Blitzkrieg Commander - French

I have not gamed WW2 since about 1980, when I was a young lad at school, so I was starting completely from scratch when I was asked if I wanted to join in with a few guys at the club in trying out Blitzkrieg Commander (BKC). I think it was an advantage, since I was quite happy to go along with any scale or theatre as I didn't have any armies that I would be discarding along the way. Which is how I came to be collecting the French.

What I will say is that it's very easy to paint an army in 10mm. I am not trying for any prizes in quality; I just want it painted to 'tabletop quality' (which I tend to think of as being 'I'm not embarrased to put that on the table'). We are scaling the lists so that a battalion is made up of about 10 tanks or 10-15 stands of infantry. I have found that I can paint that number of figures as a block together, and go from raw lead to based and varnished in about 6 hours of painting; maybe a week to a fortnight for me, depending on how much 'spare time' I get. Since there are few stats you need in the game, it's quite easy to stick a little label on the base of each element with movement, firing and armour values - you will be able to see this in some of my pictures.

As to the BKC rules, the command and control section is pretty much Warmaster - better commanders have a better chance to activate groups, you can activate groups more than once in the turn, failing activation ends the turn for each commander. Shooting is based on the number of shots an element has and what cover its target is in. Elements have a number of hits and a save, you need to remove all the hits in a single turn to destroy the element as outstanding hits disappear at the end of the turn. Close assault can be very bloody or slowly attritional, depending on match-ups. I like the rules; they include all theatres from the Spanish Civil War through the eastern and western fronts and North Africa to the fall of Berlin. There is also a set called Cold War Commander which covers the post-war period up to the present day.