Thursday 12 September 2013

An Update

It's been a long time since I did an update but I haven't been idle. So far I've finished over 60 bases for my Normandy'44 campaign, the US infantry regiment is based, as is the supporting tank battalion and a large batch of anti-tank guns and artillery pieces are nearing completion (note to self painting 14 guns at once is easy, painting 14 crew sets isn't....).

One of the other things I have been doing is thinking about my overall wargaming plans and I've decided to:
1. Go back to using 1 base = 1 platoon, it just makes things a whole lot simpler when translating real world TO&E in to BKC format*.
2. Focus my energies on completing my WWII armies for BKCII.
3. Put anything post war on the back burner so to speak. To be honest I'm not really that interested in the post war period these days and it reduces the amount of models I need to paint from the ridiculous to the might be achievable with a bit of effort.
4. Finally sort some rules for the Zulu War and paint some more of the 1500+ figures I have.

*Exception: smaller companies (e.g. those with 10 tanks or low numbers of infantry) are represented by two stands (effectively a half company per stand).

The WWII armies I'm working on are:

1. German Panzer Division 1, June-July 1941.
2. German Infantry Division 352, June 1944.
3. German Panzer Division 6, August 1944.
4. Russian 3rd Tank Division, June-July 1941.
5. Russian 29th Tank Corps, August 1944.
6. US 1st Infantry Division, June 1944.

Each consists of at least a regiments worth of troops and a varied selection of supporting units based on what was historically available to each particular formation. The armies are all matched pairs so I can always play solo if I want. All are at least 60% complete.

I'm also toying with adding the following units (I have most of the models anyway but just didn't want to get too carried away to start with):

7. Russian 29th Tank Corps, July 1943 (Kursk).
8. German forces to take on No.7. Not sure what these would be at this point.
9. Russian Infantry Division - I'd probably build this to make it usable for any point in the war but would start off with a 1941 era division to take on No.10.
10. Romanian Cavalry Brigade, June 1941.

Thanks for reading.

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4 comments:

  1. Hi Richard

    Some interesting projects there. Would love to see the US Big Red One when it's done. I'd have to model the other assault division (29th Blue and Grey) for Omaha as it was commanded by my namesake and spent most of it's pre-D-day dispersal in Devon and Cornwall - as a boy I used to play in the overgrown dispersal areas in a local park.

    Cheers

    Andy

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  2. Hi Andy,

    I'll take some pictures of the completed bases later, we've got visitors this weekend so it may take some time. In the mean time I'll post the army list so you can see what I'm working towards.

    Cheers

    Richard

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  3. Cool, I'd like to see pictures as well. Especially how you do bases.

    Platoon size definitely takes up less room. And fewer models.

    Do you create infantry for all these units? At 6mm, I've thought I could share the infantry among some units because they wouldn't fight alongside each other. And my painting skills can't crank out different looking uniforms. Does this make any sense what I've typed here?

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    Replies
    1. Yes that does make sense and no I don't create infantry for all the units. I try where possible to create multi use infantry units so that, for example, the 1st Battalion Grenadier Regiment 915 can be given the appropriate halftracks to become the 1st Battalion Panzer Grenadier Regiment 114 (Panzer Division 6). The same applies to some of the artillery battalions. At the end of the day I couldn't see the point in creating duplicates when you don't need to.

      The majority of my bases are 30sq with 1 vehicle, 5 infantry or 1 support weapon (like the others you can see on some of my other posts), I couldn't face rebasing them to anything more fancy.

      Cheers

      Richard

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