W/WW2 German reinforcements

One of my personal goals for this year's painting challenge was to try and build up my WW2/Weird War collection a bit and bulk out the Commandos and Heer that I've done over the last 2 years.

I picked up one of those pick and mix German army deals from Warlord a while back with some discount vouchers, grabbing some grenadiers and pioneers to mix and match parts for a more ragtag looking late war feel where uniforms wold have been all over the shop.

The pioneer set is a pretty good deal, with lots of plastics as well as a few metal figures and conversion bits. Some of the metal components really don't seem to fit the plastics though, so I'm not entirely sure how they are supposed to work. One of my favourite models in the set is the Goliath. At least the German's remote controlled bomb was better than the Russian bomb-dogs, even if it was significantly slower. There is also an engineer laying down showing off his nice new hedge clippers

The box set also has an anti-tank rifle team for some of those heavy infantry squads that will no doubt appear if I ever get a game in.

We have an MG42 team that can either be put into one of the infantry squads, or take one of the riflemen and turn it into an MMG team for some more static support.

Supporting this is one 10 man squad of basic, rifle toting infantry, with one Panzerfaust for a bit of anti-armour if required. these are a combination of bits from the Grenadier and Pioneer kits. I know this gives a bit of a mish-mash of uniform styles that may cause some people to have sleepless nights, but I'm aiming for weird war here, rather than historical accuracy... so it doesn't really bother me much.

And a super assault-y elite infantry squad with an officer, 1 smg/panzerfaust and 6 assault rifles. By Konflikt rules, this is fine and dandy. I can even add the MG42 team to this to make it even more obscene. For normal BA games, these could be split across multiple squads or used as a very well (if not historically accurate) Volksgrenadier squad. In Achtung! Cthulhu these would either count as Black Sun Elite and remain as-is, or be split into pairs and spread across the Wehrmacht squads for a bit of additional kick.

Last night I got to play my first ever game of Bolt Action against another new player. We'd borrowed two forces from some of the regular players, so Matt ended up with a German force and I ended up with 1000 points of US troops to play with. I lost (as always), but there were some spectacular activations on both sides. My highlights were a tank hunter assault against a Panzer taking it out in very easily and an understrength infantry unit armed with rifles assaulting a building containing a maximum strength Volksgrenadier unit, armed to the teeth with as many assault rifles as is legally allowed in the squad.

This has given me a lot of inspiration to try and flesh out two full BA forces to play with. Unfortunately, it has also made me want to go back and improve them all as I can see a lot of problems with this lot and all the past squads. I also want to rebase everything that was on clear bases to match the ones above, otherwise mixing units is going to look off.

WW2 Heer infantry

These have been sat in the box of undercoated figures for the last two years, so it is a relief to have finally got them done. Each year I've been meaning to push them up to the top of the painting queue for the Analogue challenge, but each year I have something else to work on. Last saturday I was waiting for the varnish to dry on the vikings and was looking for something else to try and do for Tuesday's challenge entry. These guys were staring up at me with pitiful stares.

These are all Warlord figures and, with the exception of one figure, they are all the plastics from the old Bolt Action starter set. They aren't intended for use in Bolt Action, so the groupings below are all rough guesses. They will be used for things like 7TV, so the actual unit composition isn't relevant. This may change when the Bolt Action or Achtung! Cthulhu weird War rules come out, but for now... 

We have an officer with his two body guards. The one on the right is the only metal figure in the force. Somewhere there is a gestapo officer and a mad scientist from the same set.

 Next we have a medic, who would probably be shot by the allies if anyone spotted him with that pistol... but he needs to defend himself against the mythos beasts that he is likely to face in the future.

 Then we have a sniper team... not that headshots work on things without heads...

 Fire team 1 has 1 MG and 2 panzerfaust to add a bit of punch to the rifles

 Fire team 2 has 2 MGs and 1 panzerfaust instead. These are more fixed position troops.

In total this is 21 Heer to add to my small WW2 collection. This really needs some additions as they will be easily outclassed by the British Commando and Russian forces already sitting on my shelves

SdKfz. 251

Oh geeze. I just found a whole pile of unpublished tank photos from the tank museum while looking for the Hanomag colours for someone! So it looks like I could have been giving you some posts while trying to paint things for the challenge after all! Onwards and upwards!

The SdKfz 251/1 was a dedicated troop transport designed by the Hanomag company, who had previously specialised in trains and construction vehicles. The vehicle was commonly referred to as Hanomags by both German and Allied troops, despite the company producing a number of other vehicles, such as the earlier Sd.Kfz. 11. The vehicle was so widely used that there were over 20 official variants, with a number of field modified versions making an appearance too.

Casualties

The latest bonus round for the painting challenge is Casualties. I had originally intended to paint up some of the dead skaven that were given away with pre-orders of Mordheim (way back in the dim distant past when GW did nice things), but as I also had to create something for the challenge fee based upon a Sam Peckinpah film. Now this was a bit of an additional challenge as I've not seen any of his films (yet), so I had to go do some research on the topic area. Most people seem to have gone with cowboys, but when I came across the poster for Cross of Iron I knew I had the answer to all my problems.

Now, I've not actually seen the film, so I've no idea which character (if any) this is supposed to be on the poster, but it seemed to fit the bill as a casualty as well if I could recreate it.

Lots of cutting and hacking apart of Bolt Action plastics and a touch of greenstuff later, we have our entry.