15mm WWI Casualties and Accessories

I'm in the process of running a 15mm WWI campaign at the local club, and now that I have about a platoon's worth of infantry for the French and Germans complete, I'm focusing on adding some more special pieces. The rules I'm using are TFL's "Through the Mud and the Blood", and each player has a particular big man who is his own unique character, with a bunch of detail elaborated beyond the base rules. 

When ordinary soldiers are killed or wounded, the game doesn't track them any further. But when a big man is hit, he might soldier on in a reduced capacity, be gravely wounded and have to be extricated from the fight, or be killed outright. When a character is gravely wounded, the cry goes out for stretcher bearers, and these poor gentlemen have to make their way forward under fire and try to reach the injured man. 

These are Peter Pig's 15mm WWI German stretcher bearers. Each team consists of 3 pieces, the two bearers and the separate stretcher. The pack contains two such teams, as well as two extra stretchers. They don't offer a French set, but I'm thinking I can replace the German heads with French ones and just fudge the rest in the painting. In 15mm it should look alright. But we'll see. 

Who are they trying to reach? Casualties of course. Here is a set of Peter Pig's WWI German casualty markers. There are three different pieces in a pack of 8.

This isn't quite enough to represent the average failed attack (or successful one, come to think of it) which tends to look a lot worse, but it's a start.

Of course, any WWI project is going to need a healthy (or rather an intensely unhealthy) amount of barbed wire, so I've begun work on my wire sections. I've got about 4 feet so far, and this is the prototype I'm working from.

The base is made from sheet styrene cut into 4" x 2" pieces. To that I glue cut down stumps of toothpicks for the posts. Then I paint white glue over the base and cover it in a generous amount of sand. I also glue a few pebbles around the base to represent larger stones. Then the base is undercoated a dark brown and drybrushed with a few lighter shades. The posts are painted a light khaki color and then given a thick dark brown wash.

The wire itself is from Gale Force 9. At first it is bright silver and very new looking, so I soak it for a few days in a plastic container full of vinegar and salt. That rusts it up perfectly.

I'll probably add more wire to each piece to give it a more tangled look, but for right now I'm focusing on churning these out. From the profile it looks a little more gnarly.

Wire or no wire, the attack must go forward. 

15mm WWI Update

I haven't been posting a lot lately, just because other factors have been getting in the way, but I have slowly been chipping away at my ongoing 15mm WWI project. Here's a quick look at a few more figures that are ready to go over the top.

First up, here are five more French riflemen from Peter Pig. The only modification to any of these was the addition of a scope to the weapon of one of the crouching riflemen, and the removal of his bayonet. He will be a designated sharpshooter for his team. The "Through the Mud and the Blood" rules allow a designated figure to operate as a normal rifleman until called upon to operate as a sniper, at which point some special rules apply.

Next, four grenadiers from Irregular miniatures. Some of you may recall an earlier post I did about adjusting Irregular WWI Germans to fit in better with their Peter Pig counterparts. For these guys, I just removed the pedestal under them. No heads were removed and swapped, as they fit in better than the Germans did.

You can see the variety of poses is not great. I bent some of the arms around a little to add some minor variety, but that's not much. The sculpting quality in general is not quite up to the Peter Pigs, but they're not bad figures, and it was a quick way to add dedicated grenadiers to the unit.

And lastly, here are five more Germans. The first, second and fifth (from left to right) are from Irregular Miniatures, and had their pedestals removed, their heads swapped with Peter Pig heads, their arms bent around and, in the case of the second from the left, a pistol added to one hand and a grenade to the other.

The figure in the middle is from Peter Pig's WW2 line. I removed the pockets from his chest to make his jacket more appropriate for WW1. You can just make out the edge of a little piece of white card on his base. It has a number on it, which identifies which "Big Man" card is his in the "Through the Mud and the Blood" deck.

The figure next to him is another Peter Pig figure, who was originally carrying a submachine gun. I replaced it with two small brass rods to give him a double barreled shotgun - not a military-issued weapon, but perhaps a hunting piece that I can imagine a trench raider taking with him on an assault.

There's plenty more of these in the works, and I look forward to posting more photos soon.

15mm Stormtrooper Alterations - Irregular Miniatures

Recently I was looking to add some dedicated close combat stormtroopers to my set of 15mm WWI German figures, guys who clearly had the look of men looking to get up close and personal as they raided an enemy trench on some moonless night. My Germans and French have been entirely taken from the excellent Peter Pig lines so far, but while Peter Pig does have some stormtroopers modeled throwing grenades, they don't have figures with shovels and pistols and body armor, which is the look I was going for. 

I looked around at my options with other manufacturers, and decided to give Irregular Miniatures a try. The photos on the website seemed to have promise, and the price was right. My biggest concern though was that size-wise the new figures would not be a good match. I didn't own any pieces from them already, and couldn't find clear comparisons online between the relative sizes of the two lines, so I took a shot in the dark. 

