From SylvainR: Tray 7 - French 1939-1940 - Recce, Pioneers, Weapon Company (60 points)

 

1. A New Project

 

Now that "NORTH AFRIKA I" is done, the next project on my plan is "EARLY EUROPE I", starting with the French army of 1939-1940.

Before the start of the challenge, I already completed an infantry battalion for the French army. The little soldiers were already painted and all I did was "re-basing" them. This gives me a good head-start on this new project. None of the units in this tray will count towards the Challenge.

When I say "re-basing", here is what I mean:

1. Most of the infantry units I am working with were based according to rules sets from the 1980s and 1990s, like "Firefly" or "Combined Arms", which means a squad consists of 2 teams of 4 rifles with a separate team for the light machine gun, as seen in the picture.  The current trend is to base 6mm infantry in squads. I usually remove the little guys from the base with an exacto knife before rebasing them, but...

2. ...but most of the French infantry were glued to their bases with some kind of very strong and hard epoxy glue. I would damage the soldiers if I tried to cut them out. So I had to glue the old bases as they were on to new bases from Warbase.

3. To mask the old bases, I used "ceramic stucco" (more on this later).

4. Then I painted the new bases and added flock while keeping the little soldiers intact.

I already mentioned that I inherited a huge collection of 6mm WW2 miniatures, some beautifully painted, some half done, some others still in their blisters. My goal is to finish all the unfinished projects and to update the existing units by putting them on bases. The bases have many purposes: Under each one, players can find the name of the tank, heavy weapon, or type of infantry. On top, there is characteristic terrain and color codes for ease of identification.

I want to give a new life to the collection by enhancing the good work of my friends with nice looking bases. Here are some of by draft attempts, with various essays of colors and flock. So far, my bases were for the Sahara desert, but now I had to create bases for European terrain. Let me show you how I made the European bases.

2. "Making of" 6mm infantry squads.

Since the challenge's theme, this year, is cinema, and since I have seen other participants explaining with great (and very interesting) details their painting methods, I thought I would do the same and present a "making of" on how I paint my 6mm infantry squads. Besides, I'm not getting any younger and I might need to refer to my painting recipe once I start loosing too many neurons because of old age...

First, miniatures are glued on to a base with contact glue. In this case, I want to create a squad of  French Pioneers in 1939-1940 and I am using for this purpose all sorts of leftover models. You will notice that each soldier has a pedestal, and these pedestals vary in thickness and width.

The first operation is to level the surface of the terrain with the use of filler. I call this "icing". When you have to fill in gaps between 9 little soldiers, it makes the task very un-glamorous and I need to stop and do something else after I have done 3 infantry bases. But "icing" terrain for tanks, support weapons and other vehicles is a totally different story.

The product I use was recommended to me by Curt years ago. It's very easy to spread and material sticks to it very well.

For "icing", I use a small plastic artist's spatula. To get in between the tiny soldiers, I created a tiny spatula by flattening and gluing together the bristles of a cheap brush with contact glue.

I use three different sizes of "rocks" on my bases, to create more variety of terrain. When you sprinkle sand or rocks, it is important to push the grains into the stucco and I use a bent spatula for that purpose.

Once the stucco is dry, usually after a day, I trim the excess with an exacto knife to have a clean edge. Otherwise, the bases might not fit perfectly in the tray.

The base is primed with diluted black acrylic paint. These tiny terrains have lots of little features and using a spray can would leave some areas unpainted. The great advantage of the liquid paint is that it gets into all the little cracks and crevices.

Once the black coat is dry, it's time for coat of water diluted "ocher" acrylic paint. It's important to get into the cracks and I also like to vary the amount of water I add to create more variety of tones on the terrain surface.

Then rocks are painted grey. I found that the color of natural rocks does not look "natural" at 6mm scale, so I paint them all.

Next step is to dry brush the whole surface with beige. This blends the rocks with the rest of the surface.

Now it's time to work on the little French guys. First, a coat of Khaki drab for the uniforms.

Then I paint the wooden part of the weapons in light brown.

Next, I paint the metal parts of the weapons with metal colors. Everything looks so sloppy when looking at a close up, but this is 6mm. What matters is the look of the whole company at the end.

Faces and hands are painted with flesh color.

Then helmets are painted.

Followed by the gears and back packs.

The contour is painted with a color identifying the nation. In this case, I used blue for France.

The color code for the squad is added. Orange means "pioneer/engineer company" for my armies, one dot means this element is part of the first platoon. Note that the dot bleeds on to the side. Originally, the coding colors were only on the contour, but it was not very visible to the players.

Flock is added, but I am careful to let the rocks peak through, as well as some of the rougher terrain, as it makes the base more interesting to look at. I must have smeared some glue on one of the soldiers' head, it looks like foliage added to the helmet for camouflage.

The last step consists of adding some bushes. I tried different proportions of rocks, grass and bushes with the goal of achieving some kind of balance with all the elements on the base while avoiding a "too crowded" effect.

The territory of France is big and varied, so when came time to choose a typical "European" terrain, I opted for the "Ardennes", the forest through which the German army made it's big push in 1940. I also have fond memories of Balcony in the Forest, a novel by Julien Gracq taking place in the Ardennes in which the author tries to capture the strange and unique mood of the Phoney War. So this is the "Ardennes Pattern" that I will be using for my French army.

3. Submission for this week.

Finally, after a long and boring introduction, here is a tray of goodies I would like to submit for this week.

First, here is a weapon company to complement the battalion of Fusiliers-Voltigeurs, shown previously.

This is the command section. The "Capitaine" wears a kepi, a very unique coif that, in my opinion, did certainly attract Stukas with their bright red top, which would explain the quick downfall of the French army in June 1940.

The 16 heavy machine-guns are all made of resin; note the thick barrel. I don't what maker they are from. Weapon, servants and sand bags are one block of resin and I simply added some terrain all around.

The 81mm mortars and crew are one of those "clumping" teams from GHQ.

A 25mm anti-tank gun (SA-34), probably from CinC, with crew for Heroics & Ros.

Next is a company of pioneers for the French army. The "making of" section of this post was about this unit.

The command base features some supply trailers.

Here is a close-up on one of the pioneers sections.

Finally, a group of 4 recce teams, each with a crouching observer peaking through binoculars.

And a close-up on one of the bases.

Regarding the tally, things are complicated, as usual.

- Weapon Company

   - The MGs were already painted except for one team. 1x weapon + 2x men = 2 points

   - The mortars and crew were already painted.

   - Anti-tank guns. 2x weapons + 4x men = 4 points

- Pioneers

   - 85 men = 42.5 points

- Recce

   - 16 men = 8 points

TOTAL = 56.5 points

Thank you for taking a look!

Fantastic work on these Frenchmen Sylvain.  I really enjoyed your step by steps on the basing.Your finished teams really show the benefits of the time and effort invested.  I use similar techniques with 28s, including I think the same kitty litter rocks.  They look much bigger in 6mm but that fits the rough Ardennes terrain.

I've rounded your total up to a nicer number for the terraforming.  FYI, it helps your minion if you give a summary for the whole post and not just by company etc, as that's how the Spreadsheet of Doom wants me to enter the information.  You do not wish to displease the SSOD (or Big Julie is you're familiar with Guys and Dolls).  I make this a total of 107 foot figures @0.5 points and 3 weapons @ 1 point=56.5 points, rounded up to 60.