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 While there hasn't been much movement on the Bolt Action front, there has been some. I decided to build all the remaining bodies for the Italians. After building the engineers squad, there were 7 bodies left to build. These were split up in to three groups, to form an engineers command squad, a flame thrower team and two assistants for the FOO.  First up the Engineers command squad, formed of an officer and two assistants. The idea behind these is simple, options. The other engineers squad is 5 strong, and when combined with the flame thrower team below, can form a second five man squad. Alternatively they can just function as a command unit for a Engineers platoon, or even as an officer in any other platoon. The two assistants can also be added to the 5 man Engineers squad with the flame throwers to form a large two flame thrower squad or can replace the flame thrower in the squad to enable the two flame throwers to be run as separate units. All in all there are lots of opti...
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Engineers

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 Flamer This is the start of a new platoon, one I didn't intend on building but things sort of got away from me and so now I have an engineering squad.  I did not intend on building any more sections but when my boy got the German veterans box, there were several flame throwers going spare, so I though, why not. So, I now have a small engineers squad, with a flame thrower, along with another one on the table, ready to build.  This is just a small 5 man squad, which can be bolstered to 9 or even a full ten men with the second flame thrower team and the officer and his two attendants. Most likely though it will stay as a small 5 man with either one or two flame throwers in.  The German flame throwers are different to the Italian ones, as the German one has a main tank and smaller side tank (flammenwerfer 35) but the Italian is a twin tank design (lanciafiamme modello 35 or modello 40) However, I don't really see this as an issue, as these are either hard core Italian S...
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Heavy weapons

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 Alongside the new vehicles I have brought and made some heavy weapons teams. I say heavy weapons teams, but two of them are actually light mortars, so not very heavy at all! These are Warlord games resin Italian Bersaglieri light mortar teams. I wanted just regular army teams, but there were none available when I brought these of eBay.  These models are pretty nice, not the best but still good. The sculpts are decent but the left arm comes separate on the mortar man and is a bit of a pain to put on, it just doesn't seem to sit nicely in any position.  I mounted the teams on 50mm bases rather than the separate bases they should come with, as they didn't come with any bases and I had these to hand.  As well as buying the mortar teams, I built two Anti-tank rifle teams from various bits, mainly warlord Italians and German veteran bits. The guns are actually German anti-tank rifles, which isn't quite right for the Italians but I don't really mind. I could have brought t...
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Tanks!

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I mentioned in a previous post that I had brought 4 vehicles, two tanks and two tankettes but actually it's more like a tank, a self propelled gun and two tankettes.  These vehicles turned up a couple of weeks ago but I have yet to get them primed or painted. The weather is currently hovering around 0 to 5 degrees and damp most of the the time. Hopefully I'll get a chance soon to get them primed at least.  The vehicles in question are the L15\42, the Semovente 75\34 M43 and two CV33's or CV35's (basically the same vehicle).  The L15\42 will be the forces main tank. Now it's not a great tank by any means, with only a Light AT gun but it does have 4 MMG's which is pretty good. I did consider the the P26\40 instead, with it's medium AT gun and Armour 9 but the extra 45 points don't really make it worth while. It is only really my son's Tiger that will cause me issues but most other stuff I play against is armour 8 or 9, so can be dealt with by the light...
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2026 aims and objectives

 So over on my main blog, (the 40k one) I write down my resolutions for the the year and I though that I should do something similar here. I thought I'd title it slightly differently though, as my aims and objectives for the year.  So what are my aims and objectives for Bolt Action \ VBCW this year? Well there quite simple actually, as having just brought everything I want for my Italian army and I have no plans for further expansion, I'll be just concentrating on playing a few games. I would like to play every couple of months, maybe get half a dozen games a year played, which I think is reasonable.  Having just mentioned buying everything I need for the Italians, one of the main focus for the year, is getting it all painted up. So far I have four tanks, (or two tanks and two tankettes), four weapons teams and half a dozen infantry to paint but there will be two artillery guns and about another half a dozen infantry to add to the list soon. Getting them all painted is hi...
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Reinformemts

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 So, I finally caved and decided to bite the bullet and buy the rest of my Italian army.  As you can see, I've just gone and done it in one lump sum. Most of these are cheaper 3D prints and I have no idea about the quality but I'm not overly worried, as long as they are usable it's fine.  The light mortars are Warlord Games models and so will be fine.  The vehicles are all from one eBay seller and should give me everything I need, with a tank, a self propelled gun \ tank destroyer and two light armoured vehicles. I had thought about getting some other vehicles, namely an AB41 and a S37 or two. I'm hopeful that the vehicles will be scaled correctly as it's hard to tell from the pictures.  Lastly, I have bought two artillery pieces, one anti-tank and one howitzer. This will give me all the support I need, along with the two light mortars. Again I might get some additional artillery at some point, maybe a heavy howitzer or an AA auto cannon, but I really don't need...
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Artillery and heavy platoons

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 Lastly we have the support platoons, the Heavy weapons and Artillery platoons. The Heavy weapons platoon is almost complete, it is just missing a mortar the artillery platoon currently consists of one miniatures, which is not a gun. Heavy weapons platoon Platoon commander Spotter While I have built a spotter, I don't yet have a mortar to go with it. I do plan on getting one at some point but I'm in no hurry. The two guns are the same, the standard Breda M37. Now, I think I have mentioned this before, in game they are going to be standard MMG's, however, in real life the gun was considered the standard heavy machine gun. I don't know if I will be able to play this as a heavy machine gun when the army book comes out, but we shall see. If I can that would be great, but I suspect that it will still be classed as a medium gun, as the calibre is more of a medium, especially compared to the American .50 Cal guns. The artillery platoon is currently formed of just this one offi...
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