Operation Marita - German invasion of Greece

I've been working on painting up a German invasion force and defending Greeks, supported by some Brits, for a few months now. The armies shown here have been put together for Iron Cross, where a handful of miniatures represents an infantry or support unit and one vehicle per vehicle unit.

Other than adding tufts and flock to the bases, I finally finished all of the miniatures this afternoon. Here is the whole of the Allied forces, awaiting some armoured support...

The core of the force is made of an HQ squad...

...and four infantry platoons

A sniper is really useful when defending, which I am expecting to be doing in the majority of scenarios with this Greek army.

A couple of CV-35s (captured from the Italians), which are useful for putting down heavy fire onto infantry.

A couple of infantry support units: a medium machine gun (again, good for putting down a weight of fire and stopping infantry assaults) and a mortar team, which I mainly use to cause units-in-cover to move and lose their cover bonus, which is especially useful for disrupting support weapons and limiting their rate of fire.

A Skoda M.15 75mm mountain gun, an anti-tank rifle, and an 'Elephantino' anti-tank gun to provide some heavier fire against advancing panzers.

In support of the Greeks, I've got some extra British infantry mounted in a lorry. I've also got a British 2 pounder anti-tank gun on the painting pile to provide extra AT punch.

I've also got a few more armoured vehicles to paint for the British

• a platoon of universal carriers to add further mobility to the reserves, 
• a couple of Vickers MkVI's just for the nuisance value, and
• a couple of A13's which have a reasonable chance against the panzers.

I plan on making some terrain pieces too: trench works to give the defenders some protection and barbed wire and minefields to slow them down a little and channel the enemy's advance onto the AT guns.

On the attack are the Germans with 3 x Panzer 38(t)s, 2 x Panzer IVs and 6 x Panzer IIIs...

...and 1 x HQ unit, 6 x infantry squads (3 in trucks), a mortar team, an HMG team, a Pak36 AT gun, 2 x anti-tank rifle teams, and 2 x teams of Panzerjagers armed with AT grenades. A formidable force!

A selection of German armour. I have no idea how the Greeks are going to stop that lot!  I might need to "dig" a few anti-tank ditches in addition to making the other terrain pieces to stop the Greeks from being overrun immediately.

German panzers scouting ahead of the main force...

Greek anti-tank units concealed in the pine forest lie in wait...

I will crack on with making the terrain pieces now and also finish off the British armoured units and then maybe by then we will be out of lockdown and get some gaming in.