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  4. Would it be a good idea ( and commercially viable) to look at the minor WWI powers?

Would it be a good idea ( and commercially viable) to look at the minor WWI powers?

  • WB

    Serbs, Bulgarians, Greeks, Montenegrins, Romanians ( Balkan Wars + WWI)
    Many of these can still be used much later on, including WWII.

    Austria- Hungary?

    Turks?
    Portugese?

  • Hudson Adams

    Absolutely

     

    Time to Make the Plastic!

  • CB

    @Willie Bogaerts would be really cool, but for now it's at least possible to kit ash Bulgarians or turks from the germans

  • BV

    Serbs and Austrians most definitely since that was the heart of the matter, plus Austrians probably lost the most soldiers of any country in that war* and I would not label them as a minor power in that war. Turks in some form would be good to though and upgrade sprue might work for them, and again would not label them as minor (it was an old and sick Empire maybe, but it was still an Empire).

    The real question is should WW1 Italians be done (I want Arditi in armor).

    *edit: I was wrong, France, Russia, and Germany all lost more soldiers each but 1,100,000 is still a pretty big hit to ones military (Turkey lost the most civilians, followed by Russia if the stats are accurate).

  • Yronimos Whateley

    I'm thinking that the WWII Italians from WA's "World Ablaze" line, along with the WA French and German WWI kits, are going to go a long way toward covering some of these minor powers:

    Looks like the WWI German kit's uniforms are a good match for Austro-Hungarians, while some of the WWII Italian caps and helmets seem pretty close to the Austro-Hungarians.  The Italian rifles are not quite right, but look similar enough that I don't think anyone will notice without looking really closely, while the German C-96 pistols and and the heavier machine-guns in the Italian kit ought to be correct (the heavier machine gun would need some minor scratch-built modification, but nothing too elaborate!)

    The WWII Italians themselves are a close match for WWI Italians:  the uniforms should be passable, and the French apparently sold helmets to the Italians so the helmets from the WWI French can be kitbashed onto the italians; the soft caps and hats in the Italian kit should be OK for WWI, the rifles should be correct (though I suspect the WWII version is shortened from the WWI version, it'll surely be close enough at this scale), and the heavier machine guns should be correct.

    So, there might be some minor anachronisms here and there, but kitbashing Italians and Austro-Hungarians seems do-able!

    I haven't looked into the Serbians or Ottomans yet, but maybe some of the various other minor powers are kitbashable from some of the various existing and upcoming WA kits - in addition to the WWII Italians and WWI Germans and French, the upcoming British set and the WWII French Partisans might be some useful sources of bits to work with!

     

  • BV

    @Yronimos Whateley 

    For covering the Ottomans an upgrade sprue for the Germans might be all that is needed, same deal with the Belgians except with an upgrade sprue for the French simply because the base uniforms are the same, though that is up to WA.

    However I think it is smarter to do sets for the Serbs, the Austrians/Austro-Hungarians, and the WWI Italians, in fact from a purely historical perspective I would say they are more important than doing Americans and I will explain why for each.

    The Serbs where a rather colorful force that did include modern armed soldiers with some French equipment but also backwoodsmen with stuff from the 1860's and their arsenal for the war shows this off, it would be hard to do this with just kitbashing, plus Serbia was the second or Third major front in WW1, Millions fought and died there.

     

     

    The Austrians/Austro-Hungarians had different hats, collar of the uniform jacket and web gear from the WW2 Italians, and their main arsenal during the Great War was pretty different from both WW2 Italians and the WW1 Germans particularly in the main battle rifle department. Likewise remember how I said millions died in Serbia, the Austrians lost over a million soldiers fighting in WW1 and calling them a minor power during that war is sort of like calling the UK in the war on Terror a minor power, WW1 is the reason Austria is a bit player in the modern world, before and during WW1 they were a fairly important player in European and world affairs. Speaking frankly WA could have started off with these guys and either Russian or the Serbs.

