Actually this is one of the first finished armies on unfinished armies. The last two units I wanted to paint are the hungarian Bofors and a second objective.
After collecting hungarians for now three years I finished my mid war hungarians with the core troops for a Lorried Infantry company and Tank company.
The hungarian Bofors for mid war need to get an head swap with the german or hungarian heads available from Battlefront. Meanwhile there are Bofor Anti Air Emplacements available, which have special rules for late war. Painting these models is very time intensive, since the guns have many peaces, and I painted ammo boxes, crews, gun carriages and guns separately.
The hungarian Bofors seemed to be used without the gun shields. Battlefront wrote, that there were some shields which looked different from the british versions coming with the miniatures. In Flames of War the two guns with the command team are available for 50 points, which is very attractive from a army composition point of view.
For the Bofors I painted a present from Ekimdj, who designed this excellent emplacements or dug in markers for FoW. They were a fun to paint and show oil barrels, wooden boxes and sand backs with a very realistic look. I need to get more of them, since they add a lot of flavour to the scenery.
When playing hungarians it´s very essential to dig in to cope with the overwhelming sovjet mass. Hence it´s very good to have markers for this special hungarian skill available. Hungarians may repeat their dig in roll.
Another detail modeled by Ekimdj are the three oil barrels with the camo sheet on them. I painted them in the typical hungarian camo style.
For a very long time I planned a hungarian field kitchen as my second objective for playing FoW. I wanted this because in german field kitchens are called Gulaschkanone which literally means Goulash cannon. Although the famous goulash soup is a national dish in hungary but the phrase Gulaschkanone is not used. I couldn´t resist and had to build this model by modifying the horse cart model by battlefront. I added a chimney, which could be folded down and some round devices on my scratch built cart construction.
The original battlefront cart can be seen on the right. It is covered with a tarpaulin in hungarian three colour camouflage.
Since my mid war collection for infantry and tank company is finished, I painted some models, which are suitable for late war. I always liked the german Hetzer from a design perspective and urgently wanted a unit of them. Since mid war is done, this is the first late war model in my collection. The king is dead, long live the king.
Yesterday ElComandante and me had a nice game together with Thorsten, who gave us helping hands with the 3.0 version of the Flames of War Rules. You need to know that learning rules is a matter of years for ElComandante and me. Therefore we now established a rules corner with big prints of the rule summaries, where you can think of your mistakes, if somebody sends you there.
My first impressions of the rule system were very good. We had several situations where changed rules applied. I will now give you a short summary of what happened and why it felt intuitive and correct.
We played the reworked cauldron mission, which saw changes in the setup area. The cauldron now is at one long table edge, which I like very much and the defender has delayed reserves. Since the attacker has reserves too, there is less material on the table at the beginning. As far as I remember the old cauldron saw incredible much stuff on the table at the beginning.
The new setup was quite good for ElComandante since he had an entire maximum unit of Kartjushas across the Don, and an heavy mortar platoon (anybody happens to know if that is possible?). Since this leads to an devastating template ElComandante was initially lucky with the die result of the cauldron mission.
Since I decided some seconds before we rolled the dice for a scenario that I will field tanks and not an Assault Pioneer Platoon I cursed some times. A minefield could have been helpful against a tank company. However I fielded a hungarian Gépkocsizó Század with 2 platoons infantry, 1 anti tank platoon, 1 weapons platoon, 1 Artillery platoon and 1 tank platoon. I decided to start in the cauldron with two infantry platoons and 1 antitank platoon in immediate ambush. I chose to use off board artillery as ElComandante did.
I decided to act very defensive, which is the usual choice for infantry in a cauldron. ElComandante attacked with infantry and tanks at my left flank. He rolled both units available at the start in the same segment.
Hungarian infantry in the cauldron
Now it came to the first changes in terms of rules. I was able to let my anti tank guns go to ground. If guns do not shoot or move they now have a 3+ save and are gone to ground. Therefore I could position the anti tank guns at the edge of a wood and I could wait, until the tanks attacked my infantry in close combat. Before that rule change it was possible to shoot down anti tank guns with tanks especially when the range of the tanks exceeded that one of the guns. Now it´s less easy for an attacker to get rid off the guns.
