Are You Afraid of the Dark?

 Western Front.

A French patrol crosses No-Man's Land on a moonlit night to investigate a suddenly silent section of German trench

 

 

 

They meet no resistance on entering. No signs of anyone.

Cautiously, they navigate the twists and turns of the trench, ever watchful for ambush.

A private expresses his disdain for this mission to the officer, who himself would rather not be there.

Meanwhile the others, unaware that they were just two, continued to advance.

Out of the darkness, a terrifying roar bellows from a hideous visage. Intent on satisfying its blood lust, it leaps upon the poor soldiers.

The other's race to catch up to their comrades and join the fight against the terror from the shadows.

The fight was over before it began.

*****

As those photos were taken this morning, the atmosphere is somewhat lost - here are some photos of the infantry that I took last night by kitchen light

I am pleased with the results - actually I can't believe I painted them. They have the look for this kind of game that I wanted them to have.

The "trench" is a proof of concept, literally slapped together while I waited for the figure bases to dry. Materials used: a cardboard box, a thick card mailer, a bamboo skewer, paint. I didn't measure anything and it shows, but I like the look none the less.

World War I Updates

I completed the second machine gun and crew for the Austro-Hungarians (I use the German mg and crew from Irregular Miniatures, with gasmask heads because gasmasks look cool) and with that, phase 1 of my WWI armies, for Austro-Hungary at least, is complete.

We'll call this a battalion of three 6-figure companies with a stormtrooper company in front,

I haven't decided if I'm keeping the Green Tea base color or not, hence the plain wood rounds.

Now obviously, when someone says something like "Phase 1"that implies a "Phase 2". Indeed, that is the case here. 

Of course, these phases, so-called, were derived after the fact, thus the labels are being retroactively applied.

Phase 1: 

• 18 infantry figures
•  6 assault troops
•  1 leader
•  2 machine guns with crews. 

The Italian gun and crew are in the queue and have jumped to the front:

Irregular Miniatures British HMG and crew, with Adrian helmeted heads from their Empire  Multi-parts range,

Phase 2:

For both sides: 

• 6 additional infantry figures (giving me 4 companies for my battalion, when using 6-figure units),
• 1 airplane

For the Italians: 

• 2 additional cavalry figures 
• 6 Alpini figures

Phase 3:

• 12 Germans
• 12 British 
• 1 German MG
• 1 British MG

"Now, hold on there, Jethro!", I hear you say.  "What's this about an airplane?" 

Well, I acquired a print copy of Contemptible Little Armies and I really like the way air support is included on the table. Before I could say "contact!", I had a 1/48 scale model whizzing through the mail to me:

The search for a suitable (i.e. cheap and not difficult to assemble) kit for Austro-Hungary continues. 

I haven't built a model plane in nearly 40 years. I'm a bit nervous about the painting. And I've always hated applying decals(I always tore them accidentally). The 1/48 scale should hopefully be easier for my all-thumbs-itude and my sketchy vision to deal with, at least.

Finally, also World War I, but on the weird side, I have assembled my 1/35 ICM French

They remind me of game pieces in this grey state.

Let me be clear, I love these figures. The poses are fantastic, the sculpting is crisp, and the figures very clean with no flash and minimal, easily removed, mold lines. HOWEVER, I doubt they will last more than a game or two, if they survive painting. 

Apparently, the difference between 1/35 and 1/32 is that in 1/35, bayonets are skinny little needles that break when you look at them wrong (both of those pictured are glued together somewhere in the middle of their length as a result). That the bolts on the rifles were a separate piece to be attached with glue defies all logic that I can muster.

At least I somehow managed to glue the bi-pod on the LMG the right way.

As I said, this is a Weird World War I project (and ICM is helping by suddenly releaseing a bunch of sets of figures in the attempts at armor made during the war). Weird means there needs to be something, well, weird. First up:

This is in-progress. I have yet to decide on how I'll finish i off

This is a hook horror from CP Models. It is intended as a larger than human-sized 28mm figure. But, I wrote to the proprietor and found out just how big.

