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!