Since there were enough options for my opponent to put pressure on my guns with artillery the change felt good. Now it is possible to have guns on the table if there is no ambush option.
First sovjet assault on the hungarian positions.
The next changes came to live when the first assault on my right flank with the first reinforcements took place. ElComandante attacked rather quickly with a T34 company. The new rules are very intuitive since only teams with enemies in 30cm distance may move into the assault, and only teams with enemies in 20cm may shoot defensive fire. Congratulations for these excellent changes. This reduces cheesy movements in FoW by 80% I think. In our case the attacker´s dice where unwilling to win and the T-34 lost the first attempt, which was not very likely. One tank was bailed out, the company had not the morale to attack again and lost one vehicle in combat.
On my left flank the infantry with lots of submachineguns rushed towards my positions. I have chosen to let my infantry fire with the help of two heavy machine guns attached from the weapons platoon. Since I faced only one infantry platoon I decided to change the position of the third machine gun. A rule change made that happen because not the whole second platoon was treated as having moved, only that specific gun team. I moved this one in the woods and therefore had a entire infantry platoon gone to ground on my right flank. A very good change!
With a lucky shot from my artillery I was able to achieve an delay in the advance of the russian Sherman tank company. ElComandante had to reassign a company commander with his Bataillon commander, which draw some movement and diminished the amount of shots I had to suffer. At this flank the changed rules we used a lot were, that tanks may shoot over stationary infantry, which ElComandante used a lot. Same is for gun teams, which also applied, since there were two Maxim machine guns at that flank and a lot of tank rider infantry.
In parallel ElComandante searched the decision on the right flank again. But he was not able to kill any infantry therefore I broke off. In my turn artillery shot a barrage on the tanks, after that I moved the guns through the woods and was able to take down another tank. The movement of light, medium and heavy guns has increased, which brings far more flexibility for infantry based armies.
When fighting a russian infantry company or even more of them it might be very interesting, that the rule of mass only applies for teams that rush into assault. This means, you need to carefully move your russian infantry in an assault in order to have enough teams in action who count. It is a big difference for defending troops to pin down an assault by hitting 5 times or 15 times. It took me two rounds of shooting to get his infantry horde down to the interesting number, which was very important on my left flank.
The modified hen and chick rule was appreciated since movement is now a bigger option for Soviets. They may shoot during movement of 30cm at +1. This is not brilliant since the Hungarians are veterans, but it feels better and leads to a more dynamic style of gaming.
Although ElComandante was extremly unlucky that evening we both liked the new rules. The game was finally a major win for the defending Hungarians in the cauldron and ElComandante failed to use his advantage of 400 Points of tank support. In our campaign this victory for sure will be an important success. On the other hand I am very sure, that ElComandante will learn to combine infantry and tanks very soon.
Having played Flames of war for quite a while I am very happy to say that once more the authors proofed to have an improvement in mind and not the optimisation of sales in another way but to have satisfied customers. Well done Battlefront!
If you happen to read this article I am curious which is your new favourite rule change!
Hungarian Medical Toldi Tank; Photo Credit: Csaba B. Stenge PhD; with permission
During my research for the hungarian army project I came along a picture in the Book „Magyar Steel“ which shows a medic Toldi tank, which operated 1943 at the river Don. Since tanks for Doctors are a very unique thing as far as I know I decided to make an objective with this topic. Since the picture in the book was black and white I am not sure wether or not the tank was painted in three colour camoflage. I decided to do so and added a red cross flag. I added a bag on the turret, which was shown on the picture. The red cross was painted on the turret, although I painted it on the other side of the hatch.
Then I painted the last infantry platoon for the hungarians in order to play an infanty company without tank support. Now I can field 30 infantry stands if I want to.
