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
![[29th Infantry Division: Normandy landing]](https://www.lonesentry.com/gi_stories_booklets/29thinfantry/pics/29infdiv_pg6.jpg)
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 Troy Hill
I didn’t realize how much I missed other gamers until I had to go about 18 months without seeing them.
True, we stayed connected on social media. And a lot of us used TableTop Simulator, or Roll20 to get in virtual games.
But there is nothing like being back in person. Seeing friends (for me, new friends that I barely got to know last winter. I forget if we had a March game day (maybe?)
This technically wasn’t my first game back from the great distancing. We had one of those in June. Back then we had four players at our North-east Indiana Bolt Action day. Our group gets together once a month for Bolt Action on the second Saturday of the month, and again on the fourth (occasionally the fifth weekend if there is one). This Saturday we had five players for Bolt Action. Not bad. We’d had a few drift off to other games, or still ensconced in catching up with family. Five is a good number. Except someone has to take on two opponents…
Yep. That someone was me. And mistakes were made.
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
Survivors from the mornings spoiling attack march back into town under the watchful eyes of their fellow defenders. The spoiling attack succeeded in delaying the advance of the British paratroopers and more importantly, their vehicle support.
The German soldiers have a short time to rest and refit for they know the British are close behind them. Ammo pouches are restocked and a few bites of food are swallowed just in time for the officers and NCOs to rouse their men to their battle position.
The church, which is located in the center of town just as God and religion was the center of life when the town of Colline de L’église was built so many centuries ago, must be held. A German sniper in the church’s bell tower reports sighting British infantry nearing the town and the engine of a nearby assault gun roars to life.
By Troy A Hill
One of the joys and pitfalls of moving into a new area, and joining a new gaming group is that many of the local players in the new area already have their army builds done. When I lived in Southern California, there were a mix of players and armies. In my regular gaming group, no one was playing British, so I picked it up to compliment my US and my German Armies.
But, when I returned to North East Indiana in the States, and looked up the local crew, the most popular nation to play in the new local gaming group is… yep, British of one flavour or another.
What was I to do? Americans are the vanilla “easy mode” according to the Juggernauts. In my 15mm WWII wargaming days, I began with Americans and soon tired of them. Germans are definitely challenging. And with my grandmothers coming from lineages of Kaiser and Sigsbee surnames on one side, and Bechtel on the other side of the family, the German army seems like a good fit for me. So far, though, my interest in all things German seems limited to the DAK.
Well, when I played Warhammer Fantasy, I loved the horde armies of the goblins. Guess I should look at… The Soviets?
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
As one project ends, or ends as much as any army building project for our hobby can, another begins to take shape. After building Bolt Action armies for Germans (Heer, Waffen SS, Fallschirmjager, Grossdeutschland Panzergrenadiers), Soviets (hordes of khaki), and the United States (29th Infantry Division and 101st Airborne Infantry) I started looking at a fresh new army.
I decided to take a look at the minor Axis powers. Building a minor Axis power would add some interesting flavor in my local meta which heavily emphasizes the major powers and would provide myself with a new challenge.
The first step was to pick up the book and look through the minor Axis powers with available lists.
The factions covered in the Armies of Italy and the Axis book include Italy, Finland, Bulgaria, Hungary, and Romania. Each faction has it’s own appeal and I dream of one day building an army for all factions but I needed to narrow down my choices for my first minor power. I mentally developed a three part criteria to help me pick: local meta, history, and aesthetic.
By Kreighton Long
I don’t remember where my interest in playing Germans in World War Two games came from but I do know that the first miniatures I painted after joining this hobby were Germans from Bolt Action Miniatures, before Warlord Games bought them. That five-man infantry squad still sits in my display case to this day. After painting and gaming Germans for over a decade it’s safe to say that the German army is my first-round-draft-pick when throwing dice with friends.
The German Wehrmacht, rebuilt after being disemboweled by The Treaty of Versailles following World War One, reentered the world stage in dramatic fashion with it’s blitzkrieg against Poland in 1939. What followed were six years of brutal campaigns across Europe, Africa, and Russia ending with the final defeat of the Third Reich in the streets of Berlin itself.
