Normandy 44 – Lair of the Lagomorph

Normandy Reinforcements

I’ve had a rather unplanned dip back into WW2 wargaming these last few weeks, and it’s resulted in quite a bit of model painting and building. This all started when I read Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson, one of those books I’d always meant to read, which sets half of its action in the WW2 years. This made me look into the new edition of Bolt Action which had been released since I last dipped my toes in the period, and also look into the other much talked about game for the era which is Chain of Command. Turns out Chain of Command had also just released its second edition, and having seen the game played on youtube in the past I was sufficiently interested to pick up a PDF of the rules from the publisher and start reading.

After reading the rules, I decided I really liked the look of Chain of Command (CoC) and I wanted to play it. Now CoC bases its armies on historical formations rather than the more Warhammer-like unit customisation Bolt Action offers. In Bolt Action, squads/sections have a minimum size, and extra models and special weapons are purchased to fill them out. The job of the list builder is to build a army that is functional and fits into the points limit. This often means under strength sections, as extra models get shaved off to upgrade another section to get an extra LMG etc. In CoC the platoon you select is as per historical records and there is little to no customisation available, so sections are full-strength, special weapons are as per historical kit out etc. This meant my Bolt Action armies were not quite playable in CoC and required a few more models to be painted to get there.

I started working on getting two of my armies up to scratch: my 2ème DB (i.e. my Free French Armoured Division), which needed (and still needs I’m not quite done!) quite a few more models to bring it up to a full strength Armoured Infantry Platoon, and my late war Germans who only needed a handful of models to make them into a Panzergrenadier platoon. I’m planning on making my North Africa forces CoC compliant but that requires a fair bit more work as they’re much smaller for now.

First up, my Free French needed a lot more officers (very important in CoC), so I picked up the Warlord Games US Army Platoon Commanders set which has the four models you see above, cast in their “Warlord Resin”. The models were all one piece and quite easy to clean up. The detail on them was quite nice and they were easy to paint (in my usual slightly speedy manner employed for historical models).

I also added a Browning .30cal team, also from Warlord (this one a metal set), and I also painted the remaining crew member of the Perry Miniatures mortar team I painted as part of my first batch of models for the army all the way back in 2022! Bolt Action tends to default to 3 crew for a lot of weapons (presumably for game balance), while CoC sticks to historical numbers, so the mortar should have 5 crew all up – which means I still need to make another crew at some stage!

I still need a few more models to get the army game ready, namely some regular infantry as well as a second Browning team. I’ll work on them soon so I can play a game!

As mentioned above I also painted a few more Germans to make that army ready to play, which meant painting two more MG42 gunners. I also painted up a medic model I had, this one not required by the game but is an available support option and I liked the model!

Finally, CoC is a pretty token intensive game, and I’ve been in a token-making mood recently (I made a whole batch of custom tokens for Netrunner recently and that kicked off something in me!) so I started making tokens for the game. Most of those aren’t ready to show so I’ll leave them for another post, but what I do have ready is what are called Patrol Markers and Jump-off Points in the game. These are used for a pre-game mini-game that determines the starting positions of both armies.

The patrol markers tend to be bigger (I went for 60mm diameter) and the jump-off points smaller (I went for 30mm). The patrol markers need to be able to be marked as locked so I made them double-sided with a locked side and an unlocked side. The translations are all mine so hopefully they’re right (I’m confident about the French one at least!).

These are made by 3D printing simple discs and (2D!) printing the designs on some self-adhesive photo paper. I made the designs in Affinity Designer (an Adobe Illustrator alternative that I heartily recommend). The only parts I didn’t make are the map of France (SVG from https://simplemaps.com/svg/country/fr) and the Airborne (From Wikimedia commons https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:British_Airborne_Units.svg). I made a set for all of my armies as I was enjoying myself quite a bit making these. Left to to right, top to bottom: Soviets (I don’t have any of these but my regular opponent does!), 8th Army, Afrika Korps, Germany, 2ème DB, British Airborne.

I look forward to giving the game a go, it looks like a really nice way to play the period. I’ve organised to have my interested in WW2 friends to come over for a game in the next month or so, so I’ll be doing some preparations for that until then. I’ll most likely be playing a practice game by myself beforehand to get across the rules properly so might turn that into a battle report for the blog.

