Great War French Clavery's Chargers (GFRAB01) Spotlight

Hello All

Today we are going to have a look at the new French Clavery's Chargers (GFRAB01) set for Great War. One of our local gamers Robin Spence painted these for us and so I will hand it over to him to explain the rest.

First off the list, you get the options of either Reluctant Veterans or Fearless Veterans, the points jump a lot between the two and this box set can be anything from around 1600pts for RV and a whooping 2200pts for FV.

Early War AAR - French Escadron de reconnaissance vs Hungarian KÖNNYÜHARCKOCSIZÓ SZÁZAD - Cauldron

Hi all another ahistorical AAR this time it's EW and my French have some Hungarians to deal with!
Dave P was bringing his Hungarian tanks to the table for the second time, he rolled up cauldron.

Road to Nowhere - New Minis

So I return to my French, after Art of War I'd come to really appreciate the weakness and strengths of the list, and following some rather extensive discussions with my friend John, some reinforcements were needed - thankfully I owned the models already!

Alongside that I realised I only had another couple of platoons left, so decided that they would also get painted - so I split it up into two painting batches - the tanks and AT guns in one batch, and the infantry in the other.

Road to Nowhere - List Destruction

So I'm back from Art of War, and my French have had their first outing, 3 wins, a mutually lost fair fight, and a loss - no 6-1 loss so happy on that!

It was a learning experience, with only one previous game vs armour, I found defending - especially in a mobile battle tough. The Czech 38t is my nemesis! (On a side note I've ordered two boxes from PSC!) The difficulty with this list against the 38t is that I have units which can hurt them - panhards/lafflys and units which can take a hit from them - hotchkiss, not one which can do both. Combating them was also problematic for the hotchkiss, with the 38t having a longer range - and my one man turret getting to shoot at them effectively was tough.

The other problem was against infantry - with lots of no HE I needed to assault to clear people off objectives, and with lots of HMG's the recce Hotchkiss were not relied upon. 

Thankfully I only faced barbed wire in one mission, but in my practice games it was noticeable how tough that made things for me.

AAR - Czech Panzer's vs French Recon - Cauldron

Hi all and welcome to another AAR. I traveled up to Matt's place for a few games, and we started off with an Early war game. I broke out the French Escadron de Reconnaissance against Matt's Czech Panzer's from Barbarossa, for some Art of War practice. We rolled up Cauldron and so Matt was the attacker. As you may know from listening to the podcast Cauldron is one of my least favourite missions. But it is a mission that is common at tournaments so it's always good to get some practice in.

Matt's Czech Panzer's HQ 2 38t B 4 38t B 4 38t B 4 Panzer 2's 2 8-Rad's 4 Nebelwerfers 1 Flak 88 with Extra Crew

Adam's Escadron de Reconnaissance HQ Hotchkiss Long Barrel 5 Panhards 4 Panhards 3 'Recce' Hotchkiss 4 Hotchkiss 'short' and 1 'long' 5 Renault AMR 4 Mortars 5 Laffly SP Anti-tank 4 105mm Artillery

Road to Nowhere - Laffly and Renault AMR-35 Army for Art of War

Hi all another update for the project - and more importantly the list and practice games so far leading up to 'Art of War'!

Firstly the AMR-35's, I've got 5 of these mobile MG's, I still view them as being an assault unit more than anything else, with TA1, and half tracked mobility they can get to the enemy pretty quickly, they may still be able to be pinned by 5 shots, but unlike many of the other units can hopefully pin and even remove a couple of infantry teams on the way in with their 13.2mm MG's.

Road to Nowhere - Hotchkiss

Now another two units done! I've done enough of these little guys for an HQ and 2 5 tank platoons, though for my EW french currently I only need 9 of them - in three different ways.

The obvious one is for my HQ, and it's one of the long barreled Hotchkiss, I'm strangely annoyed I can't choose long or short, as I can see my poor CO being gun tanked easier, but with a little extra range and AT I shouldn't complain.

