Hy folks,

Several people from the DPG’s english forum recently discovered our French Milicia Project.

At first we were glad to read your enthusiasm.

Then we realised we didn’t communicate at all on the english speaking forum. Such a shame.

I’m beginning to do it today.

We are Molpov (Meulpeu) and me (Moulardo).

Molpov lives in the Alp mountains, along the ski slopes, and I (Moulardo) live on the banks of the Loire, amongst the vineyards and the Châteaux de la Loire.

Each of us began on our own before we discovered that there was another one, somewhere in France.

We both thought it was necessary to remember the grim past of the french collaboration with the german power.

By chance, Meulpeu is mainly interested by the graphical work, and I’m mainly interested by the ludical subjects. Therefore it was easy to work together. The distribution of our work isn’st so schematic, of course, and every little step reflects lengthy discussions and controversies among ourselves.

During next weeks, I will attempt to summarize all the work we already published.

And from now, I will translate each new topic about our French Milicia Project in order to publish it on the English Speaking topic.

For french speaking members, you will find our work at https://www.devil-pig-games.com/forum/?action=viewtopic&t=11076.5

See you!

Moulardo.

Thank you for sharing your stunning work Molpov and Moulardo! I'm very grateful for you translating to English.

I have seen your work as I scoured the forums for custom units months ago. I was impressed by the variety. They are wonderful. Now with translations I will be able to use them. Thank you so much.

Hi, I love to have a dedicated card deck. In my opinion it’s much easier to take out your correct deck then preparing another deck by adding and removing cards. The removal of cards is one of the most disliked aspects of old school Heroes of Normandie setup. It just takes too much time. Which brings me to my next point.

May I suggest some future proofing for the cards/deck? As you know, Heroes of Stalingrad will see the new and improved 50 card decks with the alternate bonuses. These decks already exist for Shadows over Normandie and now also for Black Reach. People, me included, seem to like these smaller decks because the removal of cards is no longer necessary. Plus the alternate bonus gives useless cards still a purpose.

So what about a dedicated Militia deck with faction specific alternate bonuses?

Still, when the Militia forms an ally with the Germans, you’ll need a system of a modded German deck.

Dear soldiers,

After the Action Cards topic, there comes the Anti-Cards Topic.

"Anti-Cards" ? What is that ?

Among our ludic solutions to weaken French Milicia, is the use of Anti-Cards.

Our idea is to add to the Axis deck a small number of Action Cards which handicaps the Axis player, instead of helping it. These disadvantageous cards are the Anti-Cards.

We created 2 kinds of Anti-Cards :

. the Anti-Cards Doubtful Recruitment,

. the Anti-cards Perfidious Cards (only a working name, we must find a better name)

The cards Doubtful Recruitment :

Our purpose is to reflect the presence in the French Milicia units of a large number of men afflicted with dramatic shortcomings (alcoholism, delinquency, psychiatric disorders, too old to serve, etc.). Indeed, French Milicia, faced with recruitment difficulties, gradually lowered its minimum recruitment requirements.

This Action Card hasn’t any effect.

This Anti-Card may be discarded during reserve phase, as every Action Card.

It wastes pointlessly one of the four places on the Milicia player’s hand for the entire turn.

The Perfidious Cards :

They are more problematic fot the Axis player.

Our purpose is to reflect the mediocre training within French Milicia and Franc-Garde, and their bad operationnal performances as soon as they had to face a serious opponent.

The Perfidious Cards give a tactival bonus to the Axis player’s opponent (the Allied player).

For example, the Action Card "Inconscience Juvénile" (Youth Recklessness) gives to the Allied player a bonus for a Firing Action against an infantry target.

After having drawn a Perfidious Card, the Axis Player has two choices :

. he can keep it on his hand, and then avoid giving a tactical bonus to his opponent,

. or he can give it to his opponent, in order to clear his hand. In this case, he will suffer from the tactical bonus he gave to his opponent.

Notice, that Perfidious Cards can never be discarded by the Axis player.

First settings before testing this system

Number of Anti-Cards:

With Anti-Cards, we want to reduce the Axis Player’s hand to only 3 cards on his own benefit.

Then, it needs 10 Anti-Cards in a 40 cards deck.

We will then creat 10 Anti-Cards :

6 Anti-Cards Doubtful Recruitment and 4 Perfidious Cards

OR

5 Anti-Cards Doubtful Recruitment and 5 Perfidious Cards.

This number of 10 Anti-Cards remains the same if the Axis player chooses to have a larger deck.

Admittedly, the proportion of Anti-Cards is decreased, but so is it for the good Action Cards.

When must the Axis player add the Anti-Cards his deck ?:

All 10 Anti-Cards must be added to the deck as soon as there is at least one French Milicia unit in the Axis army composition.

A Recruitment Option will soon allow to remove the Perfidious Cards from the deck.

That’s all Folks !

Please give us your opinion about these Anti-Cards and please, please, please, tell me all the englis mistake I made in this text.

Moulardo.