Flames and Fences

AoS, Bolt Action, Terrain

A bit of a mix of things this post! After working on a few of my bigger projects these last few weeks I felt like a small palette cleanser (can’t remember where I first saw that pun, but it’s excellent at expressing what I mean!). This resulted in me putting together and painting a blister pack of german weapon teams and an old set of Warhammer fences.

The weapon teams as you can see are made up of a Panzershrek team and a flame-thrower team. Not much to write about in terms of painting as these are done in exactly the same way as my other Grenadiers, except the fire!

I had a bit of fun with that flame, trying to make sure to keep it as bright as possible. To that end I started with a pure white, that I slowly covered in yellows then oranges at the very tips. The glow effect on the soldier is done with a very light pass of orange through the airbrush, to tint the underlying colours rather than cover them entirely. I think the effect is pretty convincing, and looks pretty good even when not lit up properly (i.e. anywhere not under painting lights!) which I’m happy with.

While I was painting these I also tackled an older set of plastic terrain I’ve had for years, the old fences set for Warhammer (back in the square base era!). I spent way more time n these than I usually do on terrain, but they’re great models and were very fun to paint. The green mossy parts on the walls are done with AK enamel washes (Slimy Grime Light and Slimy Grime Dark). I’ve been wanting to try these for a while and this seemed like a great project for them. Really like the result so will definitely use them on other projects.

Anyway, those were two fun short projects that served as a nice filler while I impatiently wait for my next project to be delivered!

2ème DB – Vehicles

Bolt Action

Back this time with the other half of the army! The 2ème DB being an armoured division, it couldn’t go without some transports and armour support! I tried where possible to base these on real vehicles, although limitations in reference photos and the model kits meant I had to get a little creative in some places. I also had limited suitable decals for the division so did a lot of the marking painting by hand which was an interesting challenge! It looks a little rough in places but I just tell myself a lot of the originals were hand painted too so let’s say it’s appropriate! The divisional insigna is from decals by Company B, which I was glad to find as I was not looking forward to having to paint those by hand! The other decals are from the kits themselves.

My goal was to represent elements from the 9th company of the RMT (Régiment de Marche du Tchad), known as “La Nueve” due to the large proportion of spanish revolutionaries in it. The half-tracks are painted as elements of the 9th company and the M8 as part of the support company of the 3rd battalion (that the 9th is part of). The M10 tank destroyer is painted as the Siroco, part of the RBFM (Régiment Blindé de Fusillers Marins), a tank destroyer regiment crewed by gunners from the french navy.

Half-Tracks

The half-tracks of La Nueve were generally named after important events of the Spanish civil war, and the names you see above all appeared on half-tracks of the company. I read that the soldiers of the company were allowed to paint the spanish republican flag on their half tracks, and interpreted that as a replacement for the French flag usually found on the half-track doors, but I have no idea if that’s correct and if they were all consistent or not. After painting these I found a photo in one of my reference books that had the flag on the side of the bonnet instead of the door, so that may have been more correct, but I quite like the look of them on the doors so wasn’t too worried! These models are by Warlord Games/Italeri.

M8 HMC

“Porthos” I had no reference images of, but I had some from others of the division so took a gamble on what it might have looked like! Porthos, and as you might expect Aramis and Athos made up the M8s of the 3rd Battalion of the RMT and therefore presumably would have supported La Nueve.

The model is a resin and metal kit by Warlord Games.

M10 Tank Destroyer

Siroco is probably one of the more famous vehicles of the divisions, famous enough that this Rubicon Models kit came with decals for it! I still used the Company B emblem to keep everything unified, and still had to paint the tactical markings (the yellow Y over blue background) by hand as there were no decals for that in the kit.

The kit did not come with crew member models, so I took a spare Warlord Games US soldier model I had and built him to fit in the turret. Presumably the rest of the crew are down below for some reason! You’ll notice this crewman’s helmet has crossed red anchors instead of the yellow anchor present on all the others. This is the emblem of the RBFM.

