Italian Alpini Platoon

Starting a new platoon for Chain of Command ... I decided on an Italian platoon but wanted to do the eastern front Italians instead of the desert. I saw the Great Escape Games released some Alpini troops and read that those soldiers were sent to Russia. So I set out to do that platoon, using the list from the 1940s book. I'll check on any differences for Barbarossa but at first blush does not seem like it.

The Italians sent three Alpini Divisions to Russia, the 2nd Tridentina, the 3rd Julia, and the 4th Cuneense, which together formed the Alipin Corps. They fought with the Italian II corps forming the 8th Italian Army.

This is a big platoon with 47 men in it as each of the three squads are 15 men and there is a two man hq squad. I'll add in an HMG and a couple of light mortars to use as the "main" force, but will also have a 45mm AT Gun and L6 Light tank to use depending on the game.I'll also paint up an FO, Medic & perhaps an ATR.

This will be my test squad for painting.

I then test painted up half a dozen figures using Vallejo Model Color Olive Grey for the base uniform color. The color works well, though I have noticed that sitting on the game table, the uniform color looks suspiciously like the German uniform color!

I primed the figures using Vallejo Air Color Olive Grey with my airbrush, as I happen to be spraying up some German vehicles for CoC:

SdKfz 10/5 with 20mm AA gun.

One of two SdKfz 184 elefant tank destroyer!

Pz V 'Panther' medium tank

Pz IV H no zimmeret

SdKfz 251/1D Halftrack

I must admit that at first I was not impressed with the Great Escape figures, both with the posing and quality of the casting. After painting them though the quality of the casting turns out to be much better than I thought and I did enjoy painting the figures. The detail was easy to get at and clearly delineated so did not take to long to finish the six figures. 

That said, the posing of the figures suck! GEG made the cardinal wargame foul of mixing postures within a squad. I am not doing up a diorama, these are wargame figures, so all I need is advancing figures for my squad (as opposed to a prone/kneeling squad). Also please do not have any crazy action/running figures mixed in with walking figures. I just don't get how companies that sell GAME figures (even for the own games) can't figure this out.

I have nine more figures for the squad and will get them painted up in the next week so as to have one complete squad. Still waiting on the figures for other two other squads, so may work on the MMG and AT gun while I wait on them. Once complete will update the blog to show the complete platoon.