Tale of 3 gamers – Chindits, the less travelled path.
Last time out Martin took a look at the US starter box and told us, what he is planning to do with it. At the same time Mark is deep in the process of making close to a million bases for his huge infantry heavy Japanese army, so now the turn has come to me, to tell you what I plan to do with the “British Far East Rifle Company Army Deal” that Battlefront was so kind to send to Breakthrough Assault.
I am sure that you already have seen multiple unboxing videos or box reviews, so let us jump quick and easy over that part and go straight into the part where I reveal my plans…. CHINDITS. As a non-british or American, the Pacific war has very little interest to me. I didn’t have an uncle or grandfather that fought in the jungle or hopped through the islands of the Pacific. So what could possibly catch my interest, well Chindits.
I have encountered the term a few times, while searching the internet for info about various units that fought for the British in the Mid-war period. To make a long story short, the Chindits was a small force established to operate much in the same way as the Long Range Desert Group(LRDG) in North Africa, with the one exception that they would be on foot. They were to penetrate deep behind enemy lines and sabotage and destroy as much as possible and generally be to as much trouble for the japanese as possible.
The new Pacific book offers a full formation of Chindits using one of the Command Cards from the deck.
As you can see it’s purely infantry. Not even a 6pdr platoon makes it into the Formation diagram. But the good news it that the Army Deal contains precisely the models I need to make the HQ and two full strength platoons.
Compared to both the normal Rifle Platoons and the Indian Rifle platoons the Chindits are better. The Chindits are Fearless, Trained (Deadly) and Careful, with both the Standard Rifles and Indian Rifles being Aggressive and only the Indians being Fearless.
With it being all on foot, I have decided to drop the Grant’s and as they also didn’t see service in Burma before January 1944 it seems like the right choice and the Universal Carriers will also have to join the pile for my 8th army in North Africa project since they also are a tank unit.
Even the 25pdrs and 6 pdrs is a stretch from a historical perspective, but with infantry in Mid-War being close to completely helpless versus armoured tank teams, I have decided to keep them out of pure necessity.
The HQ, 2 full infantry platoons, 6x6pdrs and 4x25pdrs amount to 47pt, so that gives a fair amount of points to play with. But with the no tank option it gets interesting.
For my 100pt force I have chosen to add to the formation in the form of a Mortar platoon, a small 2 team MMG platoon, an 8 stand Recce platoon and a gimmick in the form of a 3 stand Command Sabotage Platoon. On top of that an extra 25pdrs battery for both smoke, artillery and direct fire and finally a Hurrican Fighter Bomber Flight as the Chindits in real life was very dependent on airsupport as their only form of heavy weapon support.
Now this list seem very unlikely to ever win a game, but since when has that been important in a game of toy soldiers. I am at least looking forward to get into the process of painting up some lovely sculpted models in some colours that we don’t see to often in the european theatre of war.
That all for now. Happy hobbying.
-Soren-
