Great War Germans

So, my good friend Bob over at Back to the Keep, has been passive-aggressively cajoling me to finish up a few languishing projects. Specifically, our 10mm Great War  project. 

Some years back we found out we had a mutual interest in the war. For those unfamiliar with the American attitude towards the war, its not much higher on people's radars here in the states than the Spanish-American War, War of 1812, French & Indian War (I could go on). We seem to think of it more as a practice round for WW2. Which is understandable since the US barely got its feet wet in the trenches by European standards. 

None the less, we embarked on a quest to do some small wargaming projects in preparation for the 100th anniversary. If you clicked on the link up above you'll see Bob has finished off his Tommies/Stephens (I think   Stephen is what the Canadians called their soldiers. Nobody look it up though.) Naturally, his paint job is of a much higher quality than mine. I really do despise painting. In retrospect, I probably chose the wrong hobby.

After seeing his results I resolved to finish off my Fritz's once and for all. 

I chose to represent late war Germans.

I painted and based pretty much all day long and finally finished up around 1:45am. I'm a night owl by nature so it works out fine for me. The total force composition is 21 regular infantry bases, 13 Sturmtruppen bases, 6 machine guns, 3 field artillery pieces, and 1 command base.

Up close...THE HUN

I based the Sturmtruppen 3 figures to a base to differentiate them from the Vanilla Fritz's in the force. I still need to paint their camo helmet designs, probably get to that later this week.

Small details like this are why my mother frowned
upon this hobby when I was younger.

This guy needs something to justify his upright binoculars. 

Unfortunately, I'm hardly done with this force. I need to sexy up the bases a little bit so they have some more visual appeal on the table. I'm open to suggestions. I tried a few different barbed wire bases, some better than others. They each took me around 10 minutes to get right, and with 34 bases the tax on my free time just doesn't add up. Maybe I'll only do a few with wire, some others with random battlefield debris, crumbling brick walls, dead horses...who knows.