Dear members of the forum,

Today, I’m pleased to present several Recruitment Tiles, recruitment options and tokens.

1.The FIRST TRENTAINE OF CLAMART.

Its cost (70 points) and its victory value (8 victory points) are only written to introduce the debate about them. We didn’t even begin to calculate them.

French Militia’s organisation was :

Main (hand) : 4 men and their chief;

Dizaine (ten) : 2 Mains

Trentaine (thirty) : 3 Dizaines (a small section)

Centaine (hundred) : 3 Trentaines and a Command Section.

Each capital city was supposed to have at least its Centaine.

We choose to introduce one of the Parisian’s Centaines and to billet its three Trentaines in the suburbs, the 1st Trentaine of Clamart, the 2nd Trentaine of Meudon and the 3rd Trentaine of Saint-Ouen.

2. The 2nd Quinzaine of the 1st Trentaine

It is a very classic combat group.

As I said, the Franc-Garde divided each of its Trentaine into 3 Dizaines.

We tried to keep this historical organisation.

But we realized that this tactical scale (10 men per OR) was not suitable for HoN.

We then distributed the 30 Franc-Gardes of a Trentaine over 2 groups (and not 3). The first group is on the Recruitement Tile, the 2nd is this Recruitement Option.

In order to remember the historic label « Dizaine », we named them « 1st Quinzaine » and « 2nd Quinzaine ».

The 1st Quinzaine is on the Recruitment Tile, and the 2nd Quinzaine is this Recruitment Option.

May be we will change the name « Quinzaine ».

3. The counter of Chef Moreau: Moreau is the Chief of the 1st Trentaine of Clamart.

His name has no historic reality. Don’t look for a real sadly famous Milician.

4. The Franc-Gardes

These are the Franc-Gardes counters of the 1st Trentaine. Franc-Gardes of the 2nd and 3rd Trentaines will be the same, except their colours, of course.

It is important not to confuse Franc-Garde (« LA Franc-Garde ») and Franc-Gardes (« LES Franc-Gardes »):

"Franc-Garde" was the name of the military corps.

The Franc-Garde (LA Franc-Garde) consisted of volunteers, the Franc-Gardes (LES Franc-Gardes), typically enrolled after a year's membership in the Militia, aged 18 to 45 years old, who were paid and lived in barracks.

The "Franc-Gardes" were « technically trained and prepared for combat, in order to be ready to maintain order ». Franc-Gardes made up the bulk of French Militia’s troops. They were supposed to be shock troops in the service of the National Revolution of the Maréchal Pétain.

Franc-Garde had its magazine : L’assaut (The Assault »).

In reality, Franc-Garde never became an effective military unit, and has benn defeated as soon as it was confronted to a well-organized opponent.

Originally dramaticaly poorly equiped, because of the occupant's refusal to let Vichy France have a military capability, Franc-Garde only began to be better equipped since spring 1944, when it was authorised to pick up light weapons in the French Armistice Army’s stock and to keep all english and american pradropped stuff it picked up before French Resistance did it.

Franc-Garde was never authorised to possess heavy weapon or armoured vehicles.

French Militia’s enrolment, originally targeting ideologically motivated recruits which often possessed combat experience, became relatively quickly very shady : common criminals, socially excluded people, Refusers of STO (compulsory labour service in Germany), psychiatric sufferers, aging war veterans, …

Because of this recruits’s poor value and the lack of military assets, French Militia and Franc-Garde always remained a mediocre combat force, and never had the German’s confidence.

We choosed to simulate this mediocrity through 2 ways :

. the addition of the Character Trait Cowards on the back face of the Franc-Garde counter. It is mostly symbolic.

. the addition of the anti-cards (see the anticards topic).

To be continued.

Moulardo.

Looks very nice as well! Interesting that you used the history so much and translated that to these units.

Why did you chose to make the cowardice mostly symbolic?

Another option to make these troops worse than the more organised armys, might be to reduce the to hit bonus to +1?

Today, the second large Recruitment Option of the 1ère Trentaine de Clamart.

It is a Motorised OR.

It gives one Peugeot DMA and one Peugeot DMA with Rifle Machine

Here are the counters of the Peugeot DMA et Peugeot DMA 24/29

To be continued.

Not a Bren but a FM 24/29.

MAC = Manufacture d'Armes de Châtellerault

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FM_24/29_light_machine_gun

Citation de bartdevuyst Le [18/12/2018] à 16:32

I think you mean a Machine Gun instead of a Rifle Machine?

Citation de Moomer Le [18/12/2018] à 19:27

Not a Bren but a FM 24/29.

MAC = Manufacture d'Armes de Châtellerault

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FM_24/29_light_machine_gun

It is indeed a Mac 24/29, the most common french Army's "Fusil mitrailleur", the french equivalent of the english Bren.

I thought the correct translation of the french word "Fusil Mitrailleur", was Rifle Machine. It is then a Light Machine Gun.

Anyway, we gave to it the same combat values that of FFI Citroen T23. 