By Jonas Spring CleaningIt's quite natural that you'll find yourself with a whole bunch of spare minis after you've made a couple of wargaming forces. I had quite a bit of odds and ends taking space in my cupboard from both our eastern front Germans and the previous DAK platoons. Instead of letting them gather dust a few more years, I decided to dig out as much German infantry as possible, and paint them up for Africa. Some of these are not made specifically for DAK, but as long as you paint them up in beige, khaki greens and greys they'll still do just fine on the tabletop. The most important addition is the four extra MG34 teams. With them we should be just fine doing bigger games with double LMG sections for the Germans. I haven't counted yet, but there might be enough troops now for a whole company (three platoons) as well, though probably not with all double LMG sections. That requires a crazy number (18) of LMG teams. But it should be close. More Deployment PointsWhile painting the platoon, my clubmates started planning a Big Chain of Command battle, with two or three platoons per side. With a deadline suddenly appearing, the DAK painting took priority. But I also wanted to have some more thematic deployment points. I dug through my bits boxes and found some rather unwell Germans and some supply dumps for the Allies. These would do nicely. With everything painted up, it's off to war! For the German Deployment Points I imagined a water run that got ambushed. Jerry cans dedicated for water would have a white cross painted on them. The casualties are from Artizan, while the soldier calling for back-up is from Warlord. We already have three Allied Deployment Points with supplies, so colours were used to easily tell them apart. Where the other ones are mostly painted green, these got blue/grey fuel barrels and some tufts with orange leaves. That way the Allied players won't risk getting their deployments mixed up. These Black Tree Designs LMG teams will match the ones I've previously made on combined bases, making that platoon more consistently based. These LMG teams are from a mix of Warlord's oldest (now retired?) kit and the Blitzkrieg kit. I decided to use decals for the helmet insignia and I think it made a difference for the overall look of these leftover minis. More Warlord mixed minis, this time section leaders. This time I put leader minis on bigger (25mm) bases. Partly because some of these were already based and I feared I'd damage them, but also to make them stand apart from the grunts. Given our huge glut of officers, DAK player can now choose if they prefer their leaders to have the same base size as the rest of the platoon or not. Senior Leaders, this time from Black Tree Designs. The wounded guy was a left-over as well, he might end up crewing a weapon or something. There's always a need for more crew members! The last Black Tree riflemen. I think I got these to bulk out the two first platoons if both were to be fielded with just a single LMG team per section. Finally, a mix of all leftover Warlord riflemen I could find. All of them from the old, frankly quite bad, kit. They'll serve just fine in North Africa!
It's a great feeling to paint up minis that just gunk up your storage space. Just mount them up for a big batch paint job, and get it over with. Here are the pics (and some extra), click for bigger size.
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