I think it fits quite well with the 1/35 figures. It doesn't look bad next to my 1/32 HaT Spanish Infantry either (which are undersized). 

Painting for the entire Weird War I project is intended to be grittier than my usual glossy toy-soldiers to convey the weird aspect in visual form.

Oh and one last thing, I recently learned of Never Going Home, a WWWI RPG. Savage Worlds has its own Weird World War I books, which I will acquire eventually, but I managed to score the entire Never Going Home PDF collection via a Humble Bundle deal. Highly recommend if just for the evocative artwork!

WWI Project Updates

I love the look of gas masks, although wearing them maybe not so much (a band I was in once did live music for a theatrical production and were required to wear surplus gas masks while performing - it was hard to breath and seeing the guitar neck through the lenses was something else). I also happen to really like the French WWI horizon blue uniform and the gas mask they used for the majority of the war. 

It was probably inevitable, then, that in a moment of feeling sorry for myself for missing my friend's wedding due to Covid, I would order the ICM WW1 French in Gas Masks. 

They are 1:35 and ICM is small 1/35 in my opinion - based on comparing their Austrian and British machine gun teams with my 1/35 Soviet machine gun crew.  Clearly, they won't fit with the Armies and Plastic, Waterloo 1815, or Dulcop figures. 

That's OK. I have a plan.

I've really been enjoying the army building and background creating for my Venusian forces, I realized I wanted to do more fantasy-based themes. Fantasy role-playing games and world-building loom large in my personal gaming history. I also happen to be a fan of weird fiction (Lovecraft, Clark Ashton Smith, Algernon Blackwood, etc.) and the general ideas behind the various Mythos related role-playing games. It struck me that it would be fun to do something themed around that.

Weird World War II might be an obvious choice given my existing collection plus the Nazi occult themes, zombies or werewolves and sometimes mechs. However, I am really more interested in WWI generally speaking and I started this post talking about the ICM figures, so you have to know I'm leading up to their use!

Why not Weird World War I? 

I picture a handful of gas mask wearing infantry (the ICM figures!) heading into no-man's land, exploring mysteriously empty trenches, underground constructions of non-human origin, villages filled with low-hanging fog and no signs of life? Perhaps some slumbering Eldritch horrors have awakened due to the death and destruction sown upon the land? 

So, that's a new project that came out of nowhere - an RPG-light skirmish wargame.

I already have some horrors in mind - the lovely Hook Horror figures from CP Models. The proprietor, Mark, was kind enough to measure the figures for me. They come in around 50mm which is just about perfect.

FYI, the ICM figures come with two heads per figure, one with a gas mask and one without. Theoretically, you could buy two boxes of the gas mask figures to get an extra set of gas mask heads, then by a box of their French infantry without gas masks and gain a few more poses. 

I suspect I'll pick up some ICM British in gas masks as well, Germans too. Why should the French have all the "fun"?

In other WWI gaming news, I finished up my (for now) final base of Austro-Hungarian infantry and Italian infantry as well. They both now have six bases of regular infantry. The Austro-Hungarian force is done, save for a machine gun base that I need to purchase. The Italians need two bases of arditi (6 figures total) and a four cavalry figures painted up and another machine gun base as well.

Speaking of cavalry, here is the first head-swap to make Italian cavalry:

The body is an Armies in Plastic Egyptian lancer and the head is from a Dulcop arditi (the grenade throwing pose - the dagger pose has much too small a head). The head isn't a perfect fit but it's close enough. and is the best I had to work with. As much as it pained me to cut up a Dulcop figure, as was mentioned in the comments on the cavalry post, the AiP French heads are *way* too big to use for this purpose.

I'd be lying if I didn't note that I am already planning to acquire a box/bag each of Armies in Plastic WWI Germans for Caporetto, and the British for Asiago and Vittorio Venetto.