Painting-wise, all these vehicles were done in the same manner:

Undercoat with Vallejo US Olive Drab primer
Basecoat non-green areas (stowage, crew etc.)
Paint on non-decal markings
Gloss Varnish
Decals
Gloss varnish
Oil wash all over with Abteiling 502 Dark Mud
Dot Abteilung 502 Copper Oxide Blue in random places
Wipe all that in a downwards manner with a brush wet in solvent to achieve the streaking effect
Apply thinned down Abteilung 502 Starship Filth in random-ish spots around vents and fuel caps
AK Wet Mud all over the tracks area
Matte Varnish all over

I thoroughly enjoyed painting these models, the Free French markings are quite cool looking and considering at the end of the day these are otherwise just plain green tanks make them stand out quite a bit from “regular” US or British versions of the same vehicles.

Anyway that concludes my foray into the 2ème DB for now! Not to say that I won’t be going back to them, there are many more vehicles of theirs I’d like to do up at some time in the future!

2ème DB – Infantry

Bolt Action

After a brief interlude in antiquity, back to World War 2 and Bolt Action, with an army that’s been in the works for a while but never got finished, my take on the 2ème Division Blindée, or Division Leclerc for some, an armoured division of American-equipped Free French troops.

If you read the previous post on the army you’ll realise that these don’t match those very well, and indeed I had a change of heart with regards to their colour, taking inspiration from the very good videos by Sonic Sledgehammer over on YouTube. From that original post, the bazooka team and the mortar team were repainted to match the newer scheme.

The infantry in the photo above are all I’ll need for the 1000pt army list I devised for the army. To follow on are the vehicles. As these are for an armoured division, I have half tracks for all of the squads and some tank support as well.

First up, we have a lieutenant and bodyguard, both armed with Thompsons.

A ten-man rifle squad, with BAR and NCO with Thompson.

A nine-man rifle squad, with BAR and NCO with Thompson.

A six-man mortar squad, most of the time I envision the mortar team splitting off from the rest of the squad who will be manning the machine guns on the half-track.

A bazooka team.

You might have noticed yellow anchors on the helmets of the non-netting covered helmets, and blue patches on most of the jackets. The Osprey book I have on the division has them marking their helmets with a yellow anchor, symbol of French colonial troops. I found a photo of American helmets painted with the same anchor (although in use by other French troops).

https://www.parismuseescollections.paris.fr/fr/musee-jean-moulin/oeuvres/insigne-de-la-2eme-division-blindee#infos-principales

The blue mark represents a pin with the emblem of the division often worn by the troops. Both of these I added to make them look a little bit different to regular American soldiers!

I also tried to vary the skin tones I used, as the division had many soldiers from North Africa in its ranks as well as Republican Spaniards that had fled after the civil war.

These were a lot of fun to paint, I found myself quite motivated when I started a got through all of them 5 models at a time, which wound up being a nice batch size. The basing was a bit of fun too, I found these packs of tufts by Vallejo at my local game store and got 4 different types that I randomly scattered on the bases. I found the result looked quite swampy so I added puddles with a product by AK called … “Puddles”! They worked out nicely I think so I’ll be using that on other models.

Unless I get wildly distracted (which is a very real risk let’s be honest!) the next post should be the vehicles to match the army.

In the meantime however, this is not the end of this post! A few weeks back I played a 2000 point game of Bolt Action with some friends and thought I’d share photos. The game had a small force of Germans backed by a couple of Tigers take on a coalition of Russians and British Paratroopers, a very historical scenario as you might imagine.

The game was played on the Normandy board I’ve been working on for a while, you can see the layout above.

The allies ended up taking the win, the game ending with just the two Tigers left on the german side, Although as you saw above, one of them ended up at point blank range of the IS-2, so who knows how that would have gone!

Road to 1000pts… and more!

Bolt Action

After typing up the last post, I did a quick tally of the points I’d painted for my Bolt Action army and found that I was pretty close to finishing 1000 points. All I needed was to paint up the Pak 40 and 120mm mortar teams. With that milestone so close, I decided to just go for it!

I really enjoyed painting both of these, the models are quite characterful and form this nice little vignette. The base for the Pak 40 was cut out of plasticard, as the round base provided was really too small.

