Flames of War Paratroopers

In a new venture for me I present the first models in my Flames of War British WW2 Paratroopers army:

I've been toying with the idea of Flames of War for a while but a recent conversation with an old friend (Gareth, better known as Dice Jesus of the blog It's Game Over Man) galvanised my interest into action. Of all the forces in WW2 it has always been the paratroopers that fascinated me the most so it was pretty much inevitable that a 6th Airborne Division army would be my choice. For those unfamiliar with Flames of War it is a platoon based wargame played with stands of 15mm models. That is roughly half the size of the models I usually paint as the next image will demonstrate:

Thank you Ms. Funnymoney, that'll be all. Obviously models of this size present their own challenges. Not least of which is the fact that the Denison smock they all wear is camouflaged... Checking the painting guide in the Turning Tide reassured me though. The only change I made to the recommended colours was to swop out Green Ochre for Khaki as it seemed to me to be a better match for the pale colour on the smock.

The overall effect is surprisingly effective for such a small scale. I deliberately did not use Battlefront Studio's highlighting style as it was far too stark for my tastes and went instead with Devlan Mud washes to add shading. As you can see I decided to push it and went for as much facial detail as I could on those models that had crisp enough casting to make it worthwhile.

I also made use of the plastic urban rubble bases. These are almost more trouble than they are worth. You have to trim the bases of the figures to fit as they are not the standard size indicated by the holes in the bases. You have to then fill the holes to level them off. Really frustrating. I won't be using them for any future Flames of War armies I do but I am kinda locked in for this army now! The extras are nice (like the wall in this one) but some of the details are really soft and poorly scaled (the umbrella for one is almost the size of a full grown man).

I like the way you can create little vignettes with the bases, the mortar crew taking cover behind a pile of rubble for instance. I didn't paint them in situ as the models would have got in the way of painting some of the details. Instead I superglued them to sticks to paint and then sliced them off when finished. Oh and my wounded left index finger would like to warn you all to use not very much superglue at all as if you glue them on seriously then you can slip and put quite a slash in your fingertip. Anyone would think I was a professional or something...

Well that's all the shots I've got this time, that was just one platoon though so I have got quite a long way to go before I have an army of these airbourne nutters. I've included the army list below to show the journey. I will of course keep you updated! For now though...

TTFN