12mm French & Germans

[James Morris]

Following on from Tom WD's 12mm British thread, I have been finishing off my current French and Germans, and building a trial trench section.  Despite the fact that we are playing Peter Pig's 'Square Bashing', I have been using the Kallistra plastic bases (40mmx20mm) - this has no effect on the game but I prefer the look of rectangular bases. 

Experimental trench section: this is a bit of a compromise between playability and reality.  Obviously the trench wouldn't be this wide but I want to be able to fit the 20mm bases.  I'm not entirely happy with these yet but needed to make something to get the ideas rolling.









Colonial French troops:





Massed 75s:



...and their opposite numbers, German 77s:





Flamethrowers and MGs:



German infantry:





Casualty markers and command:

[fred]

Great stuff.

The trench works pretty well. As you say with the width of the bases you have to go pretty wide. What size of unit does a base represent in Square Bashing?

I like what you have done with the slope up to the trench - makes it not look too much like a raised earth work. Personally they look very black.

Are the puddles / water filled shell holes as dark in reality as on the photos?

[aircav]

Fantastic stuff James 

[Captain Darling]

Great looking figures and terrain.

Re: the trench playability vs aethsetics is always a bitch you've done well!

[James Morris]

Great stuff.

The trench works pretty well. As you say with the width of the bases you have to go pretty wide. What size of unit does a base represent in Square Bashing?

I like what you have done with the slope up to the trench - makes it not look too much like a raised earth work. Personally they look very black.

Are the puddles / water filled shell holes as dark in reality as on the photos?

Thanks Fred! A unit of 4 bases is a battalion in SB.

The water/ holes are pretty dark, lots of black wash. I guess I just like the definition. I'm tryouts by to get a room this match with the base cloth I'm using, but this is involving quite a lot of tinkering...

[fred]

Interesting, so the SB scale is very similar to Great War Spearhead (GWSH). For GWSH I am using 3-4 10mm figures on a 30mm square base. I'm thinking for trenches to treat them more like area terrain, with just an overhead view of the trenches drawn on a large base. But I'm not sure about this, as it will look a bit odd. I'm really stuck with how to represent trench lines in general, as they were so often so close together that in the ground scale of the game they will only be 1-3" apart, which seems far to short a distance to be playable.

I went a bit more brown on the water filled shell holes on my bases - I was hoping the gloss of the water effects gave the contrast. Some photos on this rather neglected thread of mine http://leadadventureforum.com/index.php?topic=67280.0

[James Morris]

Fred, just looked at your old thread - what lovely figures! Looks like we're virtually running parallel projects. 

As regards trenches, I know exactly what you mean. Ground scale wise, there should be two or three lines instead of one. Square Bashing copes fairly well with this because it works on a grid; the whole of one square is considered 'trench', so all units in that square benefit from trench cover. So my single line of trench will represent the full trench system but without any rules fiddling.

[Norm]

All looking good, particularly the trench system and the command bases.

[fred]

Fred, just looked at your old thread - what lovely figures! Looks like we're virtually running parallel projects. 

Thanks. When I first saw yours they made me think of my own neglected project!

The approach of SB to trenches seems very practical, having the trenches modelled helps the players, and using squares automatically makes all terrain area terrain, and you are either in the terrain or not.