When playing an infantry company fielding mortars is very essential in order to fire smoke or to pin down russian infantry. Therefore painting a mortar platoon was mandantory. My club friend Thomas added lots of crates to his russian mortars, which I liked very much and copied that for differenciation on the gaming table. Moreover it seems more realistic if mortars are surrounded by ammo boxes. There is now only three bases missing for my mid war hungarians, the last platoon will be two Bofor guns.
The first gaming experiences with my hungarian tank company were devastating. I had the same experience the hungarians made at the Don in real life. The 38t tanks are almost useless when facing a soviet tank company, the few german tanks are to rare (expensive pointswise) and the missing stormtrooper move is very hard since the russians have usually more than 12 tanks in a company. In five games I was far away from even achieving a draw.
The last burning ten hungarian tanks brought me back to the painting table. Having both the option to play tanks or infantry gives you more options in a campaign. Therefore I added the very important anti-tank guns. I have chosen the 7.5cm PaK97/38 option, which was recommended by my club mate thomas. These guns come with medium bases and are perfect for ambushes. The huge PAK40 with big bases is far more difficult considering the positioning of ambushes.
Once more I painted transports although they are rarely used. I decided that the 6 different transports I painted in this run are the last for the company since usually only a couple of them are used. I removed the bases from my Botond trucks because I do not like based vehicles in FoW. Hungarian vehicles can be seen on several war time pictures and I think the camo was often different. This time I decided to paint the canvas in british uniform, which is similar to the Battlefront painting scheme.
Everyone who thinks about an hungarian infantry company which is capable of fighting against the soviet tide has to think about a weapons platoon, which provides additional firepower for the combat platoons. 3 HMG teams, two anti-tank rifle teams and two light mortars should give you the option of strengthening the points where an attack is very likely.
The weapons platoon got soviet Beutefahrzeuge. I painted two ZIS-5 Models from the special order, since I really like the models. As far as I know is the variant with two axises was stopped in production 1942, so this car was a veteran, when captured by the hungarians. I added no markings for the case that I decide to have a soviet company, too.
When playing with an infantry company in FoW, it is always useful to be able to distinguish between the different platoons since an intermixing of e.g. anti-tank guns and infantry is very useful. Therefore I added slices of an polystyrene rod wich were glued to the base. These werde painted in different colors. I started with the combat platoons in the colors of the hungarian flag, then I added colors without context. For sure painting a circle would have been enough, personally I like the 3-dimensional style. Moreover I have painted the same colors on the bottom of the base, since I put the models upside down in the model case.
In our Club we are going to start an Mid War FoW Campaign very soon. In order to have some valid thread to russian Tanks I painted one Platoon of Hungarian Assault Pioneers, called Utász in hungarian. I was a little bit unlucky with the decision of converting some models, since Battlefront did a platoon with modeled pioneers, too.
However now I have my very own version, which is pretty much similar to the version of Battlefront. I decided to show the Pioneers by adding german mines, barbed wire and some craters. I modeled the mines with grey stuff and made a tiny mold of it. There are two versions of the mines, a bare mine and one in a wooden carriage box. I used the box to convert the pioneer truck.
Painting was this time a little bit quicker but more precise than I did with the first infantry platoon. Currently I think the amount of work should be chosen carefully. There are a lot of 15mm based miniature painters, who are very specialised and paint an incredible quality. Chevalier de la Terre had an excellent Blogpost on inspiring FoW painters: http://cracdeschevaliers.blogspot.com/2011/04/sources-of-inspiration.html, but I must admit, that personally I paint FoW miniatures less intensive, since there are too many other miniatures to have a detailed painter eye on it e.g. 28mm.
This week I managed to finish the hungarian Recce troops. Some time ago I mentioned the paper masking airbrushing technic I used to spray the camo scheme. I am very happy with the finished troops. The tanks looks somewhat simple, but I would like to mention some special things in order to let you know how much work these tiny armoured vehicles were.
First of all every turret was fixed with rare earth magnets to the chassis. Then I added some commanders and one soldier talking to the platoon leader while standing on the rear of the tank. I added at least one piece of stowage to each vehicle. Then I added two typical round aerials which can be seen on many photos showing the Toldi troops. I used wire in a strength which prevents future damage.
