My Late 1941 / Early 1942 British Armored Division

Vroom, vrooooooom. Dakadakadaka...

During our pre-Christmas sojourn in the United States, I bought my X-mas gift to me: a set of 1/600 WWII desert warfare minis from Oddzial Osmy’s U.S. supplier, Pico Armor. (And let me just take a moment to give a big shout out to John from PA for getting my stuff to me overnight and in a blizzard to boot.)

I had already decided that the period I want to focus on would be late 1941 to early 1942, the “classic” desert war period, encompassing the Crusader and Gazala battles. I’d thus eschewed buying early war British armor, at least for now.

Over the last few days, I’ve been scaring up OoB information for the British 8th Army, trying to figure out what kind of force I’m going to put together for the Blitzkrieg Commander II, which I eagerly await. (My copy’s probably made it over the Atlantic now and is pining away in Brazilian customs.)

This is my favorite part of any miniatures project: laying out the figures and building forces.

I play BKC in company scale (i.e. each unit is a company or, in the case of artillery, a half-battalion) and my OoB philosophy can best be described as “semi-historical”. I’m not a button-and-bayonet counter. I generally presume that my scenarios are occurring in a parallel universe just next door. This means I use historical OoBs to model my units, but I give myself some creative leeway, constructing “typical” units rather than perfect replicas of historical formations.

So the following is my first stab at a British Armoured division for this period. Note that I have extra units which I can swap in if I do want to make a historical formation, but I don’t have enough to do this on the divisional level. This means that I’ll only be able to play small historical battles, but c’est le guerre de plomb. (I should note here that I’ll also building a reinforced British Infantry division, complete with two RTR Matilda regiments, but that’s a future project).

Any comments are welcome. I’ll be following this project with photos as I go along. Hopefully, it’ll inspire some of you out there to take a stab at 1/600. Note that the following forces cost me about USD 35.00, all told: the equivalent of maybe 12 Pendraken 10mm vehicles, so I’m getting around 50 maneuver units for the cost of a dozen in a larger scale. This may not appeal to you WWII fanatics out there, but for those of you who play, say, FWC or CWC – or even those of you who specialize in another front of WWII – 1/600 allows you to take a stab at quickly and cheaply fielding entire armies outside your preferred period or theater.

And I think that you’ll agree, when you see the paint job that I’m going to do on these, that they are quite acceptable for table play – definitely not “counters with bumps” or “bits of rice”, as 2-3mm detractors would have it…

Comments, suggestions and criticism, as always, are welcome.

7th Armored Division, divisional units
 1 CO
 1 FAA
 1 FAO
 1 Grant (HQ escort)
 6 Daimler Recon
 4 25 lb artillery
 3 Engineers
 2 Bofors 40mm AAA
 3 6lb ATG
 12 Trucks

201st Brigade
 1 HQ
 1 FAO
 6 Infantry
 3 Machinegun
 3 Carrier companies
 3 2lb Portees
 2 3” Mortars
 2 25 lb artillery
 13 Trucks

2nd Armored Brigade
 1 Grant HQ
 1 FAO
 2 Infantry
 1 MG
 1 Carrier
 1 2lb Portee
 2 25 lb artillery
 6 Crusaders
 3 Grants
 6 Trucks

4th Armored Brigade
 1 Stuart HQ
 1 FAO
 2 Infantry
 1 MG
 1 Carrier
 1 2lb Portee
 2 25 lb artillery
 6 Stuarts
 3 Grants
 6 Trucks