Entry #7 to the Lead Painters' League - 'Les Paras Francaise en Indochine, 1954'

For my seventh entry to the Lead Painters' League (LPL) I decided to return to my admittedly neglected but not forgotten French Indochina project which I started a couple of years ago.

Actually, it was really great to dig out these figures and get them done-up over the past week. Even though its been a while since I've worked on this project I found it was like putting on an old, comfortable sweater. This probably due to the fact that the Vietnam War served as the focus of my research for my graduate studies (back when dinosaurs strode the earth) and my shameless love for French culture (well, at least their cuisine and wine - hic!).

These 28mm figures from Red Star Miniatures represent the French paratroopers which became so iconic during that conflict. These are Paul Hicks sculpts and are absolutely superb castings, with almost no flash or visible seams to have to mess around with. Their overall animation is very dynamic and well-posed, with a nice variety of heads options available (soft caps, bush hats and helmets) - allowing a nice variation to the range.

These half dozen figures seen here feature a few specialists and some bog-average regulars. 

First up is a .30 cal LMG team firing from a prone position (sorry Greg, I know you hate prone figures!). I discovered that the pair, once assembled, have their M1919A6 Browning in a slightly elevated pose. So instead of messing around, trying to correct it (and invariably making a complete hash of it), I decided instead to mock-up a rotted log to place under the raised bipod in an effort to make the pose look a bit more natural. 

Below is a marksman specialist armed with a long barreled version of the oddly designed, aluminum-stocked MAS36 rifle with a scope attached.

Here we have a fellow fitting a grenade projector to the barrel of his MAS36 rifle.

And two regulars armed with MAS36 rifles, one is hustling forward while the other is giving covering fire.

Finally, a last shot to show the entire force to-date. Yeah, it's slooowly going, um, somewhere...

Thanks for visiting folks!

Next up: 3mm Napoleonics!

My 6th, 7th, 8th and 9th Entries to the Lead Painter's League

Viet Minh marching to Dien Bien Phu, 1954

So, a few folks have been asking me what's been going on with my participation in the Lead Painters' League (LPL). Well, as a recap, the League has been clipping along over the past ten weeks, with each week having the 40 entrants paired against one another for one-on-one matches. Points are won for a variety of things such as points for win/loss, point-spread within a match, submitting figures towards a stated theme, newly painted figures, etc. 

I've had a great time painting everything from goblins to panzergrenadiers but I soon realized that since our vacation landed right in the midst of the League I'd not have the time to submit new work for every round, so I've had to resort to 'retreading' some of my recent efforts.  So my apologies if this post seems a bit redundant in some spots but I thought I should try to wrap up what I'd started.

For the 6th round I drew upon my winter-themed French and Russians that I'd done for this year's Painting Challenge. Again, I really can't rave about these Perry figures enough - they're simply superb models.

For my 7th entry I sent in this group of 28mm Viet Minh from Red Star Miniatures which are excellent sculpts by Paul Hicks. I had read in Bernard Fall's 'Street Without Joy' that the French forces in Indochina greatly admired the Viet Minh expertise in camouflage, so I decided to tart up a couple of the models with some leaf camo on their helmets which I had snipped from the tips of aquarium plants.

For the 8th round I submitted a group of post-apocalyptic Soviet die-'ards that, again, I had done for the Challenge. These are very characterful Lead Adventure sculpts by the very talented 'Ratnik'.

My 9th entry was an homage to Alan Furst's excellent series of WWII noir-espionage novels. I know, it's kinda a lame entry but I do like these models from Mark Copplestone - they're such a blast to paint.

So there you have it, we're pretty much caught up on my entries for the LPL. There's just one more round to go and I'll post up that final entry next week when the League concludes. Thanks for visiting!