After that I constructed my own Decals. My first attempt with white decal paper was not that precise, so I decided to let them printed out by a service which is able to print white colour, too. To do this we had to provide a pdf with two pages, one with all color information, one with the white information (in black). The Service called Druckeronkel (german page) did an excellent job to reasonable prices. I designed the correct version of the hungarian Balkenkreuz, since I did the same mistake like Battlefront´s author Wayne, who mentioned it in his excellent painting article. Unfortunately I did it wrong with my first batch of hungarian decals.
Now with the correct version I added registration plates, hungarian coat of arms, hungarian armed forces coat of arms, a double cross insignia for the Cabas, an Eagle insignia for the hatches of the Toldis and some other details. My employee, who is in trainig of a graphical job, did the printig version of the insignia. It takes ages to produce a printable version since you need vector construction skills, knowledge on colors in print (although RGB without profiles was needed) and you should be able to save PDFs. I took us three approaches to get the file right for print. So if you consider to produce your own decals don´t blame me that you did not know that that is hard work.
For making the fire and smoke markers I used exactly the technic introduced by Elladan in his excellent Fire and Smoke article. Since I read it some years ago I wanted to test that. Strange but true it took me really a long time to get into a pet shop, a artist´s shop, get red ink, a good yellow paint and magnets for the bases. But now it worked excellent, thank you very much Elladan for sharing your work with us!
The fire and smoke markers will be very important for our upcoming Tactica 2011 gaming table depicting Eastern Front 1943, since many hungarian and sowjet vehicles were destroyed during that time.
Currently I am working at my Mid War Ostfront hungarian company. At the very beginning of our campaign I will just be able to field a hungarian Tank company as painting an whole infantry company simply takes a lot of time. However my first games will see 7 38t tanks, 3 Panzer IV, 3 Panzer III, 3 Stuka, 2 Nimrod, an motorised infantry platton, and a 10,5 cm artillery battery. The force consists of elements which actually were present during the attacks against the Uryv Bridgehead in 1942 the Sovjets established on the hungarian controlled banks of the river Don. Battlefront did write two good articles on the operation of the Hungarian 1st Armoured Division: Karotyak Bridgehead and The Battles For Uryv. Both give an interesting Overview. Online Ressources for this two Battles are rare, please drop a note if you have more Links for this topic to provide.
All units I have chosen so far were used in the Uryv Bridgehead. Obviously there were a lot of Pak 36 guns which could not provide an anti tank capacity against the T-34 and KV1 tanks which were brought in the battle by the 30th tank regiment. Since I had some really bad experiences with that kind of anti tank gun, even with the Stielgranate, I do not want to paint this gun type for my Hungarians so far.
My first army composition feels good against infantry with 10 tanks, 2 armored vehicles with high Rof, a good artillery and aircrafts. However I think my club mates will make the same decision: Let´s start with a tank company – it is less to paint. Therefore I have to think about the threat of some KV1 or T-34. The only tank which is valuable against T-34 are those 3 Panzer IV. That is not that much. The only weapon against the KV1 are my Stukas. Usually I do not like airforce choices since the performance usually is very variable. Sometimes they rock, usually they don´t especially when there are anti aircraft guns available.
This platoon has seen a somewhat funny story: I painted it in order to support either my hungarian tank company or motorised infantry. For sure artillery is important and the german 10,5 cm guns can provide a means against russian tanks in artillery bomardments. To field a hungarian platoon means, that you have to buy two blister guns, a hungarian artillery crew blister and the towing vehicles as well. A lot of money if you consider to field alternatively mortars for the infantry company. However I always liked the sprayed hungarian 3 color camo, therefore I decided to paint the guns in that version. I found several picturs showing the german guns in this painting scheme.
