Shortly after having finished up my German platoon last week I've managed to add a couple support elements to give me some new toys and flexibility. While the Stug's were orginally finished back in December, the lackluster lighting didn't do them any favors so I thought I'd include them along with the more recently painted infantry.
Altogether this has given me 27 support points to play around with, quite a significant amount, broken up as following (using the consolidated arsenal):
Regular Infantry section: 4 points
Senior Leader: 2 points
Forward Observer and 8cm mortar (off-table): 4 points
StuH42: 9 points
Stug III G: 8 points
Now where does this leave me in terms of further expansion? Currently waiting for painting remains my vast collection of untouched old Flames of War bits and bobs. And, although I think I'll never field it, I'm currently also nearly done with a Tiger II, which is just an awesome model to own. I'm also looking at adding an MG42 team, a Sig33 infantry gun, a Pak40 and a small section of engineers.
But, the main issue remains that, while I'm making leaps and bounds with my little Germans, my poor British platoon has received no love in the meantime... I suppose once I get burnt out from painting field grey uniforms I'll jump back to Khaki ;-)
Thanks for reading!
Well 2018 has started off with a bang in regards to my Chain of Command project! While finishing my German infantry platoon might have stagnated towards the end of last year, they are all ready and done now. I'm quite pleased with the final result, while the overall paint job was nothing special, I think that they hold their own when placed on the tabletop. It has to be once again mentioned that at 15mm achieving a good tabletop standard does not require exceptional talent, in my experience quite a lot comes down to basing, which can really make or break the overall result. I've seen too many figures that have static grass glued directly to the base without any effort to even the surface - consequently you get the base of the miniature standing out - destroying the final result.
Anyways side rant aside here is the core German infantry platoon, composed of 33 figures:
In contrast to a British platoon, which historically preferred a fire and movement approach, opting to use the Bren rather than a belt-fed machine gun like the German mg34 and mg42, German platoons quickly became bogged down in static positions relying on their overwhelming firepower, with riflemen mostly serving a role of ammunition carriers. After having played a couple games it does become apparent that this happens to be the case in Chain of Command too. The German player feels very comfortable sitting back and laying down fire, which makes it quite hard to forget that fire and movement tactics remain king. And, lacking the ability to lay down smoke, unlike the British who have their 2" mortar, trying to move forwards does appear quite daunting initially. Nevertheless, this still probably is due to my sheer inexperience in platoon level tactics, which I hope to improve by playing some more Chain of Command :)
With the German platoon now done and dusted I will be able to field two basic infantry platoons against one another, which remains much more exciting than playing with unpainted miniatures. Now the next step remains starting to ship out the various support options for both platoons.
