En Avant!

 Still with the whole French thing. By Sunday I will have three infantry squads ready to go, I am now moving on the support units and will leave the last reserve squad until the end. Did I say end, I am now thinking of one motorised squad and one of colonial troops, why, because they are there and why not. I have also managed a few vehicles as well, leaving two more to go, I will need at least one truck if I get the Dragons Portes and maybe that nice Citroen staff car Rubicon does.

I have given each tank a different camouflage to get the most out of the fancy schemes the French used, they also had a colourful identity scheme involving the suits of playing cards, probably not the best way to identify tanks on the battlefield but it was only to last a few weeks anyway.

Schneider P16

Renault R35

Panhard 178

 My French interest continues with entertainment, I am lost for anything decent to watch at the moment and remembered reading a review of a French programme called "Call my Agent" about entertainment agents and their clients and the goings on at an agency in Paris. It is very modern in its outlook and depiction of modern 'norms' however despite this I am binge watching it.

 

I spent about a week twiddling my thumbs in the PO as it was very quiet and managed to clean up some figures, base and prime them along with the tanks in between having to get up and sell a stamp. Then, as usually happens I received three new map projects with at least one more to come all on the one day, I also found one on one of my extra drives which I had forgotten about, a large project but thankfully not required until October. The author for "The Onin War" is Japanese history expert Stephen Turnbull, I read one of his first books way back in 1977 and would certainly add it to a '10 best' list, and here I am 44 years later drawing maps for his latest tome, who would have thought.

 I will be having my first face to face game in about a year on Sunday, Fran, who played the Union commander in my recent campaign will this time be playing the Rebs. We are back at Elkhorn Tavern but this time the actual battle, it will be Fran's first game of Johnny Reb and this is an exciting scenario which is not too large but demands some hard decisions by both sides in order to win. The Confederate force is mainly green troops with poor weaponry, the Union forces have better weapons in some cases and slightly better morale however they are outnumbered and as the battle opens are spread out with half their forces still arriving. I am looking forward to this.

 

Our Atlantic naval campaign is picking up pace, the Royal Navy has lost the Hood and several cruisers are badly damaged, on the plus side at least three German heavy ships have gone to the bottom, one may be the Scharnhorst or Gneisenau but my commanders seem unable to identify most enemy ships. The German invasion of Iceland is also gathering pace and my plan now is to destroy the Kriegsmarines naval assets and then turn on their supply ships. I am still disturbed by the possible size of the enemy fleet and which capital ships are involved, there is a British invasion fleet on the way or gathering but the timing is not good as my fleet will be running out of fuel when the invasion fleet gets to Iceland.

My flagship