*Here’s the army in the current configuration I’m thinking of for 1000 pt games*

After finishing these models, I realised that painting up another lieutenant model would let me fit in more of the tanks I’d painted a while back (In regular games of Bolt Action, you can add 1 tank per reinforced platoon, adding another lieutenant would let me split the infantry sections from my base list into two of these, giving me one more tank allowed). If I made these two tanks Tiger Is, the list would come really close to 2000pts (Tigers are veeery expensive, especially if crewed by veterans). I floated the idea of playing a game with these to some friends and they came back asking to play tomorrow! So I quickly painted up the second lieutenant this morning, ready for the game! He’s a little rough around the edges, but needs must!

Here’s the army at 2000pts:

As you can see, it’s not much bigger, just has larger cats!

I’m looking forward to this game, which will see this german army facing my 1000pts of 6th Airborne allied with 1000pts of late war russians! Might have to think a bit to make up a plausible explanation for how that scenario occurred!

German Reinforcements

Bolt Action

I love listening to audiobooks while I paint, and have mostly listened to books about WW2 recently, which always pushes me to paint more models from the period. Recenty I listened to “Killing the Bismark” by Ian Ballantyne, which was a fantastic account of the hunt for Bismark by the Royal Navy, mostly old from the perspective of that navy through accounts of those who were there. That definitely has me considering naval wargaming!

Following on from that, I’ve been listening to James Holland’s “Brothers in Arms”, an account of the Sherwood Rangers’ participation in the later years of the war, again told from a very personal level through accounts of men of the regiment. I’m not all the way through it yet (so far it has been excellent!), but the early chapters cover Normandy on and after D-Day which has motivated me to paint more of my Normandy armies (and also consider buying Shermans…).

So here is the next batch of Germans for the late war army I’ve been putting together, with first up an officer and forward observation officer

The officer model I found really fun, he looks right out of Indiana Jones or another pulpy movie with the round glasses and the luger.

The observer I’ll either use as an artillery/air observer, or as a spotter for the mortar I still have to build and paint.

*I had fun painting the reflection in the glasses so here’s a close-up!*

Both models are from Warlord Games.

Next up are opponents that regularly show up in “Brothers in Arms”: the SS.

Last post on the army I made the comment about how I felt conflicted with painting an army of real world villains (thanks to everyone who commented by the way, I feel like some really positive and constructive discussions were had on the topic). If there was any unit to have misgivings about painting, here they are.

This camouflage pattern was a lot of work! I can see why display painters are drawn to it, and army painters dread it! My hands were cramping up after repeatedly dotting these 10 models. I used Vallejo German Camo Medium Brown, Vallejo German Camo Dark Green, and Vallejo Gobin Green for the pattern. As a reference I used an illustration in a very useful book I have on WW2 uniforms.

I plan on running these models in one of three ways: as a 10-man section, as two 5-man sections with an MG each, or two 5-man sections with MGs and assault rifles split up.

The MG models are some older Warlord Games metal models, which have one of the team members acting as a mobile tripod. I saw photos where this tripod-man was facing either way so I built the teams to have that man face both directions to add a bit of variation in what are otherwise identical poses. The rest of the models are from Warlord’s fairly new SS set.

This mostly leaves weapons teams to fill out the rest of the army as I currently plan on fielding it. Something like a couple of MG teams (with real tripods this time), an anti-tank gun, and a mortar team. I have quite a few more models in the collection, so most likely these plans will change, we will see!

Grenadiers

Bolt Action

The WW2 bug is still very much around and I’ve now started painting the infantry in the German collection that was given to me. Starting with the Grenadiers, from Warlord Games’ plastic kit line.

I have 2 squads of these in the 1000pt list I’ve written up, both imaginatively armed in the exact same manner! 8 men, two as an MG team, one with Panzerfaust, and the rest with rifles.

I painted these using Duncan Rhodes’ guide, following the steps exactly up until some of the more detailed highlights that I skipped.

These were based with more base ready materials, this time the Scrublands mix. I think it looks quite nice, especially given the low amount of effort required!

I’ve been on a bit of a journey with these models, building and painting models that are evil in fantasy and sci-fi settings is one thing, but these are miniature representations of an organisation that caused harm in an unprecedented scaled to real people. I’ve had serious misgivings about painting and posting about this army, but at the end of the day I think historical wargaming can have a positive role in helping us and others keep in mind what happened in the past.

This is a bit more of a serious tone than usual on the blog, but I did want to address this as I think it’s important. I’ll probably talk some more about all this when I get to the troops of a more political nature…