Desert Rats Progress: P.2 Scots Guards, Motor Infantry, more

Try to look under me kilt, will ya??
Scary thing is - looks like winter. Just this image probably caused Operation Sea Lion to be cancelled.   https://www.pinterest.com/pin/177610779034951020/

This British force for WWII N. Africa has sat around with no progress for 1.5 years. My excuses aren't TOO lame...NTC rotation, back problem, other projects, and the baby. Some couldn't be helped  [NTC, baby] but the "other projects" is just lack of focus! The back problem was particularly discouraging [it's exacerbated by sitting in chairs for lengthy periods of time] but hoping it'll be OK with proper PT plan.

This is directly related to working on my WWII rules, also. Just reading the draft for the first time in a while got me excited to play them again - these are really good rules, IMHO! I did another clean-up and made a couple of mechanics decisions thanks to a bunch of GDW Team Yankee playtests [CLICK]. These mainly oriented in the interaction of Move / Fire / Ready actions.

Thanks to the Ponyri campaign in progress over at Sound Officer's Call [CLICK], there'll hopefully be a few more playtesters jumping in which I'm sure will improve the rules. Altho I'd love to go to the Russian Front, I own no 15mm Russkies and will get none given the backlog of 15mm WWII I already have. As this was declared "15mm Fall" in my 2019 Fall Focus post [CLICK] it's time to move on this Motor Company.

First up, I had to get some replacement paints, including basic Black, and a gunmetal color, along with shiny gold [not as useful for WWII, but a good highlight for brass buckles, gold filigree and badges on hats, medals, etc]. Then I had to DUST OFF the figures...really!

Some examining and remembering confirmed I was ready to do the lengthy black paint job for all the weapons. I then hit the water bottles, weapon straps, and host of other niggling bits of gear. Also had to play around with the color of the web gear, eventually making my own light grey / khaki mix as there's plenty more Desert Rat infantry to come.

Officer stands up front followed by support weapons, hero, tea drinkers.
Sticks 2-4 are Old Glory Command Decision 15mm - nice figs. First stick is BF, as are the rest behind.

Poor Bloody Infantry in the back. Includes some Corporals and Sergeants w' SMGs.

Same from the rear. The buckles don't pop as much as I'd like them to. They also have some strange machete-like scabbard on their left side, may be a grossly large bayonet scabbard, hard to tell with Battlefront sculpts sometimes.

There's 63 figures altogether. They will be worth half points, or 63 points of 15mm figures, for the Ides of March Painting Challenge posted recently here [CLICK].

As far as what they can do on the table, it's going to take some figgering. The 2" mortar, three Boys ATR and PIAT stands are small 2-fig stands, so:
- 10 figs, 5 stands [53 figs left].
Moving right along:
- 4 FO figs, 2 stands [49 left]
- Hero 2 figs, 1 stand [48 left]
- Tea Drinkers, 3 figs, 1 stand [45 left]
- Leaders / officer, 12 figs, 4 stands [33 left]
- Infantry bases @ 4, 8 stands [0 left]
Altogether, 21 stands of figs for 7 Units of Up the Blue! Infantry - in this case Motor Infantry. This is using my 3-base system of former Flames of War bases, which I quite like the look of. Could easily stretch an 8th Unit out of it using an OP carrier, truck, staff car, etc. So enough for two full infantry companies in the OHW Scenarios, which require 3-4 Infantry Units each. 

Still to come, primed I have:
- four 25 pdrs for 2 Units [on table, these fill either a Mortar or an ATG slot, they were used as both].
- two CS Crusaders w' 3" Howitzer for 1 Unit [Mortars]
- off-table Artillery, there's as many as desired!
Not even primed, I've 
- four 2pdr ATGs for 2 Units [ATGs, obviously].
- four Bofers AA for 2 Units [these will fill an ATG slot].
So altogether 7 Units of on-table gun support.

Tanks will be Crusaders for now; there's a 6 Units of those cardboard boxes nearly completed [5 Units with 2pdr gun, 1 w 6pdr gun, so post Operation Crusader]. This puts me at 20 Units and only needing 18 Units for three full sides! In this case I'll have two Motor Infantry companies and one Crusader Squadron.

This total doesn't get into all the additional British desert stuff I have! I will need to double-check and make sure I have three full sides of Italians ready, but I'm almost sure I do.

Another thing I like about these platoon-level rules, is that it doesn't matter as much what stands the Unit is composed of like in FoW, where you fight by stands. This leaves a lot of flexibility as to what Units are and how they are represented and doesn't compromise on the history.

Going with one-base 3x3" sabots with two stands each on them, I would have about 30 Units, enough for FIVE sides of Brits - lots of mega-game potential here!

With plenty of stands available, I am tempted to make the Brits drinking Tea a staff meeting objective similar to my Italian ones here [CLICK].

As you can see, there's been great progress. As I get closer to finishing up the paint job, I have to decide what the motor infantry are going to be: Rifle types [Rifle Brigade or Kings Royal Rifle Corps] or 2nd Battalion Scots Guards. But I'll leave that for another post.