Back around Black Friday I picked up some of the Dragons Portes miniatures from Gaddis Games. I've really come to love the miniatures Lee Gaddis sells through his shop having painted a USMC platoon made up of his miniatures a year or two ago and these French troops continue to meet the standard I have come to expect. The sculpting is excellent with only a minor issue here and there where a couple of poses were only sculpted with one of their two ammunition pouches and the NCO has a rough patch on his right shoulder joint but those are small issues easily fixed or just not really noticeable on the table at all. All the troops wear the mechanized troops helmet, a very unique helmet which I like more then the Adrien helmet and all the troops are in standard uniforms without the greatcoat which I personally love since I don't care for the greatcoat look. All the riflemen are armed with the MAS-36 rifle which is another thing I really like about these figures because the MAS is one of my favorite rifle but I do wish a few of these guys had the Berthier carbines and maybe MAYBE a MAS-38 sub machine gun but I digress.
When I bought these on Black Friday I got a platoon deal which included three squads of ten men, a medium mortar, and an HQ section. There are 10 separate poses that make up the rifle squad, NCO with a rifle, 7 riflemen, light machine gunner with FM 24/29 and an assistant with a rifle. The HQ had 4 men but one of them who has what looks like a man portable radio at first glance more likely has mortar ammunition as France did not have a man portable radio at the platoon level like the Americans or British and as such he has been moved to the mortar section appropriately. As I said I really liked these models and they paint up beautifully but they do suffer the same fate many metal ranges suffer and that is variety. That 10 man squad is the only one available and it would be nice to see some prone figures but the only ones available are operating a light mortar (not pictured here) and the only other figures I don't own are the light mortars and a Hotchkiss machine gun team. Hopefully this part of the French range will be revisited and expanded just a smidge but in the meantime there is a whole ton of other models in Lee's French range including Alpine troops that I may use to make a French platoon for Narvik.
