Hungarian anti-tank guns and weapons platoon

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 hungarians used the Schwarzlose MG M.07/12 and the Solothurn S-18/100 you can find pictures of both weapons in my gallery of the Military Museum in Budapest.

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.