Hold your manhoods cheap fellas: It's that 'Happy Few', that 'Band of Breth'ren', the 101st Airborne.
Since I'm getting into Chain of Command and looking for games with others (rather than just solo) I have expanded my forces to cover a broader range of battlefields and scenarios, including WW2 mid- to late-war. This was the perfect opportunity to actually finish painting up the last remaining miniatures from the Flames of War Open Fire! starter set I bought around ten years ago: the plastic US Paratrooper platoon. These had been the lowest priority in my Flames of War gaming all those years ago as I went first for Late War British and then Germans. American forces never really appealed to me for some reason, but it's time to give them a go and put these miniatures into action - to fulfil their destiny - their day of days - on the tabletop - and there I'll be with the mobile phone camera, to tell the story like a one-man HBO. (And yes I re-watched Band of Brothers to get ideas and paint schemes. I had originally painted those large American flag patches on the first guys but after some brief reading it seems there is no consensus on whether the 101st Airborne had the patches on D-Day. I left them off for simplicity.
I understand that Battlefront now has new plastic US paratroopers out, but I might as well use the miniatures I already have. Their rifle barrels are a bit fine and fragile but they are really nice models and were fun and fast to paint. The sprue is a few riflemen and mortar crew short of the platoon numbers in the Chain of Command rulebook, and I'm asking around the Flames of War community to see if I can get a few extras people don't want anymore. If I can't get any in time it's no big deal and anyway, when have paratroopers ever gone into combat at full strength? I'd assume probably never.
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| 1st Platoon, Easy Company, 506th PIR, 101st Airborne Division assembled for combat (or something like that). The discs with Screaming Eagles on them are the Jumping-off Points. |
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| Sweeping forward. |
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| The mortar has a '5' (representing number of crew) pasted under a bit of cellotape so I can write over it if they take casualties. The crew can also be removed too if it comes to that. |
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| S/SGT Teas and radio operator. |
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| "Why is there a fence here? There's not supposed to be a fence here." LT Rich Summers channelling the spirit of his former C.O. |
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| 2nd Squad, with SGT 'Stag' Crampton leading the men, at right. |
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| PVTs Wyatt and Lippman bring up the .30 cal to throw down some fire. |
Haha, "Summers", I get it. Love the scrim in the helmets and the general look of US airborne. Not a bad job at the 101 patch in 15mm! I think I can see the contrasting knee panels that signify the Normandy uniforms vs the Market Garden (where I think they generally just used M1943 trousers?) but some constructive criticism on otherwise better-than-I-could-do figures, maybe the panels could be a little longer or more squared off? One day I'll do late war US Army infantry for Remagen in 20mm. I like the look there too, shorter "jump boots" like the airborne and full green M1943 uniforms. AB actually released a decent set of late war US recently actually.
ReplyDeleteThanks man. I really liked painting this platoon, including doing a bit of light research on the unit in particular and US uniforms in general. I should also have used a darker green on the knee and elbow patches actually, as the difference is not very perceptible.
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