Tuesday, September 10, 2019

Norway for the Norwegians!

Following a large number of blogs, the temptation and urge to drift off onto other projects are a constant threat.  With an uptick in WWII-themed gaming of late, I could resist this temptation no longer.  While I have not pulled the long idle 15mm WWII project from mothballs just yet for a game, I was inspired to push some lead into the painting queue. 

The primary focus of my WWII project is early war in general and the 1940 Norwegian campaign specifically.  Looking back at my notes, it becomes quite clear that this collection has not seen action on the table in nearly ten years.  Ten years?  What possesses me to maintain a collection that is out of the box once per decade?  Well, my answer is that a steady stream of books on the 1940 Norway campaign continues to reach the market and I simply cannot help myself from picking them up.  With every book, I am re-energized to take one more look at moving the project onto the gaming table.   
Anyway, off the painting desk today are thirty Norwegian infantry including two machine guns and crew.  The figures are from the always excellent 15mm Peter Pig range.  Peter Pig Norwegians?  Those thumbing through the Peter Pig catalog will find no such range of figures.  What I used as Norwegian proxies are WWI Austrian infantry in greatcoat.  To my eye, at this scale, the WWI Austrian uniform looks very similar to the WWII Norwegian uniform.  Well, close enough for my use anyway.  The real purists will likely laugh at my substitution but, for me, these ersatz Norwegians work. 

Maybe I will resurrect my old Drive on Bjerkvik scenario and give it another game.  After ten years, I may have difficulty scrunching around for my game notes.  For that which is undocumented, I will fill in the gaps.

36 comments:

  1. Nice looking figures and an interesting campaign to game. Looking forward to seeing them in action at some point.

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    1. Thanks, Steve. I look forward to seeing them in action too.

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  2. What an interesting painting and gaming diversion. Osprey do a Campaign book on the subject. LINK

    https://ospreypublishing.com/denmark-and-norway-1940-pb

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    1. An interesting diversion, for sure. I have the Osprey book. It is a good one.

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  3. Good looking unit and what an interesting campaign to consider. Do you have a preferred set of rules?

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    1. I find the Norway campaign fascinating. No preferred set of rules yet. Thus far, I have tried Battlefront and 1943. I may give norm's WWII rules a try too.

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  4. Unusual choice for WW2, very nice,look fine to me but what do I know!
    Best Iain

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    1. I am not a "usual" sort of fellow! I find the smaller and somewhat singular WWII campaigns of great interest. Perhaps it is the sense of having a self-contained theater of operations that can be fought in isolation and not too big? The 1941 Crete campaign fascinates me too.

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  5. I agree with the poster above an unusual choice for WWII, but it's fun to do things off the beaten path even if it's only once in awhile. They look great btw Jonathan.

    Christopher

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  6. One big advantage of this campaign is that it featured Sir Adrian Carton de Wiart. Is 15mm too small to represent his lack of a full complement of arms, eyes, fingers etc?

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  7. Nice work on these, great idea re-purposing WWI Austrians as WWII Norwegians.

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  8. Those figures look very nice Jonathan. I’m no WW2 buff so I can’t say much about the uniforms and the campaign; however I know enough to agree that it’s not one of the more common theatres. Curious to see how a game would turn out.

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    1. Glad you like them, Mike! I will try to get these fellas out on the table soonish.

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  9. Now that is something decidedly different, Jonathan.

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  10. If you'd not mentioned it, I would have had no idea! They look great!

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  11. Nice paint jobs and prolific output as usual.
    I agree about the following blogs leads to temptations. You see someone do X project and you think “I’d fancy doing that, it looks like fun.” 😀

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    1. Thanks, Stew!

      The temptation from others' blogs is great. Not only starting a new project is a threat but getting old, dormant projects back into gear is a constant distraction. But, I wouldn't want it any other way!

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  12. These look great, and from what little I have seen of WWII Norwegians your choice of proxy seems an excellent choice. I have a few WWII projects that have also been sitting in storage for over ten years, but nothing quite so exotic as the Norwegian campaign.

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    1. Thanks, Lawrence! I like the somewhat exotic and the self-contained theaters of operation for WWII.

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  13. Very nice Jonathan...
    An interesting period of WW2 warfare with a good mix of troop types...
    I am looking forward to seeing how this develops.

    All the best. Aly

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    1. Thank you, Aly. I really should get this project onto the gaming table after such a long hiatus. One thing attractive about the campaign is that it was focused on infantry combat at a lower level.

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  14. These have got to be the first WWII Norwegians I've ever seen in any scale. Nice one Jonathan!

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  15. Hi Jonathan

    I really like your job on the figures, and the Norwegian Campaign strongly appeals to my sense of the offbeat!

    Periods that were previously obscure (e.g. Spanish Civil War) have now become mainstream. Of course, that's a good thing but it makes the quest to be different harder!

    What is the most obscure WW2 campaign that one could do? Operation Torch perhaps?

    Richard

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    1. Thanks, Richard!

      For offbeat WWII campaigns, how about adding Italy’s invasion of Greece or the fighting in the Levant? I don’t recall ever seeing Wargaming on those fronts.

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  16. I have to applaud anything with Norwegians, LOL. In WW2, the Danes were limited to the Resistance.

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    1. Good to see you approve of my WWII theater of operations! It would be very good to get this long, long dormant project off the shelf.

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  17. So difficult to paint dark colours!
    Bravo!
    :-)

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