Hobby Log: Der Deutschenprojekt

[The Other Dave]

(Apologies for the almost-certainly mangled thread title. It's for humor!)

One of my big projects for the year is to start collecting and painting a force of WWII Germans in 28mm, primarily for Bolt Action. To that end, I ordered last month a box of Wargames Factory's germans from Ring-Tail, since it's an inexpensive box and I like to throw money the way of semi-local retailers when I can. They arrived today!



Man is that some terrible box art.



And here they are! 30 little German dudes. I'll post more pics when I start assembling, but the detail is actually quite good, contrary to Wargames Factory's reputation.

My first mini-goal is to assemble and paint a bog-standard infantry squad. Since I'm also interested in playing Chain of Command, and that game is a bit stricter about platoon makeup than Bolt Action is, I'm going to err on the side of strictness and follow CoC's guidelines for a ten-man infantry squad, to wit:

Obergefreiter with machine pistol and one Panzerfaust
LMG team: LMG with two crew and one rifleman
Rifle team: Six riflemen

A quick question for those historically-inclined: Does the Corporal himself carry the panzerfaust, then?

[Primarch]

I would assume that a rifleman would carry the faust as the corporal has seniority and therefore probably won't be the guy to get close to enemy armour and stick his head up.

[The Other Dave]

I would assume that a rifleman would carry the faust as the corporal has seniority and therefore probably won't be the guy to get close to enemy armour and stick his head up.

That does make sense - and actually a careful read-through of the rules shows that the Panzerfaust is assigned to another team, so that's what happens!

Time to get assembling!

[job]

I believe you give the Faust to the 13 year old hitlerjugend and spare the NCOs the extra hazardous work of sneaking up on tanks.

[job]

I'm not exactly sure, but I think that often anti-tank teams would have been formed to deal with such duties like in the US army. Also Fausts became super common by the very late war and they were armed to all sorts, including in lieu of a rifle. That being said, such dangerous work often would require a brave man and a leader to take some sort of initiative.

Some info:
http://spring1944.net/wiki/index.php?ti ... n_Infantry

Good luck!

[The Other Dave]

So, here's a terrible picture of the first squad:



Corporal, 3-man MG team, 6-man rifle team.

I have to say, after putting these guys together my opinion of Wargames Factory has come a bit more in line with Primarch's. Detail's good, but they're very very fiddly, especially considering how not-very poseable the models are, and it looks like there might not be enough kit in the box to arm all 3 squads in the same way - lots of extra SMGs and assault rifles and what looks like not quite enough plain old rifles. Ah well, live and learn, and they were cheap! Fortunately, I didn't have the issues he had with glue, since my Plastruct "glue any two like plastics together" solvent cement did the trick.

I should get these guys primed up tonight along with the DzC stuff on the bench, and get some paint on them next week.

[Primarch]

I may have a few extra rifles from my BA minis. Please remind me before Joshin.

[job]

Those Wargames Factory minis are cheap as chips and look mighty fiddly, but I have to say your Germans look pretty darn good. It should be good to see them in the table.

[jehan-reznor]

I bought the Russians from WGF good stuff!

[The Other Dave]

Got the first color- and method-test demi-squad done.



...Yep, those're Germans all right. Only 30-odd more to go! (I'll definitely be painting them a full squad at a time from now on.)