Road to the Mid War GT  Chris's New Zealand Divisional Cavalry force Like many of the guys in the Battlefront office I have been inspired by reading Jeffrey Plowman and Malcolm Thomas’ book on the 2nd NZ Divisional Cavalry Regiment in the Mediterranean. After a quick rummage through my figures I found that I already had the Honeys and a few Universal Carriers left over from the first time I got excited about doing a Kiwi force from a few years ago.

For this list I decided to not include some allied British armour – the bias against them was strong – and chose to save my Shermans for a Late War force. After selecting some of the integral assets of the Divisional Cavalry (the Honeys and Carriers), I opted to be supported by 25pdrs and the RAF. I knew that the RAF would be unreliable going into the tournament, but if they managed to kill a German Tiger they would be well worth it. The 25pdrs could do double duty as artillery and fairly effective anti-guns, guarding one of my objectives.

New Zealand Divisional Cavalry Headquarters   Kiwi Divisional Cavalry HQ 2 Stuarts w/ AA MG 135 points Combat Platoons   Light Tank Platoon 3 Stuarts w/ AA MG 225 points Light Tank Platoon 3 Stuarts w/ AA MG 225 points Weapons Platoon   Carrier Platoon 3 Carriers w/ extra hull-mounted MG 125 points Carrier Platoon 3 Carriers w/ extra hull-mounted MG 125 points Carrier Platoon  3 Carriers w/ extra hull-mounted MG 125 points Support Platoons   Field Artillery, Royal Artillery 4 Gun Sections 435 points Sporadic Air Support Hurricane IIC 105 points Total 1500 points

As you can see from the photos I have managed to get the force assembled, although I still need to finish adding the machine-guns to Universal Carriers. I have completed one test carrier and it was pretty straightforward to drill out the mounting and then attach the Bren. Luckily the Kiwis were pretty adept at “acquiring” extra gear during their campaigns so a mixture of British and US equipment seems appropriate for the extra hull-mounted MGs that they tended to attach anywhere there was space. I have a few spare Boys AT rifle figures that I am going to have a crack at cutting up so that I can have some hull mounted AT rifles, just to make the figures look different.

Now painting the force is starting to feel a little daunting… The tanks I expect to be pretty straight forward once I spend some time talking to our painting team, however the numbers of artillery and tank crews are giving me some concerns. As with any new army the key is going to be making sure that every week I knock off a little more, so by then end of this week I need to be undercoating the force, ready to start putting on the base coats next week.  Hopefully in a few weeks I’ll have some photos of the finished articles to share! Chris