Partisans, Resistance Fighters and irregular forces were a vital part of the European experience of the Second World War. Everywhere the Nazis conquered, they had to face determined, fierce resistance, sapping at their strength and resources. Partisans and Resistance fighters took up arms at immense personal cost and make for interesting opportunities for tabletop action. I picked up the Wargames Atlantic French Resistance (1) box to put together a Partisan force – let’s see how it went!
Review
As one of WA’s earlier kits, this is a half-frame kit, a small sprue repeated several times in the box (a solid eight sprues of four bodies each). That means it’s a pretty simple kit – four bodies (leg and torso as a single piece), with a huge range of arms, weapons and heads. 14 heads and 11 weapon options with a smattering of knives, pouches and ammo means that even with the relatively restricted body range you’re able to get a lot of different poses and variety – even over 32 models if you’re careful everyone should look nicely different.
As a French Resistance kit, everything in here is themed around the weapons and clothing that can be seen in photos of urban French resistance and Maquis fighters. Trousers, open coats and a motorcycle jacket, berets, slouch caps and a nice bowler and fedora – you’d ideally have some cigarette holding hands and smoking heads (thinking about it, you can get these from the WA German Sentries kit), but other than that it’s perfectly themed for French, Belgian and Dutch resistance fighters. Weapons are much the same, mixed between French, German and British variants with a heavy focus on SMGs. You get a two STENs and MP-40s per sprue, as well as a lovely, very finely scaled Grease Gun. Rifles are thinner on the ground – two per sprue, with British and German pistols and a Bren gun making up the rest of the weapons.
It’s a simple, straightforward kit, with a good range of options. It’s easy to build and has more than enough variety to satisfy. I like that – sometimes you just want a kit that’s very easy to build. With a campaign on the way, this is absolutely ideal to get a wide variety of partisans on the table as quickly as possible, and the variety of spares will let me adapt some uniformed models from different combatants to a slightly scrappier look.
Some of WA’s early kits suffered a little from soft details, but that isn’t the case here, with nicely crisp raised detail that makes painting quick. I moved between a restricted range of contrast paints with very little subsequent highlighting, and with very little effort they look pretty good!
Scale
Wargames Atlantic’s World Ablaze range for WW2 is on the slighter end of second world war plastics, and I really like this look. They’re mostly striding or walking rather than in the power crouch of a lot of WW2 plastics, with hands and heads finer than in many other kits. They work as a good mid point between Warlord’s heroic scale and slighter metals:
Pleasantly, they scale well with all Victrix and Wargames Atlantic WW2 (and WW1!) ranges, making kitbashing very doable. WA tends to challenge the limits of what’s possible (or perhaps even sensible) with fine detail on gun stocks with its historicals ranges and this is no exception – there are gorgeous, very thin details to the weapons in this kit, giving them a very “real” look. Having said that, if you can get one of the Stens off the sprue without breaking it, let me know – you’ll know the one.
Kitbashing
While as-is this kit is absolutely based around urban, British-supplied resistance in Western Europe, you can absolutely use it for other fronts and other time periods. The bodies all sit somewhere between the 1910s and 1940s – including the motorcycle jacket – and are generic enough to be just about anywhere in Europe. Most of the weapons are quite distinctive – lots of German and British submachine guns – but the rifles are generically Lee-Enfieldish enough to fit in anywhere and, for the pedant, the supplied Bren will stand in for the widespread in Eastern Europe Czech ZB-30.
With no additions or changes beyond weapon choice, you can portray armed civilians between the wars very easily – stay away from the STEN guns here – giving this kit a very broad appeal for Ireland, the Spartacist Uprising, Spanish Civil War or any Peaky Blinders nonsense you fancy.
Mixing components from First World War Wargames Atlantic kits will give your resistance fighters an earlier feel (or that they’re bringing old weapons out for later conflicts). Using British, French and German weapon arms works well with no chopping or gap filling, and – just about, if you can ignore the slightly wrong collars – gives you more options as a plastic kit for the Irish War of Independence, Easter Rising or Spartacist Uprising:
I’m building most of mine as irregular Yugoslavian Partisans – a group well armed, equipped and organised enough to have regular battalions in almost-uniform. As a result, the civilian bodies work fairly well but they won’t be perfect for fitting in with more uniformed squads. Instead, this is all about head choice – using the side caps in the kit (two per sprue) as the Titovka cap. To pick up more, I’ve used a few spare heads from an old sprue of Warlord Soviets. This gives the squad a slightly uniform look perfect for irregular partisans:
Extending the Yugoslavian partisan theme, I’ve taken some of the heads and arms and combined them with the Victrix Germans kit to portray partisans in looted/recovered kit. The heads work well, though variably as the neck attachments are different for each body. Arms largely work, but you’ll need to do a little gap filling:
If you’d like your Resistance models to look Eastern European – perhaps as Soviet Partisans, Polish Resistance or other Soviet-supplied forces perfect for our Eastern Front Summer – kitbashing with the Warlord Soviets (which gives you a ton of spare weapons) isn’t perfectly straightforward as the warlord bodies are significantly wider. However, if you’re a better gap filler than me you’ll be alright with it, and I do like the look of civilians armed with the Degtyaryov or PpSh:
Overall
With 32 Partisans in the box, picking this up doesn’t just get you a force for games like Chain of Command, 0200 Hours, Bolt Action or V for Victory, but also gives you a lot of spare bits for spreading out into any other projects requiring civilians, irregular forces or scavenged kit. While I hope it gets bulked up to a full sprue kit, perhaps just by adding in another four-six body poses (or female bodies and heads!), it is a fantastic, functional and fun kit – and the only extant plastics for partisans, resistance and civilians as it is! I’m pleased to have picked it up and if there’s partisans and resistance in your future, this is a strong recommend.
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