    Finally, while they do share some webbing and a main battle rifle, WW1 Italian uniforms had pants that where completely different from the WW2 Italians and their infantry uniforms had no lower jacket pockets like they did in WW2. Plus there was also enough Italians running around in different types of body armor and weird helmets and hats to probably warrant doing a set of them without the normal Adriana helmets and have the legs and torsos be separate with 2 swap in armored torsos.

  • Yronimos Whateley

    Can't complain about any of that - for my part, I'd love to see a fairly well-rounded and complete Great War selection!

    And besides, these guys ^^^^ are absolutely begging to be kit-bashed with some retro sci-fi bits into some sort of interplanetary evil empire's army!

     

  • Yronimos Whateley

    Oh, and here's the WWI Italian photo of a machine-gun team c. 1917 I used as a reference - the helmets and uniform collars are definitely different from WA's WWII Italians, and the machine-gun might need some modification for the water-can and belt-fed bits, but everything else is close enough, that I'd be confinced; those helmets are decidedly French:

     

     

     

     

    And some of my reference pictures for Austro-Hungarians:

    (The officer on the right would be difficult or impossible to improvise from WA figures, but the uniforms and helmets are close to WA's WWI Germans, while the guns are a bit closer to the WWII Italians than they are to the Germans' Mausers.  The caps on the left aren't identical to those in the WWI German and French kits, but they're close.  There might be some caps in the French Resistance kit that come close to the one the officer on the right is wearing.  Paining in the appropriate colours would, I think, go a long way toward selling an Austro-Hungarian kitbash on a tabletop.)

     

    Of course, nothing beats a proper, historically-accurate kit! (Except maybe a proper, historically-accurate kit with plenty of extras to get even more use from the kit in different eras, countries, or genres!)

     

    As an aside, one thing I realized when looking at the URL for the French Resistance is that its proper nameis "Partisans 1:  French Resistance"... I'm pretty sure a lot of us are assuming or at least hoping there'll be a "Partisans 2..." kit of any kind - it's a fantastic and broadly useful set!  But, I think most of us are assuming the second kit will be WWII French Resistance, too - but, the way the label is working, I'm guessing it might as easily be Partisans in another country or historical context, so it might be almost anything... I wonder what WA has up their sleeves?  I think the French Resistance kit lends itself almost as well to WWI gaming as it does WWII, and I'm betting Partisans 2 will be useful also!

     

  • BV

    @Yronimos Whateley

    Given that Austria in WW1 is almost as key in WW1 as either the UN or the USA  is in Desert Storm, WA should just do them and probably do them after the British and with Russians if not immediate next in the WW1 line up. They were significant enough I am surprised they don’t have their own post thread yet. (Plus they seemed to have worn their jacket collars different than the WW2 Italians).

    Serbs are kind of in the same boat.

    Given they where a finalist in the set contest WW1 Italian Arditi should at least be given thought if not already planned

    The WW2 partsians are useful to kitbash up WW1 partsians in some parts of the world, (they are a little too heavy on the SMGs for out of the box use though if you ask me).

    I think of the nations mentioned the  Bulgarians, Greeks, Montenegrins, Romanians and Portugese are probably the ones we all need to discuss. Particularly the Montenegrins since they lasted as a nation for something like a year if I recall right and could probably be covered by the Serbs. 

  • Yronimos Whateley

    I think that's fair enough:  without options, I think we can improvise (especially given that at that scale, uniforms that are "close enough" are easy to fudge, if the helmets and any distinctive weapons are close enough to "sell" the illusion), but I'd rather have options, especially accurate ones, if practical!  (And the Arditi in particular are definitely going to be tough to improvise on.)

    And yes:  the Partisans absolutely need a little creative kitbashing around the wealth of SMGs!  We could definitely use more weapons that might have been available to civilians before WWII, to really balance the kit out for earlier eras, and that sort of thing would still be useful for WWII:  revolvers, shotguns, hunting rifles, surplus arms from earlier wars, and the like....  I don't know what WA has planned for "Partisans II" and beyond, but "Partisans" for other conflicts in other times times and places would definitely be something I'd buy.

