1940 Campaign French - Part 5: Mustering the Infantry and Painting Challenge

Bonjour, tous le monde!

I was delighted to be invited back to take part in the Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge this year, alongside (and in friendly competition with) my fellow painters from the WSS team. I'm aiming for 650 points, and my general plan is to try to get most - if not all - of the way there with this early-WW2 French force I'm assembling for our in-house Battle of France campaign using Bolt Action rules in 28mm. To give you a general idea, at 28mm, each painted infantry model is worth five points, and each vehicle is twenty. If you've seen my recent posts, you'll be aware that I've been starting to play with some of the bonkers 1930s-era vehicle camouflage, and that I used my artillery crews to try out my plans for painting the infantry using (primarily) Citadel Contrast Paints. In today's post, I'll share the first figures I've completed specifically for the challenge, using the painting plan with which I'm mostly pretty happy.
1st Section

 

For the first of my seemingly endless horde of infantry, then, I offer one Lieutenant and two infantry sections, each of 12 men (in the Bolt Action rules we'll be using, the general minimum buy-in for a 'legal' force is an officer and two squads):

2nd Section
2nd Section with some rear views.
Over a rattlecan white base coat, they're painted using Contrast Paints on all surfaces save the gunmetal and the helmets, and the uniform cloth is a 5:3 ratio of Dark Oath Flesh : Militarum Green. If you look super-carefully, you might just notice that one of the soldats has dark breeches: this is because since finishing them last week, I have transferred that particular fellow to a different section, who are wearing the more fancy pants. But more on them anon. Below are some slightly different angles of the men, including a closer shot of the rear view, and a couple more of the nonchalant officer.
(sorry this one is a little blurry)
 
The officer model here is by Warlord Games (metal); the infantrymen are from Wargames Atlantic (plastic). Including twenty bonus points for also completing one of the parallel themed challenges, these 25 troops at 5pts apiece gained me an opening score of 145 points for the challenge...and I've broken my duck! In my next post, I hope to explore the different stages of my infantry painting process. - Chris

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