Forged in Battle Early War French

As I write my final exam before the summer break, (which is going pretty well at the moment), you might have noticed there are pretty much a lot of reviews and written material and less painted models. I've stockpiled a few articles with the exam in mind. So you'll just have to bear with me a few more days.

Last week we played a large Flames of War battle, and David who was the latest addition to our Early War clique has started up a French army. Having done some scouting for models on my own when I was starting out with my Polish I ran across quite a lot of complaints about the Battlefront Polish so I tipped him about the Forged in Battle French.


So for the first time David ordered models from someone else than Battlefront, and since he lacks a camera I brought mine to the game with the intention of taking a few pictures of those models for those of you who are interested in alternative sources of 15mm miniatures.

From what I heard the major complaint about Battlefront French were the helmets, which I think are pretty crisp on the Forged in Battle models. I'm comparing a French infantry man from FiB with one of my unpainted FiB Polish. As you see, the French stand a bit taller.

I think you could use the French as Polish dismounted cavalry if you just paint a Polish eagle badge on the helmet and their long coats in Khaki color, if you take the liberty of having slightly different rifles. You won't be able to use the French machineguns, LMG and rifle grenade models though

The FiB were not entirely flawless. Just like the Polish seem to have 1 model that is prone to a bit of miscast on the right side of the face beneath the helmet - the French had one model holding his rifle upwards  which seemed prone to not have a fully cast tip on the rifle. I did not get the ratio of miscasts from David so I can't tell exactly how many. The problems were according to him confined to this single sculpt though and perhaps not as much a disaster as if it would have been a miscast leg or helmet.


On a related note, yesterday on The Miniature Page I found this link to the new Forged in Battle British and US Airborne sculpts. True enough the painting of the models was exceptional, but I also think the sculpts deserve a fair share of the recognition. I think they look amazingly good. Check them out on the heresybrush blog following the link below

http://www.heresybrush.com/2011/como-pintar-paracaidistas-aliados/