Don't forget the baguettes: building a French tank company (Part 1)

As a motivator in getting the project done, I have decided to blog each stage of building, painting and practicing with a new army in preparation for a tournament in May.

During my last game against on and off playing partner David, he informed me that he and his brother were playing in the 'Campaign' three-player tournament from May 9-10 in Milton Keynes (the same shameful town that stole the mighty Wimbledon F.C. Dons). This fascinating event is a three-player, three-era tournament where a team has a 1500 point Early War player, a 1650 Mid-war player and a 1750 Late War player. Here is the website for anyone interested: http://mkws.org.uk/index.php?s=campaign

The tournament is held at the mall.

                                             

David will be playing late war Finns while his brother will be playing Soviet Tankovy for mid-war. That left me with Early War, which incidentally is my favorite period. Now, I have a DAK army that is getting close to completion. However, David informed me that the tournament suggests that a team have all three players on the same side. Although it wouldn’t be bad to use my DAK, I had been thinking about increasing my Early War factions already. The question is what to bring?

I love Early War, but I don’t exactly love all of the armies. I had a few forces in mind that I would love to play: a Jock Column, a crusader force, a French force or Japanese. I wasn’t sure that I could get my hands on enough Japanese, so they went out the window quickly. I’d also read time and again that the crusader force post-nerf was neigh unplayable. That left British motor troops or French. The Jock Column seems to have such potential and would allow me to bring crusaders and murderous AT guns with crash action. However, the French had adorable tanks, fantastic helmets and affordable artillery (in the form of 105mm batteries at 160 points).

What a cute helmet.

                                           

I went on Ebay about a week ago and was digging around when I found an old French Combat Squadron box for 100 quid. Somuas are such a nice tank and I love the idea of the Hotchkiss platoons at 50 points a tank. Combined with the slight boost with version 3 “one man turret” allowing some move and shoot, I decided that box would start my army. I snapped it up and it came in the mail yesterday.

The box set came about during the blitzkrieg box set rush where you got a lot of models but not the dice/tokens/objectives of the earlier company boxes such as the Canadian 3^rd or 21^st Panzer that came out when the Normandy books first came out. That being said, it does come with 19 tanks: 7 Somuas, 7 Hotchkiss and 5 Panhards. To supplement this, I bought a French Fusilier platoon (to be truck mounted infantry) and a 105 battery I found on ebay from the same seller (I haven’t seen any other longcoat equipped artillery around, only light infantry with the desert uniforms).

Rockets must be a mid-war upgrade

I have two potential lists at this point. Each involves another 3 Hotchkiss tanks, since I think large 5 tank platoons have a lot of assaulting power.

List 1:

List 2:

Which list should I use? Are they crap? What would you field? I’d love to hear any suggestions you might have in the comments below.

I think the force will be extremely enjoyable to play. The artillery and strong armor of the tanks should allow me to tackle gunlines, while the infantry and large assault tank platoons should allow me to dig out difficult infantry blocks. Some armies will crush me, however. I have no answer to Strelkovy, T-34s or Matilda lists. I suppose that is the nature of the beast, and I’m just going to focus on enjoying my little tiny tanks.

In terms of color scheme, I think I’m going to use this scheme for my tanks:

Photo credit goes to Belloflostsouls.net

I think it is more distinctive than the others, but may require me to use a micro-pen or something to really make it pop.

I also think I’m going to paint the infantry as colonial. I recently read a ton about French colonial infantry in the Battle of France and if I decide to branch out to infantry at some point I’ll definitely go with the hard charging colonials.

No, not these type of colonials.

Next step for me is assembly and sourcing myself some dice and tokens. I love dice and tokens, and it’s about my favorite part of Flames of War. I’m trying to make sure each army has a set, and I finally was able to find a DAK set. Look forward to me showing it off on a future blog post.

That’s all for now, but make sure to follow and watch as my army gets tournament ready!