I wanted to have the teams in a dug in position since the hungarian troops were forced to cover in field works since the russians threw massive attack after attack against them. Therefore I modeled three different base sizes. The first attempt with the artillery base was to small for the huge guns, so I designed another one. After that I made a silicone form and made some bases with resin. The result was really nice. I cut off the bases of the infantry models and glued them directly to the designed base. One nice effect on this technic is, that the base ground is less thick. For sure there will be models to be fall off in future, but I can repair this.
The crews are mixed between germans and hungarians, the main difference is the boots of the germans. I just painted them as trousers and I think it is hard to pick them out if you want to search them.
The strange thing on this platoon is, that within our campaign we do play with the exeptional rule „Across the Volga“ which means that you may place your artillery outside the table – you do not need to paint it…
I managed to finish the core of my hungarian tank company. The core was not very hard in history. When the 1st armoured division fought at the river Don in 1942 their T-38G tanks were absolutely useless against most of the tanks the Sovjets threw at the hungarian controlled sector. The main gun was to weak to cope with T34 and for sure with KV1 tanks. The models are really tiny compared to other german Tanks, e.g. Panzer IV. However the history and the fact that this troop is underpowered against Russian standard troops are very interesting for me. I wanted to paint a force which ceased to exist in 1943 sindce the Russians simply wiped them out. In wargaming the aspect of modeling a unit the day before it was defeated is for me a very interestin one.
I decided to add just some stowage parts since I did not find a lot of stowage on historical pictures. Moreover the models are very small, so they would look somewhat overdone if they had to carry too much. As usual I used magnets for fixing the turrets. The antennas were made of goat hair from a brush. I printed the decals and the registration plates by myself and I was very pleased how it came out.
Panzer grey is not a favourite color for me. This time I started with a brown primer. After that I airbrushed german grey on the tanks, in a second step I highlighted with the airbrush and a lighter grey. After that I just sprayed water on the models and used Vallejo black Wash to bring the details back to visibility. A light dry brush with neutral grey was a good finish for the models.
For the bailed out markers I used german tank drivers and one hungarian officer. The hungarian tank drivers wore leather clothes and the characteristic hungarian uniforms. Just painting the models in a different way worked excellent.
Now I am somewhat curious which role these tanks will play in our upcoming campaign. Light tanks as the core of a company will be for sure ver y hard to play but I hope interesting and rewarding.
First of all I would like to mention the excellent gaming table and the great Game I had with Frank Bauer. He built a great italian Gaming Table using the Italian Village Rusus and me designed last year. The models are still available and the range will be expanded. I use these great pictures in order to illustrate the army I used for the last 3 years mainly when playing FoW.
Yesterday I had the last game within our Club´s campaign in Mid War Tunisia with my Fallschirmjäger company. The game was a really good one, I fought against a 1300 points US paratrooper company attackin in the „King of the hill“ scenary vs. my 1300 points defending Germans. Usually I do not talk very much about my games, since I play on a regular basis and keeping track of these games is quite a lot of work.
But this game was the last in the campaign which means that my Fallschirmjäger will now stay in their case for a while since my Hungarians will be used in our upcoming Ostfront Club Campaign. I started to collect the company in 2007, so it was almost three years of gaming and painting with this troops. I had to learn a lot about the german fighting doctrine e.g. Kampfgruppen or Stormtrooper movement and how to use them and not to forget about them.
The Fallschirmjägercompany was very complicated to build and understand since there are lots of small weapons and different choices. In our campaign you are allowed to build an individual list for every game. Therefore it is very important to paint different choices in order to react to certain scenarios and different point sizes. In our campaign the size of the opponent force is usually not the same than yours since that is part of the strategical map movement.
For me the most important Platoons in an FJ company are:
HQ
Two Panzerknackerteams in the HQ are absolutely great. If you have 10 points in spare you can add two valueable tank hitting teams to your combat platoons. The Püppchen Werfer or the Anti tank rifle are also very valuable against Tank assaults since they both are man packed gun teams and may be attached to your combat platoons or Kampfgruppe. The light mortar options are not that good in my opionion. They are quite expensive. I would recommend all collectors to paint Stummelwerfer as a Mortar Platoon. Then you can use them as a Mortar Platoon or a Mortar Option in the HQ. Quite flexible!
