Planning Variety with the Winter American Sprues
By Kreighton Long
As I began working on my 2026 Bolt Action army project, winter Americans, I decided to try something new. This time, instead of “winging it” when putting together the models, I decided to try to deliberately create a diverse platoon by making each arm/body combination unique within the box. Despite a few logistical challenges I had to overcome, I found the project worthwhile in order to create a more unique infantry platoon with no repeated poses.
The first thing I needed to do was build out a table to complete as I went along. Across the top are the different torsos with the number they are labeled with on the sprue for my ease of reference. Then I listed the arms I wanted to use on the far right hand column. As the challenge was to make the riflemen unique I ignored the bazooka arms for now. The sniper arms needed to fill some gaps after trimming the scope off. The slung arms looked too relaxed for men under fire so I used that one seldomly. Unfortunately for this challenge I had a limited number of M1 Garand arms to work with. Ignoring the sniper and slung arms there were only four “action” M1 Garand arms. This resulted in some kitbashing and modifications to fully arm my infantry with rifles.
Below you’ll find the table I used to plan out which arms I could use with which bodies so as to not repeat combinations. I assembled the troopers one sprue at a time and decided in the moment who would serve as the NCO. I ended up having to use the sniper arms (Arms 12) twice and in each instance I trimmed off the sniper’s scope and hoped no one would notice once they’re on the table. While working I printed out a blank copy of this table and hand wrote which arms I used where as I progressed. Here is a typed up version of what I scribbled.
Next I needed to figure out was how many NCOs and BARs I needed for the initial draft of my winter American army. In my 1250 point list, I ended up with four squads, each armed with a BAR. The remainder of the models from this box would be enlisted riflemen. The officers and support weapons would come from a second box.
As there were only four “action” rifle arms and one BAR arm that limited me to five clean combinations per sprue. The sixth would need to come from something kitbashed, the sniper arms with some trimming, or the slung rifle arms which I personally wanted to minimize for infantry under fire.
All told a little bit of pre-planning and note-taking helped to create a more diverse and dynamic infantry force from a single box. As I will need to dip into a second box to add the remaining infantrymen to this project I have no real hope of maintaining the diversity with the rest of the platoon. At a minimum, I started off with a healthy amount of variety so a few duplicates won’t completely tarnish my efforts. One solution for this is to pay attention to which head I used where and swap covered and uncovered heads for duplicate combinations with the rest of the force. That’s one trick I can try to keep it fresh.
Happy painting!