Wargames Obsession: Elite

26 June 2013

Falschirmjaeger just about ready for action in 20 mm FOW

I have been slowly building up my 20mm WW2 armies over the last year, switching from Warhammer WW2 rules to Flames of War. This meant re-basing my entire collection.

The Normandy Brits are done, as are my original Falschirmjaeger, and now I am working on expanding my force. Planning on a game against Luc at the Kapiti Wargames Club Open Day on Sunday.

Early war (R) and late war uniforms. In Crete a Sand-coloured uniform was worn.

As mentioned before I decided to go with an autumn theme rather than the more usual summer or winter. This makes the range of figures that are useful larger, being able to field both winter and summer uniforms (I.e. guys that are cold, and ones that are not so cold, and still wearing the summer uniforms, albeit with the autumn camouflage outside)

My elite troops are painted in the Autumn Oak or planatin Camo, and my Falschirmjaeger in the yellower variant of the Splintermunster camo smocks, with the blue luftwaffe trousers and blue or luftwaffe camo green helmets.

Images from across the net. Reproduction uniform images from Spearhead Militaria
This is also a good site for info on uniforms in general.

This enlarges the scope of games that can be played authentically dramatically, with both winter and summer terrain becoming useful. I used red "iron ore: ballast from the railway miniatures range as the base, and added lichen in various colours. The result is quite pleasing to they eye, but also vividly illustrates how effective the German Late-war autumn camo was.