Combat Platoons
Always paint two full infantry platoons of your Fallschirmjäger, always choose Panzerknacker SMG teams as command. They are really great. I tried a lot of army lists with 2 or 3 platoons infantry, which work excellent. Usually with 3 Infantry platoons there is at least one which is not at full strength. I painted an additional Pioneer platoon, which is interesting for games with fortifications or in games where you have to attack. A flamethrower which may pin down defenders could be very interesting. Moreover Pioneers have a good anti tank rating. So if you already have two platoons you should go for pioneers. Since the gear is pretty much the same you could change your whole company in a Pioneer troop with just up to 9 flamethrowers, if you have 9 sections in your combat platoons. Personally I did not want to paint the Pioneer HQ Options and sticked to the Fallschirmjäger Company. I prefer the latter since Pioneers do cost a lot of points.
Weapon Platoons
The FJ MG Platoon is great, since they may be attached to combat platoons as well. A must have for any FJ army. There may be two of these, but I painted only one. If you play a lot of infantry, Italians e.g. consider to paint two. But I think this will rarely happen. The Light Gun Platoon is sometimes very important. I often played with only 1300 points because within our Club´s campaign and then any anti tank capacity is welcome. The light weight guns are an interesting mixture when looking at their rules: Man packed, no gun shield, recoiless. One intersting aspect is that they can be part of a Kampfgruppe, as they are a weapon´s platoon. I played them quite often and they played often a mayor role in close combats with tanks next to objectives. The mortars are for sure a very important choice. Fallschirmjäger should often use smoke as an option vs. tanks and for attacking in close combat. You should definetly paint this platoon, I did not but should have. The mortars can be a HQ choice, too. That can be interesting in order to have one platoon with artillery and infantry on the table.
Support Platoons
Any FoW gamer knows how essential Anti tank guns are in the game. So is for the Fallschirmjäger. First I painted the PAK 36 which was named Heeresanklopfgerät (Army´s Knocking device) because it was to light for Mid War Tanks. Without a Stielgranate it is almost impossible to knock out a Stuart from the front. Usually you may protect your infantry against tank assaults with that guns. With a Stielgranate there may be some chance but the low RoF and the distance are quite hard. Usually I use it against infantry, Universal carriers and Recce platoons (if I know about them). I painted one alternative and one Addition to the PAK 36: Marder II and PAK 40. Both have the excellent 7,5cm gun and provide excellent anti tank options. If they appear in the game your opponent will automatically focus on these platoons. Usually I only fielded one of the 7,5 cm options. The Marder II was reduced in his point costs in the „North Africa“ book by Battlefront. Therefore I used them often in the last month whereas I did not when they costed 30 points more per tank.
The heavy mortars were one of my favourite choices. They proved to be much better than the mointain gun, which I think is crap in the old book. In the new book the mountaingun was improved, but I still prefer one heavy mortar platoon sometimes im combination with medium mortars. For sure there is an Nebelwerferoption and more, but I prefer to play a straight FJ Force at this point. I am planning to have some allied forces in my upcoming army.
The Flak Choice was often on the table when I painted them. They provide affordable aircraft protection and may be used against infantry and vehicles, too. They are not unbeatable, but the price is low and they may move 10cm and an additional 10 cm Stormtrooper move. Air support was often chosen by my Allied opponents, so a general army list should contain at least 2 of these guns.
I hope my ideas may help future Fallschirmjäger Company Commanders a little bit. Comments on these thoughts are welcome.
I had approximatly 20 games with this force, they fought more victories than defeats, maily because I could always use different choices in my composition. When I learned to use the Stormtrooper rule, smoke, Combat Attachments and Kampfgruppe the force was very flexible and interesting. Like in the real war every game saw a lot of losses amongst the Fallschirmjäger – the Airborne Infantry was stubborn, brave and somewhat fanatic which ended often deadly in the hard circumstances in Tunisia and Italy.
