I recently finished painting my Volksgrenadier Assault Platoon and supports for the 'Setting The Scene' project. I have based the platoon on a list from the 'Too Fat Lardies' Chain of Command forum.
There are some nice little touches with this list that will make it quite different and fun to game.
For example as part of the platoon HQ, you have a 3 x man Rifle Grenade Team instead of your usual mortar team.
Squad 1 and 2 are your assault squads as they are all tooled up with the STG44 or MP40's and a couple of Panzerfaust.
Squad 3 is your back up with 2 x MG42 Teams and some more automatic weapons.
So I imagine a platoon with weaknesses being volksgrenadiers but on the flipside a lot of firepower with all those automatic weapons.
Maybe I can talk Richard Clarke into coming up with a scenario and game for these, that I could then put in the back of the book, along with lots of pictures of the game.
The Platoon and supports.
Assault Squads 1 & 2 with STG44, MP40 and Panzerfaust.
Squad 3 with the MG's
Support Options - ATG, sniper, FOO, mortar, MMG.
Is this the start of the counter-attack somewhere in the Ardennes December 1944??????
In these pictures you can see the Senior and Junior leaders with their hex shaped bases and dice wells. The senior leaders have a slightly larger base.
The idea with the dice well is to indicate how many command initiatives the leader currently has. Senior leader starting with a 3 and Junior leader a 2. I have done them in white so that they are a little less intrusive on a snow base.
I have also done dice wells for the MG teams so that I can place the 'shock dice' for the squad in the base rather than having the dice trailing behind the squad. The shock dice are usually red but again if you don't want them to be so intrusive you can use white dice for the winter setting. Support options, as with the Panzerschrek, also get a 'dice well' where needed to indicate how many rounds they have used or got left.
The figures are either Artizan Design or Warlord Games. I pinched the idea from the Bolt Action forum where somebody had used the plastic winter Russians with overcoats and converted them into Germans. Ideal for the Volksgrenadiers.
A couple of pictures slightly clearer.
Platoon HQ with the two Senior Leaders, medic and the three man Rifle Grenade Team.
I still have the Panzergrenadier, Fallschirmjager and American infantry platoons to paint. I also plan on winterising my train station and railway track, along with some appropriate signage before I can start putting it all together in book form.
I was hoping to get it all finished by the anniversary of the start of The Battle of the Bulge on 16th December but I might end up going slightly over, which will have been a year in the making.
I have also put the items on the blog that didn't sell, on ebay and reduced the price yet again, if you want to check the links. I have scheduled them to start on Sunday 23rd October.
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/222289037647?ssPageName=STRK:MESCX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1554.l2649
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/222289023303?ssPageName=STRK:MESCX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1554.l2649
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/222288996304?ssPageName=STRK:MESCX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1554.l2649
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/222289049734?ssPageName=STRK:MESCX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1554.l2649
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/222288970671?ssPageName=STRK:MESCX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1554.l2649
Cheers,
Pat.
