Getting into the Action

Greetings, the blog has been a bit light on material lately and I have fell short of my goal of posting twice a month.  Fear not, I'm back! and I am not giving up on posting twice a month.  It's just that at this point it will have to be an average for the year so I'm revising my goal as such that I will bring you 24 posts for the year.  I think I can still pull it off.

The reason I have been absent is that I have been vacationing a bit and doing a number of family activities along with general summer distractions.  I've also spent a good amount of my hobby time playing games which is always nice.  Instead of spending the remaining hobby time blogging I have been feverishly working on a project I started over a year ago.  I gave a sneak peak back in April with my Covering your Bases article.

Today I bring you Getting into the (Bolt) Action.  The first half of my Bolt Action project in 15mm.  I've completed my first force of infantry, a reinforced platoon of German Fallschirmjager troops depicted with late war (1944) battle gear and uniforms and based to fight in the fields and hedgerows of occupied France.

For starters this is an all infantry force that I worked up from the core rule book.  I went over to the Bolt Action EasyArmy site to make up my list and came up with a couple versions.  I have painted more troops then needed to compile the list but will go ahead and show them to you based on this list.

Veteran First Lieutenant and 1 additional man, 103 points.

I'm going with veterans for the most part because I want the 5+ to kill stat.  They will be more survivable.  I'm showing a pistol equipped office and a rifleman here but when game time comes they will likely be substituted with assault rifle equipped men.  The weapon type is points free and I have extra assault rifles.

1st Squad (8 men): Veteran NCO and 6 additional men equipped with assault rifles, 1 man with SMG and panzerfaust, 147 points

These guys are some assault monsters or can pour out a good base of fire.  Within the force all the assault rifle equipped men have orange flowers on there bases to help with identification.  It's much harder to see the weapons in 15mm so I came up with this basing convention.  SMG's have white flowers and panzerfaust's get purple.

2nd Squad (8 men): Veteran NCO and 2 additional men with assault rifles, 4 riflemen, 1 man with SMG and panzerfaust, 127 points

This is a multi-purpose squad capable of assaulting or shooting.

3rd Squad (8 men): Veteran NCO and 1 additional man with assault rifle, 4 riflemen, LMG with riflemen loader, 134 points

I am definitely in the "LMG's suck" camp but I have the models and don't want to be too gamey.  They have some merit so I have included one in this squad.  The next picture shows how the loader can be removed as a casualty as needed.

Removable loader

4th Squad (6 men): Veteran NCO and 1 additional rifleman with 2 LMG's with riflemen loaders, 118 points.

Here is an ad hoc squad the platoon leader could have plausibly put together as a base of fire.  This gives me a good amount of ranged fire with out the fixed penalty of a MMG.  Again shown with loader casualties below.

The loaders have magnets in their bases and the LMG bases are steel washers.

Veteran Artillery Forward Observer with extra man, 128 points.

I went veteran because they are ridiculously priced and I don't want them getting wiped off the board. My reading on the WWPD forum is that many people consider the points spent on these guys to be better used for a vehicle.  Again shown with casualty marker.

Inexperienced Medium Machine Gun, 35 points

This is the figure that started it all.  What can I say?  It's basically an order die.  Maybe the long range will keep them out of harms way.

It was fun to model and paint and I really like how it turned out.  Shown here with casualty figures.

Inexperienced Medium Mortar Team, 35 points.

I had fun with these guys.  I had the large mortar left over from a mortar platoon of stummels I did for Flames of War.  The seeming loader is an extra panzerschreck loader.  I was able to reform the projectile to look more like a mortar round.  The guy standing is actually a Heer vehicle figure.  I gave him a head swap and I actually took green stuff and formed around his legs to reproduce the jump smock look.  All in all I think he turned out pretty good.  The guy crouching low is an extra gunner from a machine gun platoon.  He looked like he could be reaching for ammo just as well as pulling a trigger so I used him.  Here shown as casualties.

The inexperienced mortar team seems to be scorned as an army choice but I'll take pride in deciding to use him that way before having read about the ridicule he gets on the forums.  Needing a 6 to range in on the first attempt precludes spending much more on him than that.  It's a reserve unit or an order die or just something to make it a more cohesive or historic seeming outfit.

Regular Sniper team, 50 points

Watch out enemy officers this guy is gunning for you!

That brings the total to 999 points!  I've got a couple other versions of the list including one that contains a vehicle which is planned to be the focus of a future blog post.  You really ought to be following me!

I also have a bunch of other guys that did not make the list.  There is enough infantry men to field a couple more squads, an extra officer, or maxed out squads.  With a couple vehicles I could easily field two platoons using these reinforcements.

2 more squads worth

Many of you will be familiar with the sculpts.  The figures are all from Battlefront and I have less than $50 invested in the force.

I had a lot of fun painting these guys and learned a bunch.  There are definitely some things I'd like to do differently but I have a lot of time into them already and I don't think it will matter much when it comes time to fight with them.

One of the things I would like to do differently is try to paint the splinter camouflage more representative of the actual look.  As is turns out I basically just put slashes of paint on to simulate the colors, it doesn't look very nice with close up photography but is alright in aggregate as a force.  Some day I'll get around to trying to paint realistic faces and flesh.  I'd also like to spend some time making the rifle wood more lifelike and try some non-metallic metal some day.

I'm done with these guys for now and I'll be moving onto some other things for now.  I'll finish up one vehicle for them pretty soon and get to their opponents, American Riflemen, as the year progresses.

I'm still not getting the photo's to turn out as well as I like so I'm going to keep working on that.  Stay tuned!