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The First Indochina War as always been a conflict that has intrigued me and when i saw Red Star Miniatures' Dien Bien Phu range i couldn't help but pick up some of the figures. I was really impressed with the sculpts and decided to expand my small force into a platoon sized element. After doing a little research and internet searching i found a could color scheme to paint up the paras in their TAP47-52 uniforms and i think they came out pretty well.

First up is a close up of an NCO





I don't quite have the bases done but that's mostly because I've never don tall grass before and am unsure how to go about it, so ideas are most welcome.

Anyway, next up is my command section with an officer, two adjutants, and a medic.



And my three complete rifle squads







I also have an M8 greyhound in the works to provide support for these guys and sooner or later some Viet Minh OpFor

For the bases, use some sand and PVA, add a few small stones, When it is dry paint it with a sand or earth colour, and then ink wash. Then dot the base with a few spots of PVA and sprinkle on some static grass. You can get clumps of long grass from ebay or modelling shops which are also good.

Apologies if the above sounds like advice on sucking eggs....

I know the pictures aren't great, but I've done the first half of your suggestion. Its just doing tall grass that i haven't done before. I may hold for now and do a little more research because i want to see if these guys are also appropriately equipped for Algeria, if they are i may do something different on the bases so that they can be correct for both conflicts.

Hence my comment about sucking eggs...

These maybe what you are looking for, http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Mixed-size-Static-Grass-tufts-Self-Adhesive-basing-wargame-miniature-models-/281064401092?pt=UK_Trains_Railway_Models&var=&hash=item4170be68c4

Another way to make long grass is to use the bristles of a yard brush.

20mm? You can use groovy vehicles like the Chaffee light tank.

What I do with that kind of base is build up around the figure's individual base with putty, to fair it in. Then use sand or something. If you want long grass, the Army Painter and similar tufts are very good.

28mm actually, but most vehicles i need are in that scale too.

Would it look odd if i added another layer of sand since the first layer of sand looks a bit light on some of my bases and then did tall grass and foliage?

If you put more sand on you could try putting the glue around the lower bit of base outside the figure's baseplate. Then hopefully the sand would build up to the level of the baseplate. However it might not work that well, but you could try one and see how it does.

If you are going to add stones and tall grass that can be used to conceal the edge of the figures's bases.

Not everyone worries about concealing the figure's base anyway.

I think i'll at least give it a try, good basing helps bring miniatures to life.

Which brings me to my next question, for those who might know, is if there is a good way to make foreign legion troops for indochina?

If I remember correctly the foreign legion troops That were deployed to Indochina were Paratroopers so your Paratroopers should suffice. Also epic minis I have been thinking of getting some of these myself after seeing these I think I may.

There were foreign legion paratroopers but my reference books say that foreign legion regulars also made up a size-able portion of the mobile groups as well but i have a plan to convert warlords plastic marines into generic colonial infantry. The minis themselves are gorgeous and my photos don't really do them justice. I highly recommend them.

I just finished assembling the tamiya 1/48th scale greyhound to give these guys some light armor support

More stuff to present for my slowly growing French army

Test scheme for a French NCO in the M1947 fatigues





and a 105mm howitzer

It's fun to use the left over WW2 equipment in a different setting. Korean War offers a similar opportunity.

Since both sides used what ever they could get their hands on in Indochina theres a huge variety of surplus Allied and Axis weapons and equipment that were used.

Here's an in progress shot of my French regulars



I'll finish up these guys along with the chaffee and by then my deuce and a halfs will be here and once those are done i can move on to the viet minh forces

It's been a while but i got some more stuff in for my First Indochina War forces. Unfortunately due to school, work, and various social obligations always seeming to get in the way I haven't had time to start painting any of the new stuff.

I bought a couple of warlord's 2 1/2 ton trucks for missions during the battle of RC4. Warlord has been pretty hit and miss with me but i think the trucks are pretty good models. I still need to put the headlights on but since the Viet Minh owned the roads at night I'm not sure whether or not i will bother with it.



Only Red Star has made any actual Viet Minh figures so far and while i will eventually get some i wanted to have more rifle armed guys to mix in with the high number of sub machine gun guys Red Star put in their units so i bought some of the Viet Cong armed with SKS rifles as well as 2 with bazookas from The Assault Group.



On top of this stuff I made an interesting find at a flea market over the weekend. There was a table set up selling a bunch of poorly painted and beat up 1/35th scale modern armor but there were a ton of small boxes loaded with extra weapons and gear of varying scale as well as sand bags and some scratch built terrain. The guy at the table gave me a box and said for $10 i could have everything i could fit in there so i loaded the box up with the sand bags, camo netting made from gauze, the scratch built terrain and then i started going through all the boxes of weapons and that when i found these,



3 M18 recoiless rifles. Eyeballing them at the table i thought they were about the right size and i got pretty excited since i haven't been able to find anybody who makes them in 28mm but when i got home and compared them to some of my stuff they looked a little big.





In all honesty though, I don't know much about these weapons or how big they are compared to the average person so they may be the right scale. For those plus my box of stuff for $10 it was still totally worth it, now i just need to make some crews for them.

I haven't been completely satisfied with the look of my paratroopers so i decided to dry brush them with some khaki and I'm pretty happy with the results





and i finished the Chaffee which i also think came out pretty well

i have 10 of the viet minh painted up and i think i found a way to do their bases that i like

Dont forget the 251...

0_o

Got a small Viet Minh force painted up and ready for some gaming against my french paratroops

Recoilless Rifles look about right size to me...

Nice Viet Minh.

thank you

Cool stuff. Love that you're including trucks. More games need trucks

thanks. the trucks are going to be good for scenarios covering the battle of route colonial 4 and the battle of an khe

The M18's should be just over 5 feet in length, so about the height of a slightly crouching miniature, so those ones are pretty big. I think though, that with the camo netting, sand bags and some paint, they'll still look the part.

The way that I look at it is that putting on a historical miniatures game is like producing a historical war movie. You need to decide how much you care if someone in the audience says something like "the barrel on that M18 is way too long. They were only 5ft 1 in long and that thing is at least 7 feet!" or "The uniform jacket of the time had 7 brass buttons and these guys only have 6 and they're steel."

If you are really worried on the size, just use it as an M20 as that was nearly 7ft long... and they had them...




And for comparison an M18...




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Dunno if you have seen these...

Big P-- great pictures. I also forgot the M20 even existed. Good call on that.

Thanks Big P, the guns i have do seem more M20 sized so i may just go that route. i have seen a couple of those photos but the one in color is interesting. Is it a South Vietnamese greyhound?

frozenwastes i get that feeling a lot with historical stuff. If someone can actually walk up to me and tell me that i did the uniforms wrong i will give them one of 2 responses. The first is to point at a table and tell them to go set down and twidle their thumbs while i play games and have fun OR i will start asking them questions about the uniforms so that i can get some blanks filled in.

Also been working on this sikorsky h-19

The Greyhound is a French one... dont forget, most of their troops were Vietnamese and Vietnam wasnt partitioned at this point.