Mike's Doughboys - Progress Report

I've been working on my doughboys over the last few weeks and so far I've got a platoon mostly finished, save for the basing (more on that below), and a platoon of FT-17 tanks. On the workbench, I have another infantry platoon and all of the attachments, such as flame-throwers, infantry guns, etc. Once those are done, I should be well placed to have a game with Patrick soon!

Let's start with the infantry. Americans seem to have spent most of their time fighting the Germans in the woods during the Great War, from Belleau Wood to the Argonne. So I decided to base my troops in a shattered wood scene, trying to match this famous photo:

So I got stuck in grabbing some twigs from the backyard and gluing them to my bases. Pro-tip: try and make sure there are some sturdy twigs with a strong superglue bond so that you can pick up your bases using these and not the figures themselves. The bayonets are pretty fragile and I've had several snap off by handling them. So the trees will serve as a hand handle.

Then there's the tanks. The US primarily used the FT-17 tank. Although American-made versions, called the M1917 Light Tank, were inbound from the states, the US had to make due with French-built ones in the meantime. Had the war gone on into 1919, the US tanks would have arrived and replaced the old clapped out French versions.

This means that the American-crewed FTs were painted in French camouflage. So if you've got a French army you can use them as US tanks if you wish. French schemes are pretty garish, so I chose a simple more muted combination based on this illustration:

For painting, I chose the below pictured colors and used technical pens to bring out the panel lines and to also provide black-lining between the camo colors.

Anyway, that's all I've got to report for now! Tune in next time, hopefully for a little gun action.