August Offensive

Hey folks,

my great August offensive has started. No, it has nothing to do with the Battle of Sari Bair in 1915 on the Gallipoli Front, nor does it have any connection to the Soviet Invasion of Manchuko, another great August Offensive.

As I´ve told you in my birthday blog, my new forces have arrived after being cast. This means my tin mountain has become a little larger again, meaning its time to resume painting. I´ve got some stuff lying around including:
-Some Wartime Miniatures Taliban from November last year... somehow they got neglected
-US Marines, two squads + Support Remaining
-Urban Terrorists (Plastic, hate painting these, but want to try something new there..)
-Some very few Afghan Civilians and some minor stuff
-Vehicles

And of course, my new detachment of self-made minis.

As I have holidays now, I´ve enough time to tackle this pile of stuff. Yesterday & Today, I started with the Wartime Taliban, three US Marines and some of my Africans. I base-painted them, washed them and tried something new, achieving mixed results. Some of the Afghans are looking superb (will finish these tomorrow to show off), while some are mediocre at best. I´ve been struggling to make the brighter colored figures look good - I´ll have to change something for the next batch.

Anyway, here are the first Africans finished (somehow got hooked on these and wanted to get them done). I´m not 100% pleased, but on the pictures they actually look okay:

I´ll be trying to finish more Africans in the next few days, as I need some regular forces. I´ve actually preordered Chain of Command yesterday, but don´t want to start WW2 as a sideshow just to play the game. So, I´ll probably start off with some low-tech engagements with the African Forces that I still marshal. Old self-loading rifles and GPMGs shouldn´t have much different firepower than what was available in WW2. The basics are still the same, should be alright for infantry combat.

The major element is command & control anyway, with weaponry probably taking a secondary role, as far as I could see in the previews. What could be detrimental is the lack of national bonuses. We´ll see how that plays out. Anyway, I need more Africans to get two roughly Platoon-sized Forces ready and see which support-elements I could add. Right now, I got 26 Africans (including the two I just paitned), which is roughly half of what I need.

Most importantly, I got some Machineguns now that my own casts are ready. RPKs, PKMs and FN MAGs, even though only 1 pose of each, should add enough firepower to the squads. In the end, I should have one yellowish-team and one in woodland camo, in order to comply with the schemes of the National Army of Malongo ;)

Maybe I´ll also resort to painting my own Germans for some variety - with my own sculpts I could fill up my 8 Elhiem Germans to form two Panzergrenadier Squads. Unfortunately, I got no Marder IFVs, but using them as Jägers of any kind would result in understrength groups if operating completely dismounted (which Panzergrenadiers usually don´t do, as far as I know).

By the way -  I´m really proud of the photos today! No blur, no shaky camera, no mediocre lighting... :)