[Global 1940] The Free French/Vichy French


  • @CWO:

    It would be nice if the non-infantry French sculpts in Europe 1940 were unique French designs – but although that’s not the case, one point in their favour is that they add up to quite a bit of diversity if you combine the 1st edition and 2nd edition sculpts.  France’s 1940 equipment sculpts replicate the Soviets ones in each game; in the 1st edition, this gives France a mixture of Russian, American and British designs, while the 2nd edition replaces most of the American and British designs with Rusian ones and adds a new AAA unit in the form of a Russian-design sculpt.  And in a sense, that patchwork diversity conveys a suitable impression that the Free French (if they’re given the 1940 sculpts) are using equipment from their fellow Allied powers.  There’s a scene at the beginning of the 1944 Humphrey Bogart movie Passage to Marseille in which a squadron of American-built B-17s is overflying Germany on a night-time mission.  Searchlights reach up from the ground towards the planes, and the camera zooms in on one of the bombers as a searchlight beam runs over the fuselage; the beam reveals that the bomber carries the Croix de Lorraine insignia of the Free French forces, and at that moment the musical score of the film strikes up a few bars of Louis Ganne’s patriotic “Marche Lorraine.”  I don’t know if C.d.G. has ever seen that movie, but I’m sure he’d like it.  Two of Bogart’s co-stars are Michele Morgan (who really is French), and Claude Rains (who isn’t, but who famously played Captain Renault in Casablanca, another movie where the Croix de Lorraine pops up early in the film with suitable musical accompaniment.)  The DVD release of the film also includes a bonus mini-documentary on the FF.

    Aaaaaaahhhhhhh  but only a true Frenchman would know that already !


  • @CWO:

    It would be nice if the non-infantry French sculpts in Europe 1940 were unique French designs – but although that’s not the case, one point in their favour is that they add up to quite a bit of diversity if you combine the 1st edition and 2nd edition sculpts.  France’s 1940 equipment sculpts replicate the Soviets ones in each game; in the 1st edition, this gives France a mixture of Russian, American and British designs, while the 2nd edition replaces most of the American and British designs with Rusian ones and adds a new AAA unit in the form of a Russian-design sculpt.  And in a sense, that patchwork diversity conveys a suitable impression that the Free French (if they’re given the 1940 sculpts) are using equipment from their fellow Allied powers. {snip}

    I agree with CWO Marc - that mixture of Russian, American, and British designs was what the E40.1 Russians were using as well. In both E40.1 and E40.2, the French pieces, sans Infantry, were a blue copy of whatever the Russians were using in that edition. The difference was that Hasbro/Wizards/AH “Russified” the Russians in the Second Coming of E40. This lead to the French pieces being strictly Russians in blue in E40.2.

    All of that said, there are a couple of other options for depicting French units on a map of World War II.

    One way is to go old school - buy a copy of The World at War (boardgamegeek.com/boardgameexpansion/3618/world-war) and you’ll receive in among the pieces in that game a set of pieces - infantry, tanks, fighters, bombers, a factory, an AAA, subs, transports, battleships, carriers - in a shade of blue paler than the French in E40. Are there many? No. Is it cheap? Depends on your online sales and auction (read: eBay) skills, as this isn’t really in print any more. But it is an option.

    Another way is to invest in some patience. HBG is in the process of bringing out their own line-up of French units. This will be a “complete set” - everything you need to play E40 (except, curiously enough, AAA) in a shade of blue that is supposed to be closer to the E40 French. How close? Anybody who knows isn’t talking, so that’s a wild card. Still, once it becomes available (something I personally expect to happen either later this year or early next year), that will be a great option. It’s just not an option you can use today.

    And now, you know some more about more French for your A&A.

    -Midnight_Reaper


  • @Midnight_Reaper:

    The difference was that Hasbro/Wizards/AH “Russified” the Russians in the Second Coming of E40. This lead to the French pieces being strictly Russians in blue in E40.2.

    Except for the aircraft carrier, which remains a British design for the USSR and France in E40.2.  Russia did gets its own carrier design in the 1941 game, but France isn’t a power in that game.


  • Great information.  I must admit that I have used the WW1 and WW2 sets interchangeably for France, Free French, and Vichy.  I also have some really light blue infantry units from another game (Risk: Battlefield Rogue; it was a very poorly-made game, but there was a time when people bought it just for its sculpts) that I sometimes use.