It was pretty clear on opening the package that the Irregular figures were significantly bigger than the Peter Pig ones. They were also not as well sculpted, and the variety of poses was not great, but I didn't want to give up so easily, so the following pictures show some of my efforts to bring them down to size and fit them in with the Peter Pigs. 

First and foremost, I needed the Irregulars to be shorter in order to fit in. Right off the bat I cut the pedestals off their feet, and then sanded the feet down just a little bit to make them stand a little lower. 

Next, the Irregular heads were significantly larger, and that was a detail that stood out even when viewing them from a bit of a distance. Men naturally vary a good deal in size, but the helmets wouldn't differ quite that much, in both size and style. So off came the Irregular heads, to be replaced by spare helmeted heads I cut off of WW2 Peter Pig figures. I didn't realize when I was doing this that I could have ordered spare heads from Peter Pig, both in steel helmets or in field caps. I probably would have gone that route had I known about the possibility at the time. 

Next, I wasn't very happy with the Irregular poses. They are clearly all based on exactly the same pose, with some very minor changes made to give them different equipment. So I cut some metal away from their joints to make it easy to bend their arms in different positions. Between that and gluing their new heads in different orientations from the ones they started with, it helped give a little more variety to them. 

To mix things up a little more I also glued a few very simple custom items into a few hands. I made a shovel from brass and card, pistols from pieces of brass rod, and a grenade from brass and a small wooden dowel. 

Size-wise the figures are not a perfect match, but then even within the Peter Pig line different packs of infantry vary in size. For example, the Germans in firing poses are noticeably smaller than those charging with bayonets fixed. 

The results are good enough for my purposes, and these gentlemen have already hit the table and given a good account of themselves in storming their objectives. 

15mm WW1 Germans - Peter Pig

When the 15mm French figures I've been working on hit the table, they will be staring across no man's land at these guys. These are Peter Pig's 15mm German line, specifically those in the mid to late war style steel helmets. As such they can represent German soldiers from mid 1916 onward.


Here is the unit as it exists so far:

Infantry charging with bayonets:

Infantry in firing positions:

And a team of 'bombers':

For the Mg 08 I drilled a small hole in the flash shield and added a small piece of brass wire to represent the end of the barrel (as cast, the model ends with the guard itself). I also shortened the ammo belt of the assistant so that he could sit closer to the gun and fit on the base size I had chosen. The gun is cast as one piece with the gunner, and there is no hollow space between the legs of the gun stand. But if you paint the 'empty' space black and carefully pick out the positive detail I think the effect is nice.

It was a very fast and simple 'conversion' to add a small piece of brass to the top of one figure's rifle to turn him into a sniper. In the TFL rules Through the Mud and the Blood designated individuals can operate as normal riflemen until they are detailed off to operate as snipers, at which point special rules kick in for them.

And here are the Big Men. Because this is one of Peter Pig's earlier lines, there is not a separate pack of NCOs/ officers (though there is a set of 'high command' figures). Each infantry set includes a commander figure.

More 15mm WW1 French

The 15mm First World War project continues, and I've added a few more figures to the French platoon. After the disastrous encounters of 1914 and 1915, French infantry platoons (like those of their allies and enemies) saw the development of many specialist roles to allow the unit to employ a variety of new weapons. Fortunately the excellent Peter Pig WW1 lines give you a lot of great options in modeling these.

Every platoon will need a lieutenant and a couple of sergeants. Without their leadership even the best-trained men will falter.

Bombers are men with a talent for grenades, a very useful skill set on the modern battlefield. Their job is to get in close while their comrades suppress the enemy, deliver a deadly volley of grenades onto the entrenched enemy, and move in to the wreckage.

To engage targets at longer range while the bombers get in to position, picked members of the platoon employ rifle grenades. The technology has come a long way since the beginning of the war, and these guys are significantly less likely to blow themselves up than they might have been a year or two ago. Honest.

Of course we're going to need plenty more ordinary riflemen too:

To lay down some really heavy fire, you could do worse than a Hotchkiss heavy machine gun:

15mm First World War French - Peter Pig

I recently came down with a very strong impulse to start a 1st World War project, and after deciding on 15mm scale I fell into Peter Pig's offerings in a big way. I loved the look of the figures, and their French line in particular is awesome.

My goal is to build two platoons worth to start, one mid war French and one mid war German. I intend to use these with the TFL ruleset "Through the Mud and the Blood" which I've been told works best with one to two platoons per side.

So here is the first French squad - a corporal, a chauchat gunner and his assistant, and 6 riflemen. The figures themselves are a joy to paint, with lots of character and great poses. I like the proportions, and I was pleasantly surprised with the strength of the metal, which makes the bayonets more durable than I had expected.

Eventually the platoon will sport one more squad similar to this one, a team of bombers, and one of rifle grenades.

Here in isolation are the corporal, the chauchat gunner and his assistant:

Here are just the riflemen, the backbone of the French army:

And here is a look at their backs to see the details of their gear. Honestly I probably didn't need to bother painting the backs, as I am confident they will never be shown to the enemy anyway.