French Resistance Ideas

I've had this on the bookshelf for a couple of years and originally bought it for the Ministry of the Interior to read, as her family live less than ten minutes away from the area in which the events took place. However, after my recent trip to Brittany, I've decided to read up on the FFI, SoE and the SAS in the region partly out of historical interest but also with a view to wargaming potential.

The book is actually very good and a bit of a page turner. It's packed with interesting detail and some dramatic real life incidents that are described in depth from the personal perspective of the men on the ground. It's given me a lot of food for thought and I reckon there's some mileage in a 15mm approach using Peter Pig figures and vehicles.

There's obviously the French Resistance range to use, together with some of the SCW figures in berets for the FFI. The SAS are covered by the British Paras range, with some judicious headswapping and perhaps a bit of green stuff, with a 'Normandy Jeep' also available for transport. The Milice can be found in the SCW range again, perhaps with a few Adrian helmet headswaps, while the Germans are easy to select from the relevant packs in the PBI range.

The civilian vehicles are available from Peter Pig and QRF, while the Germans can use some of the Zvezda Opel Blitz trucks to keep the cost down. There are also plenty of suitable military vehicles to hand, especially ex-French early war armoured cars and trucks that would be the sort of thing that rear echelon troops might use to track down the Maquis. And Old Glory even do a Lysander in 1/100th scale.

The rules would have to be the key element of the set up. A conventional set like FoW just wouldn't work for what I'm thinking of, so I have something like PITS or MOCB in mind, with one side trying to locate and/or destroy the other, either by searching for arms caches, hideouts, dropzones etc or by setting up ambushes, sabotaging railway lines, blowing up bridges or whatever. I might try to work out something based around AK47 mechanics as a first step.

Interesting stuff.