    I will definitely take a look at the movie you referred to Marc.  Golden Age of Cinema + WW2 + France = popcorn.

    You guys are aware that Charles de Gaulle is a facade that I only use here and when I’m literally playing as France, right?  I’m an American through and through.  :-D


  • @Charles:

    Great information.  I must admit that I have used the WW1 and WW2 sets interchangeably for France, Free French, and Vichy.  I also have some really light blue infantry units from another game (Risk: Battlefield Rogue; it was a very poorly-made game, but there was a time when people bought it just for its sculpts) that I sometimes use.

    I will definitely take a look at the movie you referred to Marc.  Golden Age of Cinema + WW2 + France = popcorn.

    You guys are aware that Charles de Gaulle is a facade that I only use here and when I’m literally playing as France, right?  I’m an American through and through.   :-D

    Hhhhhmmmm I may need some DNA proof.


  • First you insult the Free French and now you question my honor?!

    You!

    You…

    https://m.youtube.com/#/watch?v=uBs06ZXtMzo


  • @Charles:

    First you insult the Free French and now you question my honor?!

    You!

    You…

    https://m.youtube.com/#/watch?v=uBs06ZXtMzo

    ppppppffffffffff……


  • @Charles:

    I will definitely take a look at the movie you referred to Marc.  Golden Age of Cinema + WW2 + France = popcorn.

    You guys are aware that Charles de Gaulle is a facade that I only use here and when I’m literally playing as France, right?  I’m an American through and through.   :-D

    This is probably another reason you’ll like the movie: because it features several American actors playing French characters, notably Humphrey Bogart.  Also playing Frenchmen are actors of other national origins, notably from the Netherlands (Philip Dorn), Britain (Sydney Greenstreet), Austria-Hungary (Peter Lorre), Belgium (Victor Francen), Russia (Vladimir Sokoloff and Konstantin Shayne) and Italy (Eduardo Ciannelli).  Some of the Frenchmen are, amazingly enough, actually played by Frenchmen (such as Louis Mercier, though strictly speaking he’s Algerian).  The results, when the characters speak French, aren’t always very convincing to the ears of a French speaker (I’m from Montreal).  Victor Francen, who’s Belgian, gets it right, but the same can’t be said for Billy Roy in the scene where, as the ship’s cabin boy, he shakes his fist at some German planes overhead and curses them defiantly in painfully laboured French.  But aside from that, it’s a fun and watchable movie (I’ve seen it over a dozen times), with lots and lots of French patriotism (and several verbal shots taken at the Vichy regime and Marshal Petain).  Be prepared, however, for a narrative structure that can get a little confusing because the film is built around flashbacks-within-flashbacks (four or five layers deep at one point, as I recall).


  • Sounds like an awfullly good mess.  You sold it to me.

    Maybe I should use this as propaganda?  I have been gettling a lot of French belittlement from the newest batch of players.  Have any of you ever used movies, other games, or music to get players in the mood before starting to play A@A?


  • @Charles:

    Sounds like an awfullly good mess.  You sold it to me.

    Maybe I should use this as propaganda?

    Warner Brothers clearly intended it to be a morale-raising film meant to generate inter-Allied solidarity (specifically, between the Americans and the Free French), so in one sense it’s a propaganda film (like much of Hollywood’s output during the war).  In fact, the “framing story” of the movie – the top-level context, within which the nested flashbacks take place – involves an American journalist who’s visiting a FF airbase to write a story for a news syndicate.  While he’s sitting in the office of the base commander, Captain Freycinet (the Claude Rains character), he tells Freycinet that he hopes his story will promote greater understanding between the US and the FF “in these touchy times.”  That could be called a “meta” line because the movie itself was obviously intended to do just that.

    By the way, when you watch that scene, look at the back wall of Freycinet’s office: one of its decorations is a framed portrait of General de Gaulle…the same one as your forum icon, if I’m not mistaken.


  • @Charles:

    Sounds like an awfullly good mess.  You sold it to me.

    Maybe I should use this as propaganda?  I have been gettling a lot of French belittlement from the newest batch of players.  Have any of you ever used movies, other games, or music to get players in the mood before starting to play A@A?

    Ya. I always play my favorite music album called  Who Do You Love sung by the SS Vichy choir.


  • Don’t tempt me SS.  You know that French swear words are not included in the forum censorship.

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