Well I've made a decision in respect of my British infantry dilemma for Flames of War, largely due to seeing the pictures of LintMan's Commonwealth Infantry over at lintmanswarblog.blogspot.com. I ordered a blister of the Commonwealth Infantry today, and will be using them for my Mediterranean British/New Zealand Infantry. The plan is to save the Rifle Company Box for a Turning Tide company later on in the piece. Garth impulsed purchased a Panzer Lehr box (cheap, it must be said) a while back, so it'll be nice to have something to face him with, though I imagine I'll get sick of painting infantry! I've also got the Hellfire and Back book on order. In the meantime, I'll finish off my British (Italy) Mortar Platoon and get to work on my British (Italy) Machine-gun Platoon.
Lintman's photographs have motivated me to consider doing some kind of scenic basing. What I'd like to do is base the infantry on quite rocky terrain, for them to take cover behind, with patches of arid grass and the odd olive tree. I've got a vision on what I'd like it to look like, it'll just depend whether I can find the right trees to go with it, or manage to whip them together myself. If anyone knows of any such products please get in touch!
I've been looking at pictures of Cretan landscapes so as to get a feel for what the terrain is like (I'm hoping that the basing will pass for Italy, Crete and Greece). I'd like to use somewhat spindly and asymmetrical trees to try and capture the look from the pictures above. I get the feeling that slightly wind-swept trees (in one direction or another) might be easier to position on the bases as well.
From these next two photos I can see that there is some variation in colour in the shrubs and foliage. To recreate this I might a greater mix of shades of static grass/flock. The photo below shows that Cassino may be more lush (though this may depend on the season, this isn't exactly thorough research), though I think I can probably get away with a slightly more arid Italy (and the photographs from the war may not show a whole lot of forestation).
Cheers!
