"15mm WWII British Airborne - Urban" Topic

All,

Dang it, I missed a day's post!

Greetings, all, and welcome to my piece de resistance! You simply cannot do Market-Garden without having British Airborne based to fight in the dilapidated, bombed-out streets of Arnhem and 'Der Hexenkessel!' Ugh, hope I don't sound too snobbish, just joking around, and making the point that I've wanted to have this force ever since I was little kid watching "A Bridge Too Far." Well, now I've got it! And how did I get it? Well, most of the figures came to me painted off a gentleman on Ebay, but they weren't based the way I wanted them, so I ripped them off their bases and did them myself, doing my best to mimic what my buddy AJ had already done on my Soviets and Germans.

So here are my best efforts to replicate Sean Connery and Anthony Hopkins, I mean General Urquhart and Colonel Frost, please take a look.

The entire force, consisting of:
-One Officer Commanding (OC) stand
-One Second in Charge (2iC) stand
-Five Rifle Platoons (of three sections, a Platoon Commander -PC-, and a PIAT team, each)
-One MG Platoon (Four Vickers and a PC)
-One Mortar Platon (Three 3" tubes and a PC)
-One Anti-Tank Gun (ATG) Platoon (two 6-pdr guns and a PC)
-One Artillery Platoon (two 75mm pack howitzers and a PC)
-A Forward Observer Officer (FOO) stand
-Two 'extra' command stands
-A Flamethrower stand

The OC Stand, all Battlefront metals painted by the Ebay guy. And they're really beautiful, too ;) How is my basing? I worry that I didn't cover as much area with brick as AJ did, but I'm pretty happy with my gray drybrush efforts.

A closeup of one of the rifle stands.

And a Vickers MG.

A 6-pdr ATG.

And look at that Platoon Commander, blowing his horn!

To see a whole bunch more pictures, please check the blog at:
link

I hope you like them, I absolutely love them, and can't wait to get into some scraps with them. But I need an opponent, right? And I assure you that opponent is not the greatcoated Germans you saw in the last post; I'm currently working on some SS troops in urban basing (boo, hiss, yes, I know they're evil, but that's who I want to face off against in Arnhem, and I've got another surprise in store: I'm doing some 82nd Airborne Yanks for Hunner Park and its immediate environs in Nijmegen. Yeah, I've definitely gone too far, but that also means I've gone too far to stop!

More to come!

V/R,
Jack

Jack,
Gosh these are great. Right out of A Bridge too Far. With all these finished units and you say thays more comin',
once you design the scenarios and start the games, how
long you figure it will take you to finish your complete campaign up through VE Day? And of course, since you had Africa and Sicily done, I am talking both Eastern and Western Front!!
:-)
Sam

Nice work.

Thanks, 79th and Sam!

Yes, I'm very happy with how these guys turned out, and figuring out an urban basing scheme that I'm finally happy with. There are, indeed, more forces coming.

I'm almost finished with:

US Airborne – Urban
US Airborne – Med/North Africa
Indian Army – Med/North Africa
Australian – Med/North Africa
Italian Bersaglieri – Med/North Africa

Then I'm still painting:

British – Early War Temperate
German FJ – Urban
German FJ – Winter
German SS* – Urban
German SS* – Temperate
*I know the SS are an unsavory lot, but they are part of history and I really want an Urban force for Arnhem and a Temperate force for the fights around Caen.

Forces I'm thinking about:
Australians – New Guinea
French – Early War temperate
French Goums – Med/North Africa
Free French – Med/North Africa

At some point I'm going to have to stop painting and start playing games…

How long will it take to complete the entire war? Good grief, I can only hope I live long enough! ;) Eastern and Western Front? Yeah, me too! ;)

V/R,
Jack