Tale of Two Winter Gamers - Month One - 101st Airbourne

Hello All

So month one of The Tale of Two Winter Gamers (I think we need a better title....) is done and dusted. As I talked about at the beginning of the month I'm doing a company of US Paras of the 101st Airborne from the new Nuts! book. The goal for the first month so to paint up the HQ, a complementary platoon and a piece of terrain. I was given a pass from the HQ part for a  month as the Easy Company HQ packet wasn't out until December 1st so would have been impossible to get painted in time.

For my Troops choice I painted up a US Para Platoon. I made a few modeling choices with them which I'm very happy with. Firstly I used a mix of Winter Paras and the US Paras from the new Open Fire set. I choice to do this as everything for a few reasons, the main one being everything I have ever read about the 101st in Bastogne talks about how lacking in winter equipment the 101st Airborne was. They weren't expected to be needed until March 1945 so most of the winter uniforms went to the front line troops. So to me it didn't seem right for all the models to have nice big jackets. I also wanted them to look different from the normal winter US infantry as the models are the same and it also gave me a chance to try out the new plastic Paras.

Overall I'm mostly very happy with the Paras and I'm happy with my choice to mix the models from the different sets. My only real niggle with them is I found the metal infantry easy and a little more enjoyable to paint, I feel this has shown in the overall finish of the unit as the metal infantry look better painted (in my option) than the plastics. But this is really just a small gripe as on the table top you really can't see this (I'm just always my own worst critic).

I have used the Major Cook model is this platoon to represent a Toccoa Sergeant, it's a nice model and with the Easy Company heroes set will give me 6 different Toccoa Sergeants.

I experimented with the basing a little and decided not to cover the whole base in snow to add a little colour to the basing.

For the terrain I picked up a Rural Fields and Fences set from the Battlefield in a Box range. I then added snow to make it work for a winter board.

Hindsight is a wounderful thing and I wish I hadn't added the snow flock to the fields as I don't think I got the effect of a freshly turned field I was aiming for. But I was very happy with the fences and can't wait to get enough painted to start playing some games.

So month one down. Next month is going to be a busy one for me and my US, I'm aiming to get the second platoon of Paras painted up, this time I'm trying them with metal US Para models to see if I prefer the finished look. I also have the HQ to paint up, a platoon of Glider Artillery and 2 Sherman M4A3 (but the Shermans aren't part of the challenge). For Terrain I'm have a a Rural Roads set and the Add on.

So until next time thanks for reading and Currahee!