Bavarians

I was up a bit late last night trying to finish these up – watch (well… listened to, mostly) Contagion and 12 Monkeys – how’s THAT for an evening’s double feature!? Contagion I hadn't seen before and I thought it was pretty good. 12 Monkeys I hadn't seen in years - probably over a decade and it was actually better than I remember it... You wont' read me write this often, but I actually liked Bruce Willis in it. I usually find him pretty dry - but maybe that's all just part of the tough guy part he's always pidgeon-holled into - but I thought he was actually quite good in 12 Monkeys.

Earlier in the week I was doing some assembling and organizing and repainting collars on about 40 others to make them into Bavarians (they had a white and blue lace edging their collars… I could have left it off and no one would have known the difference… but…) – so this isn’t ALL I’ve done so far this week…

Last week I started reorganizing the German forces for Vimy. I found I needed a handful more officers and men to finish up the three regiments of Bavarians and so I set to finishing those up as they seemed like low-hanging fruit. While doing that I also painted up three of the Irregular Miniatures machine-gun teams to go with the Bavarians. I even mixed some paints to try and match the original tunic colour I used 10 years ago when I painted the first batch (a colour that is no longer commercially available and lighter and greener than the one I’m using now)

 (Remember: click on the pictures for a bigger version):

The Spare Infantry

Machine-gun teams from Irregular Miniatures.

Bavarian Reserve Infantry Regiments Nos. 1 & 3. These were part of the 1st Bavarian Reserve Infantry Division which held the southern end of the ridge. The 2nd Regiment, also part of the Division, held a part of the German line south of the Canadian area of operations during the Arras offensive. (I think it was the 51st Highland Division that was just south of the Canadian Corps, which would have been fighting against the 2nd).

The mortar teams are from Renegade Miniatures, the machine-gun teams are from Irregular Miniatures, the rest are entirely homemade figures.

With the exception of the seven newly painted figures and ten that were reorged from the original 11^th Bavarians, all the other figures in these two regiments had their collars repainted this week as well…

Bavarian Reserve Infantry Regiments No. 1

Bavarian Reserve Infantry Regiments No. 3.

I have a third regiment of Bavarians; the 11^th Bavarian Infantry Regiment, which was part of the 16th Bavarian Infantry Division) held the North end of the Ridge and “The Pimple” which the 10^th Canadian Brigade was scheduled to attack the following day. I was originally going to take pictures of the 11^th as well… but there was nothing newly painted among them (save for one of the machine-gun teams above) and I don’t have a Mortar element for it yet… and… well my fingers were getting cold! (I do most of my photography out of doors where I get better light! And it was chilly this afternoon!)

On the bottoms of all of these Vimy figures I have stickers to indicate which unit each figure is in. Part of the reorganizing of the Germans I’ve been doing over the last week involved tearing the original stickers off and replacing them.

Coming soon on Tim’s Miniature Wargaming Blog:

MORE Germans for the Vimy project. I had hoped to crank out another 45 guys to finish up the 79th Reserve Infantry Division… I probably won’t get them done by Sunday or Monday or whenever I get to the weekly countdown post. Tonight is our biweekly D&D night, but I should get in a couple of solid evenings of paiting Saturday and Sunday… So I should finish up the 262nd Reserve Infantry Regiment and get s good start on the 263rd. Then I have only a few spare battalions that were thrown in from the reserves to finish up for the Germans.