WW1 'Mid to Late war' British

These really nice figures are actually sold by Hat Industrie as World War I Canadians, but as far as I can tell any difference between the British and Canadian uniforms were absolutely minimal, and as there are only one other set of WW1 British with the helmets issued from 1916 onwards, they perhaps the best available.

I really like them, and much as having painted up a whole force of WW1 French, I have another army already to face off against my mid-late war Germans, it just didn't seem right not to be able to put on the Somme, Ypres and all the other charateristic battles of WW1 with British Tommies.

These figures don't get a great write up on Plastic Soldier Review, but I really, really like these figures. I think the poses are great and they are a nice 'large' figure in this scale, which go well with the Revell Germans.

The paint job isn't completely finished. I will probably give flesh, straps and packs a brown wash, and I'm umming and ahhing about whether to give all the uniforms a highlight before varnishing and terraining the bases, but I think they look pretty good as they are.

I have just short of 120 rifleman anf officers painted up. I just have the heavy weapons (machine guns, Lewis guns and mortars) and some command bases to make up. That should be plenty for a game with either Contemptible Little Armies or GW's 'Great War.... ....so as soon as they are done, it'll be 'Over the Top'...

Catching up on things completed in 2011: WW1 French

I had not really expected to make a French army my next choice to paint up for WW1 but a couple of things conspired to move it up the list. The first was I noticed that Hat had discontinued its WW1 ex-Airfix figures, maybe because Airix were manufacturing them again and had presumably withdrawn its licence. The thing was I could still buy the Hat figures for £3.50 a box but the new Airfix re-issues were over £5. So it made sense to grap those I could while they were still around. The WW1 British had sold out everywhere already, so I decided to grap four boxes of WW1 French while I still could. Second, I bought some Hat Canadians to use as WW1 Mid-Late War British, but found there were so many heavy weapons crew in the box, that my 90 figure box yielded only 50 odd riflemen, so I'd need to get another box.

So there it was, I had a full force of French, only half a force of Brits, and a painted WW1 German army waiting for an opponent to get into action. So it seemed like a good plan to crack on with the French.

The French began the war with a bright uniform of blue coat and red trousers and kepi, but like all the armies in this war switched to more modern 'drab' uniforms and metal helmets during the course of the war. The French were the first to do this, and adopted the paler, drabber 'Horizon Blue' and the Adrian helmet by early 1915 and continued to wear this uniform throughout the war.

I mix all my our colours and getting the right shade for the 'Horizon Blue' uniform proved tricky. I thought I had the perfect match with an actual coat pictured on the internet, but when applied to a 20mm figure it looked too 'blue', especially after I'd applied a wash for shading. So I went over and dry brushed them with a grey shade. I kept looking at reference works and uniform websites for guidance, but it was pretty clear that there was so variation in the degree of 'fade' that you'd expect. So I think I didn't do too badly in getting a compromise.

The Adrian helmet was initially issued in a shiny light blue, which proved a liability to snipers, which led many soldiers to cover them with sandbag cloth covers. These in turn proved a liability as they got dirty and a source of infection when soldiers suffered head wounds, so they were discouraged and a darker blue dull helmet was issued later in the war. I thought this offered a good chance to work in a bit of subtle unit identification, so painted my figures in all three styles.

The French also replaced their backpacks during the course of the war. I painted most with this khaki canvass issue backpack. ...but I also did some with the earlier issue brown leather backpack which originally went with the dark blue uniforms but some units retained, again to help with a bit of subtle unit identification. WW1 saw huge mass actions, so you want to put a fair number of figures on the table, so far I've painted up 140 figures based as my later war Germans on 2p coins which I think looks much better than the 1p coins I started using for this period. For either a Contemptible Little Armies game -where this would give me close to 10 'units (units can represent anything you want from a platoon through to a bridgade in those rules)-or GW's Great War, where I would easily have a battalion (for these rules deploy 12 odd figures for a 'platoon'), this is plenty.

Shots above and below show they do a reasonably good job of filling a table with a couple of 'waves', and would obviously fill an even longer 'trenchline'. I suppose I could do more, but you have to draw the line somewhere as ultimately things like having time to paint other things and space to store them comes into play!For now I've got them snuggly fitting in two of my plastic A4 storage boxes. I still have a few figures to finish off, including a Hat set of French artillery to start, but all the basics are done.

