This week, I finished a battalion of Panzer Grenadiers for my desert project. About 10 months ago, I bought from Heroics and Ros some infantry minis (not knowing I would get a bunch more from my friend RobertR a few weeks later) and today they are finally painted and ready for battle!The units are organized for the "O Group" rules system, which I have read but not played yet. The rules require all infantry battalions to be about the same (3 companies of 3 platoons each with 3 squads/sections), with some rule adjustments for historical "square" companies (with 4 platoons) instead of actually fielding a 4th platoon. We'll see how it goes.
Before I show the miniatures in the tray, I just want to explain briefly a few choices I made. We played once a desert scenario with the Italian vs the British and the players commented that it was difficult to distinguish the units apart. In the photo above, from left to right, upper to lower row, there is a British section, an Italian section, a unit with just a base coat and a German section. All the desert stands start with the same base coat. To distinguish the belligerent nations, you can see that the edge of the bases are painted in different colors (beige, green, grey), but when looking at the units from above, the edges are not that evident. Thus, the British and Italian units don't seem that different, despite an additional color on the bases for the Italian. On the British bases, there is one dry brush of "yellow ochre" to represent the yellowish tone of the Sahara desert, while on the Italian bases, there is an additional dry brush layer of "bone" color. But this is still not enough. So I decided to enhance the contrast of the German units with their British and Italian counterparts in two ways:
1. First, the documentation I consulted show a wide variety of colors for D.A.K. uniforms, from light beige to medium khaki, all from reliable sources. I decided to go with the darker tones, to make the German infantry units contrast more with the British infantry.
2. Instead of a uniform texture for the bases, I added small "fields" of rocks and dry brushed the sand parts "yellow ochre" while the rocks were dry brushed with a "bone" color. The result is a bi-color pattern that you can see in the tray. I also put more vegetation on the German bases, hoping that these additional features will help better distinguish the belligerent nations.
As usual, in the tray, there is a lot of the same, so I am going to highlight only one element of each type of units. Above is a Company HQ for the 3rd company (Green). I decided to adopt a color code with dots to identify the units. The guy in the Kubelwagen (from GHQ) looks charred (napping for too long under the North African sun?), I don't know what happened with the picture, because in reality the colors are fine. The vehicle was painted by my friends before the challenge, so will not count in the points tally.
Since I had a good variety of figures, for the first platoon of each company, I chose all crouching or kneeling soldiers, suggesting the proximity of the enemy. That would be the stand on the right side in the picture. For the other two platoons, I used a combination of positions that includes standing soldiers, but made sure there were at least two LMG crew and one squad leader. There is also a mix of helmets and caps. When seeing a close up, I always remark so many imperfections in the paint job, but 6mm scale is about the general effect.
For support, here is an MG34 on its stand, and a 81 mm mortar. The support weapon base feels less crowded that the infantry base. They look like little dioramas.
Here is a view of the battalion commander stand. I made it before the start of the challenge since all the vehicles were already painted. The commander rides a Horch staff car and has at his disposal a radio truck and a Kubelwagen to send his aide-de-camp deliver urgent orders. All vehicles are from GHQ. The coding colors refers to the 3 regular companies plus a support/weapon company (yellow) that I hope to paint by next Monday. For points, we have:
27 infantry bases with 9 figures = 243 (121.5 points)
3 command bases with 4 figures = 12 (6 points)
18 support weapon bases with 3 figures = 54 (27 points for the figures +18 for the weapons=45 points)
Three vehicles (6 points)
Total = 309 figures, good for 155 179 points.
I did not count the MGs and mortars as "support weapons" because they do not compare in size to, let's say, a 105mm howitzer.
Thanks for reading!
First post of the year for me to minion and mon ami Sylvain. Your DAK bases are wonderful, each one it's own little diorama. Don't worry about close up inspections, use the two foot rule - Minnies are to be viewed on able from 2 feet away. They look bloody awesome in your photos but more pictures of individual bases would be nice.
I look forward to playing O Group with you. Neither the figure scale nor the rule scale is something I'm interested in doing my self but I am more than willing to indulge other gamers' wishes. I'm also interested in testing out your unit identification schemes with my elderly eyes.
Now for the fine details (always the rub). I gave you points for the 18 support weapon bases based on 3 crew @1/2 point and 1 crew served weapon @1 point. The points apply no matter how big or small the weapon. Also you didn't include the three vehicles on your command base.
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