Foreign Legion Paratrooper platoon

This weekend I also finished a platoon of 1980s French Foreign Legion Paratroopers as a gift for my friend Tim.  I had been buying him packs of 15mm scale modern French infantry & vehicles for a couple of birthdays & Christmases (originally intended for Force on Force games).  As Tim never got around to painting these, I offered to base them up & paint them for our new favoured system, Crossfire, instead.  These were to be his birthday present earlier this year, but I missed that deadline, so here they are finally, as a belated Christmas gift.  I'm even including the convenient mini storage box too :-)

These represent a platoon of Foreign Legion Paras ('Section Bleu'), of the elite 2e REP (2nd Foreign Parachute Regiment).  I've given them Middle East themed bases to match my own Syrian / IDF / PLO collection, as they will be serving in the multi-faction chaos of early 80s Lebanon.

Section Bleu itself consists of an HQ équipe (squad) of platoon leader stand, & accompanying fireteam; & then 3 équipes of 2 fireteams each, plus an équipe leader.  They will be interesting to play, as every équipe includes a sharpshooter with a scoped rifle, which we had decided to house-rule as allowing that fireteam to ignore normal Target Priority rules.  Typical for an elite platoon, this is on the small side for an infantry block (& emphasised further by only having 3 soldiers in each fireteam), but they will make up for this by being elite & having good leadership.

I've also been painting support units for this platoon - 2 sniper teams, 2 GPMG teams, & a Forward Observer for artillery / air strikes, so far.  As a bonus I also put together 3 bases of seriously wounded / dead Paratroopers.  These are just decorative really, to emphasise particularly FUBAR situations...

Tim has also purchased enough figures for an additional platoon of 2e REP, which I will paint as 'Section Rouge'. Then I need to get to work on their attached APCs, armoured cars, & MBT...

Here are a couple photos of the platoon & support in their cute little storage / travel box:

Festive Greetings Tim, hope you like them!

Ronin board & roads

This weekend I started on my gaming board for Ronin (28mm scale samurai skirmish), & made some roads/tracks for it.  I'd had the 2'x2' compressed chipboard ready for ages, but couldn't decide how to prepare it (PVA + sand + dry-brushing or flock? As earth or grass?).  I eventually decided to get 3'x3' of dark brown felt (£3.50 from the local craft shop), & glue this neatly over the top, around the sides, overlapping the underside.  This results in a nice soft basic gaming surface, with the edges of the board tidy & protected, & the underside cushioned for placing on tables.  I may follow this up by dry-brushing/stippling the felt surface with a lighter brown for a more natural effect, & to blend it in with my other terrain.

When trimming the excess material underneath the board, I had long pieces left over which gave me the idea to see if they would work as flexible roads/tracks which can conform to terrain like hills etc.  A test footpath proved that these would work much better than I expected - they were very simple to produce, & easy to press into shape on a gaming board (unlike flexible roads made of latex or canvas).  I simply cut the roads to size, checking how they could be laid out on the board, & then brushed undiluted PVA glue on each in turn.  I poured a custom mix of flock (1 part dark brown to 2 parts light ochre, with a tiny sprinkle of dark green 'plant' flock) over this, & pressed it down with my fingers (it adhered much more successfully than I expected).  I then added a few patches of yellow-green 'grass' flock, & some small dark green 'plants' along the edges of the roads.

After tipping off what little excess flock there was, & saving what I could for future use, I moved onto the next road, & once the PVA was fairly dry on the whole batch, I gave the lot a spray of matte craft varnish, hoping this would reduce 'flock shedding'.  The varnish has also made the roads feel a little more sturdy.  Very pleased with the results so far.  On the left is a quick shot of the board with some of the scatter terrain that I've already made.  Now to start constructing those buildings, to really bring the setting to life...