Tutorial

By Tom Mullane

This winter, my sister got married in a small ceremony in NJ. I served as the minister, and it will have been the 8th wedding I have performed since being ordained in the Ministry of Life Church (certificates available online for 35$— includes parking pass) Every great wedding party needs a wedding cake, even small receptions for family and close friends like the one my sister and my new brother had planned. In an effort to make use of my wargaming skills in a non-wargaming capacity, I decided to make a winter-themed diorama for the cake and desserts my wife Angela was going to make.

By Kreighton Long

Humans are squishy, fragile creatures who leak profusely when punctured. Knowing this, combatants typically are inclined to hid their more vulnerable bits away from the sharp pieces of metal flying through the air. While the First Industrial Revolution featured columns of well dressed fellas marching towards the sounds of guns and exchanging volleys with equally brave soldiers opposite them, there are instances of trenches and emplacements being used in sieges or to protect less maneuverable artillery pieces on the battlefield.

Moving into the Second Industrial Revolution, the descendants of survivors from the aforementioned battles fully embraced the value of fighting from holes in the ground during World War One. The topic of “digging in” continues to the modern era as any contemporary Soldier or Marine can attest to. On a typical wargaming table, dug in fortifications or emplacements are more of an exception than a rule. Players tend to prefer skirmishes and battles of maneuver rather than a bloody, typically one-sided siege or assault.

By Kreighton Long

It’s not too hard to find decals to add rank patches to your GIs. The Warlord Games set of US Infantry even comes with decals in the box. For those of you who are gluttons for punishment or want the bragging rights of painting tiny lines on your already tiny toy soldiers here are the steps for how I add rank patches to my 29th Infantry Division army.

By Kreighton Long

When playing Bolt Action I’ve run into the headache of trying to find an NCO who fell to a successful sniper or find an officer to see if he’s close enough to a unit to buff their order check. Taking an extra ten seconds or so to find the right model is a minor inconvenience at worst but there are means of expediting this step while adding fun historically accurate details to your painted toy soldiers.

The American GIs in World War Two painted a white stripe or bar on the back of their helmets so that soldiers they were leading, presumably from the front, could identify their leader and follow them into battle. American Officers donned a vertical bar while Noncommissioned Officers sported a horizontal stripe.

Below are the steps I took to hand-paint my platoon and squad leaders for my Bolt Action 29th Infantry Division army.

By Kreighton Long

While window shopping for light artillery models for my WW2 Romanian army I found limited options to choose from. While Great Escape Games makes a fine looking Romanian light artillery piece (one will make its way into my arsenal eventually) I wanted to challenge myself with a bit of conversion work to add variety to my three-light artillery Romanian list for Bolt Action.

For my conversion attempt I began with the wooden spoked wheel variant of the WWI French style 75mm gun as found in the Warlord Games . The crew themselves needed a little customization to make them more Romanian which is where the conversion work was done for this piece. I did attempt to find a way to modify German, Soviet, and American helmets to the point where they would pass as Romanian but the solution alluded me.

By Kreighton Long

In honor of my new home in Virginia, and for a less commonly seen WWII US Army theme, I decided to design my US Army on the 29th Infantry Division.

The 29th was a National Guard division recruited from northern Virginia, Maryland, and southern Pennsylvania.  The division deployed to the European Theater of Operations and took part in the amphibious landing at Omaha Beach, bocage fighting in Normandy, siege warfare at Brest in Brittany, then urban fighting and battles of maneuver in Germany.

By Kreighton Long

The backbone of the World War Two Romanian army was the humble riflemen. Romania lacked the quality and quantity in armor of their German or Soviet peers and the heavy artillery that rained destruction on their victims on the Eastern Front was sorely lacking in Romanian arsenals. Without powerful armor formations or heavy guns the Romanian military was forced to rely on manpower rather than firepower.

The average Romanian rifleman was equipped in fairly simple, but functional, gear. Color photographs of Romanians from the war are hard to come by but illustrations from Osprey Publishing and photographs of contemporary reenactors helped to guide my color choices. The Romanian soldier wore a cotton tunic during the summer which bleached in the sun. During the winter the Romanian soldier wore woolen tunics which retained their darker khaki color. Woolen trousers were worn year round and maintained their color like the woolen tunic.

By Kreighton Long

No World War Two military incorporated camouflage as extensively as Germany. Most rivet-counters/armchair historians can eyeball camouflaged German infantry and reliably tell you what branch of the German armed forces the camo-clad trooper served.

This is especially true for the Waffen SS. From their first actions in Poland in 1939 through the fall of Berlin in 1945, the SS was equipped with camouflage uniforms that visually set them apart from the Heer and Luftwaffe ground troops.

Unfortunately for tabletop wargamers, painting the different camouflage patterns of the Waffen SS can be an intimidating challenge. Personally, I held off painting my first SS infantry for years after entering the hobby due to a lack of self-confidence.

Since working up the courage to attempt painting SS camouflage, I completed numerous iterations, each time learning how to suck less next time.

By Kreighton Long

No World War Two military incorporated camouflage as extensively as Germany. Most rivet-counters/armchair historians can eyeball camouflaged German infantry and reliably tell you what branch of the German armed forces the camo-clad trooper served.

This is especially true for the Waffen SS. From their first actions in Poland in 1939 through the fall of Berlin in 1945, the SS was equipped with camouflage uniforms that visually set them apart from the Heer and Luftwaffe ground troops.

Unfortunately for tabletop wargamers, painting the different camouflage patterns of the Waffen SS can be an intimidating challenge. Personally, I held off painting my first SS infantry for years after entering the hobby due to a lack of self-confidence.

By Kreighton Long

Gamers have a variety of means of marking progress and mechanics in their games. The means of doing so range as wildly as the reasons we need to track them. Whether the game calls it stress, fatigue, or pins, we can use tokens, dice, or counters.

Players of Bolt Action deal with pins, a game concept that functions against a unit’s morale.

Marking pins on the table can be as simple or fancy as the player wants it to be. For my games, I decided that I wanted to create a way of tracking pins that would blend into the table and compliment the aesthetic as much as possible.

After some digging around I came across appropriate casualty markers from .

For this project specifically, I used a . The core idea here was to create a scenic looking marker combining a casualty model with a slot where a 9mm D6 can be turned to represent the number of pins on a unit. After completing the test piece shown below I’m committing to working on a set for personal use with my WWII German armies.