And of course I need to think of artillery...

Batterie Honneur de l'Artillerie
Uploaded by musee-artillerie

Ils sont ici!

I have been very much interested in gaming WW1 recently, and the only reasons I haven't been working on the French for a while was that I am working on a large terrain feature for games set in the Dolomites in the Italian campaign in 1917-18. Expect the 701st to be sent to Italy for service there!

The other reason is that I really like the Austro-Hungarians from Scarab Miniatures, and when they announced that they intended to do the French as I mentioned in my previous post, I really wanted to wait and see what they were like before continued much further with my Poilus.

Well, they are here, and I like what I see!

Most importantly, they do not have the khaki cover moulded on the helmets which is my biggest beef with the Brigade Games French. The cover was only worn for a short time during the Battle of Verdun where the shiny paint used on the early helmets was proving to be too visible. The khaki covers themselves were removed once new helmets with a non-reflective paint were issued, as the fabric was prone to cause infection in the event of any head wounds so the covers disappeared by 1917 at the very latest. Unfortunately, a large proportion of the Brigade Games models are wearing these so I was anxious to see if I could replace these particular figures with the Scarab offering.

I am scheduled to make another clandestine "raid" for gaming supplies sometime after the middle of April, and Scarab are high on the list of potential targets, as is a French MMG and grenadier pack from Brigade Games (modelled without the helmet covers, fortunately!).

A few words about terrain. What is a WW1 game without trenches and barbed wire? I recently received some modular trench pieces in plastic that I had ordered from Kallistra, which you can see in my other blog post here.

Another future buy is this- a 30' pack of barbed wire by Antenociti. I'll need a lot of this!