"Recommendations for 28mm WW2 French Infantry" Topic

Hi Folks
Can anyone provide recommendations for 28mm WW2 French Infantry?
Thanks in advance.
Cheers

Scott

What are the desiderata? And, I presume you mean Metropolitan troops, as opposed to Colonial?

For accuracy of equipment you can't beat Warlord Games: link

I also like the Crusader line, but they are sculpted with the mle 15 Adrian helmet: link The Chatellrault gunners are nice, but the #2s should be pistol-armed, of course.

Battle Honors do French both with the MAS 36 and Berthier. They're good sculpts, but might need a little fixing up: link

BH puzzlingly do the French 50mm mortar in their command packs which was not used in 1940 ( questmasters.us/weapons.html third down)

Crusader and Warlord/Bolt Action come to mind. I think they both make nice metal figs. Warlord is having an army builder sale, so you might want to look at that.

Artizan makes some Goumier and FFL figs.

Battle Honors makes French, but I have not seen them. Their Japanese figures are very nice.

Anything wrong with Warlord figures ? Whilst not keen on Bolt Action per se the figs look quite good to me and should be fairly easy to obtain.

It's a tricky thing to do the French properly. Bolt Action are the most complete out of the box in that you get the right weapons (pistol armed FM assistants and carbines for example). But not the right number of men for a rifle squad (should be 12). Also, I've never been a huge fan of those sculpts myself. But that's just me. Warlord also do the Lorraine 38L transport and Laffly truck so you can do those motorized and mechanized units. You will need to adjust the number of LMG teams or the number of men in the squads in that case, but it's doable by buying their individual models from their store.

I personally prefer the Battle Honors French. They have troops in the great coats with both types of rifles. They have the recon troops in the correct helmet and uniform. They have Chasseurs Alpins, and a pack of Groupe Franc which is kind of cool. However, you will have to do some extra work to get the right mix of men in the squads and weapons. There is no specific assistant gunner in their packs, so you will have to just fudge it and use a rifleman, or use the radioman model (snip off the radio) or a pistol armed NCO from the pack to be an assistant (after a head swap). It's not the best solution but you can get extra pistol armed models from the command pack too. Also, they don't have any VB rifle grenade cups for any of their models, so I had to make my own by snipping off extra Crusader minis VBs.

With that said, I also own Crusader minis French for my rifle platoon. As was said, no pistols for assistants, but still decent figs.

I think the BH French are really nice sculpts and their range is pretty extensive and for me, the extra work was worth it.

Here are some of my recon troops in the later model helmet (these are from back when I still hadn't had the correct mix of pistols so all my gunner assistants have rifles). They're also mislabeled as Dragons Portes in the BH catalog (they should be labeled Motorcycle recon).

link

Search the forums here for some really good discussions on 28mm French. Lots of very knowledgeable Francophiles on TMP in days gone by. I learned a lot from those guys.

Re. Battle Honors:

There is no specific assistant gunner in their packs

The Groupe Franc pack has a very nice pistol armed #2, and if you get the packs with the prone LMG figures, the #2s are correct.

basically, Warlord or Battle Honour, both ranges do the job …
( avoid the light mortar and boys ATR from Warlord, never issued to fighting troops ) .

My main concern with Warlord is this ing backpack . It's impossible to use them as motorized infantry .

Basically, the 12 men of the rifle squad is "regulation" …

in each case , you will have to use Crusader minis for your AT gun crews ( with the crusader 25mm ) or with the 47mm APX produced by Mad Bob or Neucraft Miniatures .

give a look to the french wargaming ressources : link in english :)

if you want to play later french ( both Vichy or Free French,) you'll have to use Perry Miniatures ones , the only decent range , army list comming soon

My main concern with Warlord is this Bleeping backpack . It's impossible to use them as motorized infantry.

Or cavalry. Sigh.

I'm thinking about getting one of those BH 75s that Pizzagrenadier linked to just for the crew to use with my 47mm guns.