Afrika Korps Underway

Good gaming news arrives from the Tripoli dockside of 1941 - the Afrika Korps miniatures have arrived! One good piece of news from having previously done the British Eighth Army is that I knew what to expect in terms of model sizes, basing, etc. As such, I had the bases ready-cut from plastic 2mm sheets and glued the models down in super-fast time. Below is an overhead shot of the storage box:

The whole thing is about 83 or 84 bases' worth of German and Italian troops, who will soon be contesting the Western Desert of Egypt against the international Commonwealth troops of the British Empire and its allies.

Here's a close-up to try and show a bit more of some of the units. When ordering models, I didn't want to get drawn into large amounts of research about what models & variants of tank were available over the historical campaign period in question - the whole idea is to play a very impressionistic, simplified game of the WW2 desert. As such, I did most of my 'research' by reading up Wikipedia articles and mainly using Google Images to search for pictures of the vehicles. If they turned up in a picture in desert camouflage, that was good enough for me! Shown above are a Panzer Division's tank units. I plumped for two Panzer III models and a single Panzer IV with the little 'stubby' short-barrelled gun.

Above shows some of the rear-echelon support units for the Afrika veterans. Pendraken don't seem to do Italian field guns, so I used the German artillery for them too. (Incredibly fiddly to assemble, I have to admit!) There is also that famous feature of the Desert War, the 88mm gun in its anti-tank role. In the KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid) Rommel rules I'm going to use, even Italian divisions get an 88. This represents mostly German guns attached to them temporarily, or possibly their own equivalent of the 88mm gun (The 90mm, also lacking in Pendraken's lists - although to be fair I would've probably preferred the famous 88 models.)

I have even got a single Tiger tank model, to give me the option of putting the earliest prototype of that tank into the game (the rules suggest that it can be finally granted in defending Tunis, mainly because Hitler seemed to like only reinforcing disasters, thankfully!) Also in the background, you can see bags containing the one part where I have bought models that also link to the Allied side - air power! I have bought a model Bf109 and a Stuka, to give the Axis a pair of models to show airstrikes (not strictly necessary, but I liked the notion of adding them) and correspondingly I got a Spitfire and a Hurricane for the Desert Air Force (two fighters, I know, but I thought a Blenheim would be bigger and cost more!)

A Speedy paint-job is underway, then 'dipping' and spraying, then finally a bit of sand on the base. Then: next stop Cairo!