I too have a 6mm Italian force.
I started them as an "opposition" force for my large US and Soviet forces, as well as my smaller French force. I don't collect Germans, and as we all know if you want to actually put on a game, sometimes you have to be able to provide both sides for the scenario.
As I wanted my Italians to face off against both Americans and Russians, I painted and organized my infantry along Continental lines. This limits me to the latter stages of the fight in North Africa, when the Italians shipped over several new divisions (and regiments or even battalions without their full divisions) without taking the time or resources to re-equip them to the African / tropical kit and new TOEs.
Since there's no real practical scenarios to have them face off against the US except in Tunisia and Sicily, that works fine for me, and keeps them available for facing off against the Russkies, or the French in the Alps or along the Cote d'Azur in 1940, or against the French in Tunisia as well.
Most of my vehicles and infantry are GHQ. There are a few H&R aircraft, figures and guns mixed in, as well as a few C-in-C armored cars and AT guns.
I base for 1 stand = 1 squad, typically putting only 4 figures on a stand to indicate a full sized squad. That's a challenge for an Italian Continental force, as they didn't have the more common platoon organization of 3 squads each with 8-10 men with 1 LMG. Rather, an Italian infantry platoon had 2 squads, each with an LMG section of 9 men with 2 LMGs, and a rifle section of 10 men. The pic doesn't show them standing about in platoons, so the organization isn't clear. But I couldn't get enough LMGs to complete the platoon the way I wanted to base it. Oof.
For the infantry uniforms I used Polly-S "Italian Uniform Gray". I may have trouble if I want to grow the force further, as Polly-S paints are no longer available. And I really need to change the platoon organizations a bit, as I could not come up with enough LMGs to actually implement an Italian platoon organization using GHQ sets, but now with new H&R Italian infantry available and more flexible for purchase, I very much want to put several more LMGs on the ground with my Italians.
The bases were painted with another Polly-S color, "Sahara Sand", which is an odd pale green. That too may be hard to match.
Armored cars are a mix of GHQ and C-in-C, close enough that they are intermixable at this scale. I added C-in-C because I wanted some AB-40s as well as the AB-41s that GHQ offers.
Most of my support vehicles and guns are also painted in Continental colors.
Most of the armor, on the other hand, are base coated in Testor's Model Master dessert sand. The armored cars and L3s are cammo'd (using a green fine-tip marker). The M11/13s shown here are just detailed and weathered on top of the base-coat.
I have some Saharianas that are painted similarly to most of my armor, with weathering and detailing straight over the dessert sand basecoat. But I really should do some troop stands in desert uniforms to represent dismounts from these recon vehicles.
L6s and Semoventi 47s, as well as M13/40s and Semoventi 75s are similarly just base-coated and weathered / detailed.
I have a few planes to support my Italians, including Ba.65 ground-attack planes, Mc.200 and 202 fighters, and Br.20m bombers, supplemented by a pair of quite lovely SM.79 bombers that were given to me as a gift by a friend, that I am still trying to paint up to match (to come up with a 4-bomber flight).
In case you haven't figured it out, what started as a box of stuff to hand over to potential opponents has turned into one of my favorite smaller forces (yes, this is small compared to my US or Soviet armies). But isn't that just the way of it? Once you start building a force ….
-Mark
(aka: Mk 1)
explores another variant in the European Buildings range.
