Clever Hans - Part 12 (An Army Re-Org for 3rd Edition Bolt Action)

During the holidays I was able to meet up with a Bolt Action gaming pal, Stephen, gift him my NIB WW2 French minis (Cos I will never have time to work on a 5th army) as I knew he needed an Early War army option and it turned out he'd just gained a new Char-B tank kit - so job done. In turn, he handed over a few sprues of Warlord Games Winter Germans that I have decided to fill out my Bolt Action German force so that they'll be usable for 3rd edition events and tournaments. 

For those uninitiated or ignorant to the changes in this current edition, the accepted "standard points value for a game of Bolt Action is now 1250. My previous German collection could meet that, but would not be very much fun or all that competitive to play, so changes had to be made. Below is a Draxian Paint Chart like the one I have maintained for my WW2 Greeks (See previous posts on that project). 

To that end, I've added and put primer to the Sd.kfz 10/4's (Etsy 3D prints) and glued some of the new Winter plastic Germans together to represent the Rifle Officer's 4x Adjutants. 

3x Platoons - Mandatory Rifle platoon: Officer with 4x Adjutants armed with SMG's, 2x Squads of Veteran Heer Grenadiers, 1x Squad of Volks Grenadiers and a small 7-man Squad of Waffen SS with their Sd.kfz 251/1 Half-Track transport; Artillery Platoon of lone Officer and a pair of Flak 88's; Armoured Platoon containing a pair of Sd.kfz 10/4's sporting 2cm Light Autocannons each. I call this force my late war Holding Kompany and it's supposed to represent the type of ad-hoc Kampfgruppe the Germans might have thrown together on the Eastern Front to try to push back the Soviets during the Winter of 1944.

These four will represent the adjutants for the Officer's squad. Gritty looking blokes with SMG's and no helmets like the standard Grenadiers.

Lots of random gear added to their rear sides so they'll stand out more-so from the Grenadier squad that'll be made from the same set. 

This pair were the last two body-sculpts from the sprue (6-to-a-sprue). The fellow on the left will be an extra crewman for one of the Flak 88 guns and the yelling chap on the right will end up as a spare adjutant should I need one for bigger points games.

Again, with more gear on his rear, including some mittens! 

Per usual, these will see basing and paint as time allows, but I'm glad to have had a little time this weekend to get any hobby done at all, so score!

Be well and safe out there,

- Dai

Start as we mean to go on

 Or at least to try to go on.

2026 starts off with a short post on a small rpg miniature that represents one of the player characters in my current workplace DnD campaign. Britt's character is a foul tempered dwarven barbarian dressed in greens and brown, wielding a large nasty ancestral axe. The sculpt itself is part of a two-pack by Wizkids from their Critical Role "Deep Cuts" pre-primed plastic range with decent enough detail for such an affordable miniature. I had to rush the paintjob a bit as I wanted to get the fig done in time of Britt's birthday later this month. She'll do I think and Britt was very happy with how she turned out, so job done there I guess. 

A dinky little sculpt, obviously 3D designed so facial details are shallow meaning I did not even attempt to paint her eyes. The underskirt is supposed to be chainmail, but Britt's character doesn't wear armour so I painted it up that light lime green to maybe make it look like some sort of lace-like petticoat or something else feminine. 

Britt has dark skin so I tried to emulate that on this fig. Her character also has braided hair, but the sculpt has straight - am hoping the shallow detail and black hair from 3 feet away will create the illusion of this. 

The little sculpt has a sculpted puddle base but like all the Wizkids plastics is very light weight, so I glued her to a 1" steel washer to provide better stability on the tabletop. Basing materials were simple flock and some other floral stuff, not over the top.

Now that we are a couple months into my game, all four of the players have figures to represent their characters, so perhaps I should start working on my own minis to represent the baddies and their bosses my game group might face during my campaign? (I've been using printed paper tokens for these up until now.) We'll see - Too many projects....

I also managed to get a few sprues worth of WW2 Winter Germans to fill out some missing pieces in my German Bolt Action collection AND off-loaded all the WW2 French models I had collected as tournament przes to a friend who had expressed an urge to start an Early War army, so plus-minus my unpainted pile shrank some resultingly! (Cos I really needed to drop a new army project for 2026 - just too much already unpainted on armies I already own.)

Maybe there'll be another post next month and if there is, unsure of what it'll be on at this point in time?

That's it for the now. Stay safe out there all. 

- Dai