C Squadron, Royal Scots Greys, Gazala 1942

This weekend the club is hosting the 21st annual ValleyCon event. I've organised the Flames of War competition for this and decided to set the theme to North Africa and Italy. This is mainly because I wanted to keep the lists simple* and Russians break everything! While I organised and will be TO for the event, I'm also playing in it as well. Before people get upitty about it, there are two things; 1) I told all the players this and how the scoring etc would run and b) there is a lack in our local community of people who are willing to run events.**

For this competition I was a bit bored with my previous force, a US Tank company with Lees, Shermans and Stuarts. I used it at VC last year (I just spent a couple of minutes looking for the post I would have made about it to link, but man we were slack MF's the last 12-16 months and did not post much!) and it was quite fun, but not a competition winner. After playing at the 2018 Masters I saw how good the light armoured forces can be (I used McZermof's Italians and came third - again, no post!), so I looked for one that I could do that was different. I've always loved the M3 Stuart 'Honey' in British service and have wanted to do a Desert Rats force for ages, so jumped in and bought 15 Stuarts. These will represent C Squadron of the Royal Scots Greys (the other two squadrons were equipped with M3 Grants).

The 15 models consist of one pack of Battlefronts excellent and expensive M3 Stuart models (plastic) and two boxes of Plastic Soldier Company's average Stuarts. Putting them to getter was 1) easy for the BF ones, and b) a pain for the PSC ones. The PSC tracks arrangement did not match the hull so there was some swearing, cutting, trimming and bleeding fingertips. Painting wise, Pelaral has stored his airbrush in my basement while he renovates his house. Given that opportunity, and with his tutelage, I used the airbrush for the first time to paint these. It was great and much easier than I imagined. I'll definitely be using it again and will be looking at getting my own.

Anyway, here be pictures.

The whole squadron

HQ Troop

1 Troop

2 Troop

3 Troop

4 Troop

Shot of the BF tanks that I'm using as the troop command vehicles

Thats the core of the force. The rest is a small Motor rifle company, and some support from 25 pounders and tank-busting Hurricanes. The Motor Company and 25 pounders will be represented by my MW French infantry using 75mm's to replace the 6 pounders and 25 pounders.


* by simple I mean I am ignoring the hoohaa over the flexible lists that BF have produced. There is a lot of pissing and moaning about 'ugh I can take Panther with my 1942 Afrika Korps force? that sucks, BF suck, ugh, ugh, moan piss'. Jog on.

** by local, I mean that we have quite a few people in the club that can do it, and do do it regularly - but its the same people each time. Not always for Flames, but there is a core of people who do the organising and TO'ing each time.