The Hat/Airfix set has loads of special figures in it, buglers, flag bearers, dead figures, wounded figures, figures on bicycles, figures with spades, figures carrying sacks, figures with telescopes, a figure with a basket and a carrier pidgeon! All great to have, and the figures with a telescope and carrier pidgeons handy for HQ stands. It does cut into the number of straight riflemen, so I needed the four boxes. There are no figures much use for high ranking officers, so I'm still pondering if I should convert an officer figure from the Airfix German set. The biggest weakness though is that THERE ARE NO MACHINE GUNS!!!! For WW1?

This would be a major pain but as luck would have it, Pegasus has just released a WW1 French set which is packed with machine guns. So next time I send in my order to Model Hobbies, I guess I will be adding a pack of these.

WW1 Late War German Army

Steve started me off on this period, and the prospect of a game encouraged me to paint up a box of WW1 Airfix Germans and Yanks I have had lying at the back of the cupboard for absolutely ages. In fact in my infant years I had all the Airfix WW1 sets, which never saw a lick of paint, so it was to see what they looked like painted after all these years . The experience, coming after a few weeks of plowing through rank after rank of Napoleonics, which I never ever seem to finish, made me realise a WW1 army could be a 'quick win'. It shares with WW2 the much easier uniforms to paint, but without all the 'kit' ie.vehicles, which at times can make filling a WW2 order of battle quite a difficult and expensive task. I turned out each box of WW1 Airfix in about an evening each, so WW1 armies looked a 'quick win' and a potentially knocking out another WW1 army from time to time will be a bit of light relief from bigger projects.

So enthused was I with the period after a brilliant game with GW's 'Great War', mainly with Steve's Airfix WW1 Germans and Brits painted as Russians, that my next purchase was enough figures for 4 WW1 armies.

As Steve had early war, I thought I'd concentrate on painting late war first, though I my purchases included figs to expand on my Airfix Huns, too. I bought Brits and Germans to match up for the late war period. But I also snapped up some Hat (re-issues of Airfix) WW1 French which are now OOP and selling out and a lot cheaper than Airfix which have started manufacturing them again themselves. The French dropped their early war uniforms earlier than the other armies, and so when painted would give me a post-1914 French army to fight both early and late war Germans (in fact for Verdun and other 1915 battles you can use both early and late German figures, as units new arrivals had the new steel helmets, where as older units had the original 'picklehaubs').

I initially based up my early war Germans on 1p pieces, but changed my mind with these and went for 2p coins instead. Despite needing more storage space, I'm glad I did. They look much better on the tabletop, and I'll probably stick the Early War Germans I've based already straight on top of 2p coins and terrain with sand, too. The extra height won't do any harm. For my Napoleonic skirmish set that I started on 2p coins, but switched back to 1p coins for line infantry- so I could get them in close formation- but these WW1 figs look fine on 2p coins as infantry were increasingly fighting in looser formations by this period.

The figures are Revell, and I'm not sure my snaps do justice to them. They are nice figures, towards the larger end of 20mm figures, size-wise, with a lot of good poses. The key feature is the steel helmet first issued in 1915. To aid unit identification I have painted some helmets in grey, some in camo as shown below, and some in brown which was also a common colour that they were issued in.

Close-up of a couple with 'camo' helmets:
Close-up of a trio in brown helmets:

Two boxes of Revell gave me 70 riflemen, and ideally I'll add another box, but there's no rush as their first outing will most likely against the French and I have the box of Early War figs painted earlier to supplement them. I need to paint up the MGs, but having also finished a bigger French force, I'm taking a little break from WW1 again.

The officers in the set look like junior officers leading the attack, but as senior officers/generals often retained the 'picklehaub', the command figures from the Airfix set are fine to use for the battalion commanders you need for GW's great war rules, or the 'staff officers' you use in 'Contemptible Little Armies'.

I would also in future like to add some artillery, probably the Hat set, and at some stage some aircraft and maybe an AV7 tank! Either way a good start for now, and expandable over time.

To finish here's a snap of the whole lot, barring a handful I discovered had flaked before varnishing, and are back on the workbench to touch up.