The Great War in Greyscale - Belgian Infantry & Carabiniers (37 points)

My Belgian WWI collection to date, with the new additions.

My Great War project has largely taken the back seat with my recent interest in the Spanish Civil War. Nonetheless these models were on my desk, dolefully staring me in the face, so I decided to crack open the monochrome paint to complete this small group of 1914 Belgian infantry. 

These will add to my small existing collection of Belgian figures. This group is composed of four infantrymen in shakos and three carabiniers wearing their distinctive Tyrollean hats.  The infantrymen are Great War Miniatures sculpts whereas the carabiniers are from Brigade Models. I've been lobbying the good folks at Brigade to provide some period bicycles as many of these troops cycled to the battlelines. There are some great photographs showing stacks of bikes near the front or carabiniers having them jauntily slung over their backs.

I found reacquainting myself with this project was a bit of a challenge as the greyscale effect requires me to reorient my way painting. I'm very happy I kept detailed notes key-coding the various shades of grey or I'd be hooped! Nonetheless I quickly got back into the swing of things and had a great afternoon (and evening) listening to an audiobook and painting these up.

I also went over a few of my existing command models to add the 'Sin City' chiaroscuro effect I had mentioned at the beginning of this project. Here is a Belgian grenadier NCO now with a flash of colour (in this case the red band on his forage cap) to identify him as a leader on the tabletop (Sidney's great hex idea also reinforces this). 

The casualty figure below is of a Belgian infantryman (Brigade Models). In the same vein as the NCO above I decided to make the blood as vibrant as possible - wanting to make the effect almost jarring. In fact I want all of the casualty figures be glaring and grotesque in order to support my overall vision of the mood of the project. These bases will get increasingly unsettling as this progresses.

I thought I'd provide a few group shots of the Belgian collection to date.

I need two or three more sections of infantry and a machine gun team to finish this force but it's slowly coming along.

These seven figures plus the casualty will give me 37 points.