    Maybe the Belgians should be considered, too - I supposed the French kit might be a good start on kitbashing them, but the Belgians actually had some pretty distinctive uniforms and hats, it seems - so:

    • Belgians - fairly distinctive uniforms; you might be able to substitute the WWI French torsos and forage(?) caps, but it's not a very close match from what I can tell
    • Bulgarians - fairly distinctive uniforms; you would, I think, be able to fudge somthing from a hypothetical WWI Russian kit
    • Greeks - might be kitbashable, with a little fudging - in some pictures I've seen, the uniforms don't look exceedingly different from the Germans (though I have seen other pictures with a rather... unusual shoes-and-tights combination - they might thank you for subbing in something else!), and a few soft flat caps might be sourced from the French Resistance, or perhaps from the WWI Germans or upcoming WWI British kits; the Greeks apparently also used French helmets, the delightful Chauchat machine guns, and Manlicher rifles and carbines, so the French WWI kit might come in handy for kitbashing! 
    • Montenegrans - might be kitbashable, with a little fudging - the uniforms don't look very far off from the Germans (and it looks like the Serbians, as Brian mentions, would probably work), and those soft garrison/overseas-style caps might be souced from the French Resistance; the Montegnegrans apparently also used French helmets, the ever-amusing Chauchat machine guns, and Mauser rifles
    • Portuguese - fairly distinctive uniforms; at a stretch, you might be able to fudge some WWI British torsos and brodie helmets, the bluish-grey colour the Portuguese seemed to use for the uniforms might help disguise the British origin, but this is probably not a very close match; the Portuguese apparently did use some British SMLEs, Lewis guns, and helmets, as well as Luger pistols and the almost ubiquitous Mauser, so the British and German kits would come in handy for a kitbashing for a rather interesting and unusual subject (I don't think I'd ever thought about the Portuguese role in WWI before!)
    • Romanians - you might be able to kitbash something out of German torsos, French helmets, and French rifles (as a really rough substitute for the correct Mannlicher rifles) and outrageous Chauchat machine guns; the Romanian caps, however, are quite distinctive - I'm no expert by any stretch of imagination, but I'd be surprised if you'll find anything like them outside of a proper Romanian kit!

     

    For kitbashing, I'm not paying very close attention to the officers or gasmasks in these armies, though - at a glance, many of the officers in particular had some very distinctive, odd, and probably hard to find uniforms, so good luck! 

    Otherwise, it looks like the WWI French and Germans were a great place for Wargames Atlantic to start, for providing bits for kitbashing projects, and I'm thinking a Russian kit might be a good next step, now that I've seen how closely the Russian and Bulgarian uniforms resembled each other; Russian bits - helmets, caps, rifles, pistols, etc. - would surely come in handy for this sort of project, too.

    That said, a proper, dedicated, historically accurate kit for these "minor" power armies is always better than improv and fudging with other kits, wherever economically practical  :)

     

  • DS

    Ottomans

  • CB

    @Brian Van De Walker absolutely, but for the part about the Serbs, they were equipped with French things from 1916, at this time pretty much all the military is wearing French gear, only the Adrian helm was modified with the Serbian eagle, for the really colorful force was more a fact before the Serbian defeat of 1915

  • PC

    Austro Hungarians could double as WW2 Hungarians, though. The cut of the uniform was similar, the caps were similar, and Hungary sported a WW1-pattern Stahlhelm during Round 2 as well. Then, Mannlicher rifles, Steyr pistols would be used by both versions, and a couple Danuvia SMGs and ZB 26 LMGs would touch up the WW2 selections.

    Not to mention that there are no plastic WW2 Hungarians, either.

  • JTam

    @Paul Cziganj 

    Excellent point.  

    WW2 Hungarians are perhaps too niche for plastic.   But a WW1/WW2 kit ala the WGA French Infantry kit would be exceptional.

  • PC

    @JTam That's it, there's not enough demand for either of these armies, but for both ?

  • MD

    Aside from anything else, the Ottomans were the major opponents for the Allied forces (primarily British Empire) in the middle east. 

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