Sunday 28 January 2018

Out Of The Blue

Less than a month into the new year and I’ve already started a new army.


These are the beginning of a German Fallschirmjager (paratroopers) force for Bolt Action. I’ve procrastinated about started a new army for Bolt Action for a long time, and have actually already bought (well, most of it was a freebie) and sold a German army before even assembling it.

However beginning the Operation Sea Lion campaign has prodded me into action as some of the scenarios feature Fallschirmjager landings and as none of us already had them, that was all the impetus I needed.

As an added bonus the Fallschirmjager were present in pretty much all areas of the war in Europe and so they’ll be suitable against numbers of opponents. What’s more, being a veteran force means I won’t need many of them, in fact, these 12 already make a legal 250 point force, so it won’t take much to get them to a playable level, which always help with motivation.

I’ve been quite wary of German forces, gauntly due to the use of camouflage, however, I’m quite happy with how this has come out. I found a painting guide done by Artizan Designs (the manufacturer) of these models and have been able to get a close approximation of one of the official Fallschirmjager camp patterns.

One thing I have done is use brighter colours than I should, such as the base brown of the camo smock, and the blue of the Luftwaffe uniforms. My aim with this is twofold, I wanted to create contrast so that details like the camo pattern could be seen, and I tend to shade with washes rather than highlight up, so I was keen to begin with a brighter base.

I’m sure there are some that will question my use of silver for the weapons, as they were likely nearer black. However, this is purely personal preference as again I wanted contrast. However, the MP-40 sub machine guns above may need revisiting with another layer or two of black wash, as they are a bit shiny.

As I was building this army for Operation Sea Lion in 1940, I was intending for this to be an early war force. However, when I piped into my FLGS (Wargames Emporium), they only had a few packs of Fallschirmjager available, one of which featured FG-42 assault rifles (below) which were introduced long after the invasion of Britain was cancelled. In early war games I’ll just treat them as regular rifles.

The plan now is to pick up a few more packs of miniatures at Vapnartak next week. I’m going to stick to metal miniatures from Artizan Designs, Crusader Miniatures and Wargames Foundry because I genuinely prefer painting metal, I have lost all patience for assembling plastic, and buying 30 minis in one go will probably overface me and make me give up.

Bite-sized chunks is the key.

9 comments:

  1. They're lovely. Really nice cammo work.

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    1. Thanks. I was really pleased with how it came out given that I’d been so nervous of it.

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  2. Nice work Kieron, they came out well. :)

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  3. Absolutely fantastic Kieron! The Sea Lion book has got me thinking as well. And I'm right there with on the plastics :) Hate, hate, hate lol!!

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    1. I used to really like them, and the value is excellent, but the combination of buying in bulk (which is the reason I avoid many Kickstarters), my painting style working better on metal, and the fiddly time it takes before you can put brush to model just makes me avoid them as much as possible.

      Having said that, my next batch of Russians is plastic, as is one of the remaining units for my Napoleonics...and they’re cavalry!

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  4. Cracking job mate. They look really good.

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    1. Thanks. I’m quite chuffed with them really.

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    2. As you should be ... they look great! :)

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