In this campaign I am using my French forces (Foreign Legion, Senegalese, and vehicles) as the new Western Desert campaign book has formalized these forces. I have also started painting figures from the new British 8th Army box. These will be troops from the North African Infantry units in the 1st Free French Brigade. I am using these figures with British helmets, French Adrian helmets and wool comforter caps for headgear in this unit. I only took a couple of photos during the game, but here they are:
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| The Foreign Legion squad seizes a building! They were taxied into combat aboard the Laffly truck in the photo. |
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| A Senegalese squad also seizes a building. Just so happens to be the same building complex the DAK commander was occupying. It ended up being a very bad day for the DAK commander! |
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| The Senegalese squad and a North African squad push the attack around the building complex that made up a major part of the terrain on our board. |
In this system you build two squads of regular infantry of no more than 110 points each. These are commanded by a regular 2LT with two soldiers. The French also get a light howitzer as their national based unit. This is your base force for the campaign. In addition to the base force, you roll on tables to determine two additional units to add to your force.
For this round I had the two squads of infantry; the command element; a 75mm gun and spotter; an inexperienced infantry squad of Senegalese Tirallieurs; and a veteran infantry squad of Foreign Legionnaires. I also rolled for two transports/tows which I used to carry the FFL and to tow the howitzer.
The first game went pretty well for my troops. I ended up with a close victory against a well commanded DAK army run by my friend Patrick. After the game we rolled to determine the results of the units damaged or destroyed during the game and to find out what two new units would be added to our force. I ended up permanently losing one of my transports. I also improved the morale of my officer to Veteran and one of my regular base infantry squads to Veteran. Then I added a second Veteran infantry squad. The best roll, however, was when I added an SPAA vehicle to my force! I will now have a quad HMG on a truck added to the army! Should be interesting to see how effective this unit is against infantry.
I am going to use the Rubicon Russian Quad HMG on a truck mount. I know they are Maxim HMG's on the Rubicon model and the French used the naval mount from their ships on trucks in the desert, but I am going to bend history a little bit. I will provide photos as soon as the models are built and painted.
I will provide another game report as soon as I can get back to the campaign. Vive la France!
