Tirailleurs Sénégalais

 

I am happy to report more progress has been made on additional units for my early First World War armies. The latest unit to arrive are French colonial light infantry. 

So far I have enough stands for around a regiment and a half. So I reckon they can make up a handy reserve force. I'd suggest that they would fit into a division or corps organisational table for the period.

These figures turned out very nicely I am pleased with the way they have painted up.  There is a colour picture in Hew Strachen’s tome The First World War which depicts Tirailleurs Sénégalais in white putties. It was dated 1913. So I opted to add the putties using light grey.   They'll make an interesting addition to the French side that originally peaked my interest in the early war period because of their colourful uniforms. 

The next on my painting table is German jägers which offer a little variation to the skirmish lines of field grey and pickelhaubes.

Heligoland Bight Mayhem

The centenary of the Battle of Jutland will take place at the End of May. We have been playing a bit of battleships down at Central London in preparation for a historic refight  of Jutland at the end of June.  Over the last month or so I've participated in a handful of fleet actions. These generally resulted in me nearly crashing into other ships in the fleet, being rammed or attempting to torpedo myself!
 

Last night's fleet action was not much different. Before the game, it was billed as mayhem and mayhem transpired!  I started with a cruiser and three squadrons of destroyers seen here at the bottom of the photo. The white bits are mist by the way.

At this point I was attempting to cross the rear of the ships sailing at right angles, at the top of the image.

 

Naturally I changed course slightly and gave my opponent, Martin nice target for his torpedo destroyers he promptly sunk my cruiser and my made large hole in my destroyers.  Nevertheless, a couple of rounds later got my own back an sunk Martin's Cruiser, Yay!

Shortly later Alan arrived with more German cruisers and battered me with some excellent gunnery forcing my two recently acquired cruisers to retreat back to port.   

In an effort to wreak my revenge on him I sent my two remaining destroyer squadrons steaming up the centre where one torpedo found its mark on one of Alan’s cruisers, but she shrugged it off.

At this point my impulsive game play got my destroyers in between the German destroyers and Alan's cruisers, they blew me to bits. But not before I nearly torpedoed myself for the second time in the game! 

On the next outing I am going to be a bit more tentative, maybe...

First World War Artillery

Now here's the artillery! Recently I picked up an assortment of figures to complete my early First World War German and French Armies. Naturally before I could start up on them I set myself the goal to finish off the last few elements of Corps Artillery. 

So here we have them more or less done, Some flocking and touching up is still required.  Above we  have three bases of German 210mm mortars. Below  battery of French 155mm canons to offer Corps level support  to there respective armies.

They have all had a lick of grey in various shades, followed by a black wash and then a dry brush highlight to finish them off. Now on to the next batch of new figures!