No, I am not talking about the Barossa Valley Bar & Grill although they have excellent wines and great food, but rather the B1 variety.

The French defense against the German Blitzkrieg usually gets told one way. However there were pockets of resistance where the French fought tough successful battles against the German invaders. One of the stand out battles occurred in the village of Stonne.

The French tank commander Captain Pierre Billotte, son of French General Gaston Billotte served in the 1st Compagnie of the 41st Tank Battalion, was equipped with a Char B1 heavy tank nicknamed “Eure”. Billotte was instrumental in retaking the village of Stonne, defended by elements of the German 8th Panzer Regiment. The village had already been the scene of fierce fighting before Billotte’s action, having changed hands numerous times due to its strategic location on the road to Sedan. On 16 May, while under heavy fire from German tanks, Billotte and his Char B1 Bis managed to break through the German defences and to destroy two German Panzer IV tanks, eleven Panzer III tanks and two enemy guns. Billotte’s Char B1-Bis tank received 140 hits from enemy tanks and guns, but none were able to penetrate the tank’s heavy armour.

Despite this great story I have chosen a different tank to model.

French heavy tank B1 n°481 “Vercingetorix” surrounded by German troops – 83 avenue de la gare, Noyers-sur-Cher, France, June 1940. This tank belonged to 46e BCC (Bataillon de Chars de Combats), 3rd company, based in Gien.

After a 300km trip from north of France, the tank was wrecked and abandoned.

The crew of the Tank number 481 “Vercingetorix”, 3rd Company, 46th Combat Tank Battalion, 4th Armored Division, France, May 1940 were as follows:

• Tank leader : Sous-Lieutenant Alexandre Vadon;
• Pilot : Sergent-chef Henri Hochart;
• Radio : Chasseur Roger Biedelez;
• Co-pilot : Chasseur Gilbert Lafabrie.

The “Char de Bataille” B1 was the main heavy tank used by the French Army during World War II. The original project was set up in the mid-1920s (many technical solutions adopted as the large tracks are derived from the First World War main tanks) but the delivery to the French Army started only in the mid-30s. Massive and robust, Char B1 was improved in “bis” version to increase its operational effectiveness. It was armed with the 47 mm gun, located in the small turret, and the 75 mm howitzer located in the hull. The tank was characterized by a strong armour able to provide a good protection. However the heavy weight negatively affected the speed (28 Km/h) and the on road and off road maneuverability . Even if it was a good tank for those times, the Char B1 bis was deployed to support the infantry Divisions and not in Tanks Divisions. Due to this it was impossible to compete against the German Panzer Divisions during the French Campaign on 1940.

The kit is an 1/56th scale Char B1 bis tank sold by Italeri and is the start of my 1940 French “Bolt Action” army.

As you would be aware from previous posts this has been on the painting table for nearly twelve months. It is good to have a bit more space and to have this one finished, At least I can now say I have started my French WW2 Bolt Action army!

Jane McGonnigal has become a figurehead for what has become known as the “gamification” movement. This movement posits that elements of game design should be incorporated into real life. The premise is that jobs, education, exercise, social life, and essentially any other human activity can be improved by studying the human propensity to play games and tapping into that propensity to improve quality of life.

Divided into three parts, Reality is Broken opens with a section titled Why Games Make Us Happy. There fun right? Yes that is certainly part of it but the main thought behid McGonnigal’s thinking is that while games are often seen as an escape or a distraction, they actually help satisfy “the most powerful motivations we have other than our basic survival needs.”

The second and third parts of Reality is Broken – Reinventing Reality and How Very Big Games Can Change The World McGonigal looks at the ways gaming’s best aspects can be put to work in the real world, both through alternate reality game projects she’s worked on and in game-style approaches to collective problem-solving and other efforts.

And toward the end, when you’re reading about the collective thought-experiment type games and possibilities generated by people doing nothing more than playing a game, it’s difficult not to feel like there’s a real power and potential out there waiting to be unlocked by gamer-think.

The book has its fair share of detractors:

“I’m in two minds about this ambitious beast. On the one hand, the author is clearly bonkers and operating on an epic bandwidth of partial megalomania. On the other hand, her enthusiasm and spirit of uncrushable optimism is a reassuring and powerful thing“.

“This author is an anarchist and doesn’t even know it. She’s a populist and doesn’t even know it. And she’s very close to being bat-shit crazy….”

“It’s almost painfully clear that Jane McGonigal has never written anything for a wide audience before. It isn’t that her book is poorly written or that it doesn’t make its point well, but somewhere in her blissful vision of a future where gaming is the new paradigm, McGonigal forgot that if you’re trying to make a convincing point, you need to focus on that point. Reality is Broken is the worst kind of populist non-fiction because it is trying so hard to be universally relevant.“

Personally I find the negative reviews that are listed for this book to be relatively amusing. Are the hundreds of millions of gamers across the western world bonkers, anarchists and crazy as well? I would like to think that games might help reality improve (who’s reality?), but I think that is a little Utopian. All I can say is without games the world would be a sadder place and I would have more money in my pocket!

This one is well worth the read.