Road to nowhere - French artillery

So another unit completed, - once again I remember how much I hate painting gun teams/artillery! Why is that the case you may ask? Well to me it's because I use very different styles and techniques when painting armour and infantry - and artillery requires armour techniques for the guns and infantry techniques for the infantry...

This shows up the difficulties in painting a cohesive army, the infantry look too clean next to the guns, so I've added dust to the helmets and a brown drybrush over the boots too, just to make them fit more.

Road to Nowhere - Panhards

Ahh the Panhard. This armoured car is one of the best looking - and most potent units available to the french, with wheeled mobility, enough armour to ignore rifle fire, and a decent AT6 gun - not to mention being recon, this is a fantastic armoured car.

Whilst I may not have gone for the 15+ that makes the fabled 'panhoard' 9 of these should be more than enough to make a sizeable dent in an opponents force. Against infantry they are able to close in on objectives quickly, though only having an MG will no doubt limit their offensive firepower - thankfully being able to lift GtG for the rest of the army to target them is a good trade off. Where they excel I think is against tanks. They may not be able to damage Matilda's and T34's head on - but side shots are very viable - and even panzer 3's are vulnerable head on to them.

Mortars - The Essential Infantry Unit.

Originally this was going to be my first 'road to nowhere' article about my new french mortars (please enjoy the pictures) but I think looking at mortars is not a bad idea, a real 'back to basics' look at the humble mortar.

The mortar really has so many uses, broadly they break down into the following

Road to nowhere - EW French Project

Hi all another project which I’m starting, thought I’d go into a little detail about why I’m doing this and some of the thoughts behind it.

In my head I’ve always liked the idea that I could field and axis and an allies army in every period, and ideally form different theatres of the war. For LW I’ve got Germans (always suitable for every front) and my Brits and Finns, likewise all of those work well for MW too. EW though has been where I’ve been lacking – whilst my Finn’s cover the Axis and Eastern front, I really wanted something to cover the Allies and Western Front/Desert. Concurrently I’ve really wanted to get away from Veteran Infantry armies this year, they’ve pretty much been my exclusive area of playing over the last 12 months (again the Finns are to blame for this) so I really felt like some Mech/Tank’s ideally ones which were trained. This had been floating round my head fro some time, but with the invitation to the ETC I realised I needed a Mech force for this – and having reviewed the options for Trained Mech lists, one really grabbed me – French Armoured Cars. Now I’ve played against this list before and thought it was great, lots of mobility, some high AT and a nice variety of units available to play with. As things stand though I’m now playing the Finn’s at the ETC, but with all the models in my grasp, I think this is a lovely small little project I can be getting on with! (and yes I realise the idea of me and a small project don’t really go…)

Breakthrough Assault Early War One Dayer AAR

Hello all

On the 11th Janurary we held a one day tournament at Entoyment, 16 players come to what was for most of use the first tournament of the year.

The event was 1550pts, open with three games, this was the first time any of us had played a tournament with the new Barbarossa book and we were very interested to see what effect that would have on the "meta".

I was trying out T-34's in Early War for the first time, in fact I didn't get a single practice game in... still something it's best just to get thrown in the deep end.

Reading Warfare - Early War AAR

Another month and another tournament.  This month saw me head off to Warfare at Reading (what a name for a show!) and take part in the 1500pts Early War Flames of War tournament.  I had my usual dilemma with what to take.

I took Polish Cavalry to my last Early War tournament and had some good fun but I fancied a change so why not take the French Foreign Legion.  I managed to pick up a Desert Fort fairly cheaply at Dark Sphere over the summer so a plan was hatched.

I did my usual trick and left painting the army until the very last minute, I didn't finish painting until 11pm on the day before the tournament!

However I like to think the effort was worth it and I got some very nice compliments from some of the really talented painters in the tournament scene which is always encouraging for a newbie to hear.

I also knocked up a display board to make carrying round the army that bit easier.  It had cut outs for both objectives and the fort.  If anybody wants a how-to article on how it was built let me know in the comments section below.

 The end result!