From SylvainR: Tray 12 - "Polish" 1939 - Infantry Battalion (110 points)

 

This week, I have a tray of Polish Infantry to complement my French Battalion. It's complicated, so you better sit down.

Because of the delays at Royal Mail, I have not yet received the stuff I ordered on December 12th from Heroics and Ros. So I can not complete my French army at this point in time because I need staff cars for the battalions HQs.

So I started working on the next project: Allies Minors, which is an umbrella designation for the Poles, Greeks, Norwegians, Dutches, Belgians, etc. My plan is to use the French army as a core to create these early European armies and then add units that are specific to each nations. The HQs will have little flags to identify the nations.

Polish squads (or sections) of 1939 had 19 soldiers. So instead of creating special rules to simulate this fact, I thought I could simply double the number of squads when the Poles are in play. This means that each of the "companies" you see in the tray will be added to a French company and voilà: a Polish company.

Polish companies have 3 platoons, so one of the French platoons will stay in the tray when I will transform them into Polish platoons. I will also leave in the tray the French "Capitaine" with a képi and replace him with a Polish "Kapitan" wearing a “rogatywka” garrison cap. Each platoon will also have an anti-tank rifle and a light mortar. The bases are practically identical. There were enough leftover French infantrymen to create another infantry battalion.

Here is a close up on a Polish "complement" to be added to a French platoon. This will bring the total to 7 elements per Polish platoon.

Here is a close up on an infantry element and a "weapon" element with one anti-tank rifle (wz.35) and one light mortar (wz. 36).

And a close up of the company HQ.

This will be my last entry for this year's challenge. Over the next months, I will be basing painted miniatures while putting aside unpainted miniatures for next year's challenge. So you will see more French and Polish 6mm minis next year. And maybe early German stuff along with elements for the BEF.

Points Tally:

There are 291 figures in this batch, but about 1/4 were painted already.

220 (6mm figures @1/2 point) = 110 points

 

Thank you for reading!

 

Clever boy reusing French as Poles!  The things that you can get away with at 6mm, although I do like swapping the out the Officer in kepi for the one in the Czapka.  A fine battalion of valiant Poles.  I have a soft spot for the Poles as they fought longer and harder than anyone but got the short end of just about every stick going.  I've been tempted with 20mm Chain of Command so I'll be interested in seeing your 6mm O Group (or whatever rules Curt lets you use) Poles in action. 

You are not alone with your mail issues, as I expect that this has caused me some issues and I expect that same is true for other Canadians.  

It’s been great watching this project unfold Sylvain, I know you put a lot of love into reworking your friends work.  Looking forward to seeing more and playing with your toys.