Bolt Action - Sicilia 1943, Dec 9, 2017

Last Saturday, Ivano and Riccardo played a Bolt Action scenario from “Duel in the sun”. This supplement reports scenarios and rules for the African and Italian campaign and my club mates reproduced a fight between Commonwealth troops and Italians some days after Allies landing in Sicilia.

To play this game both Riccardo and Ivano started to paint miniatures weeks ago. This time I decided to include into the post not only some photos of the battle but also some imagines of their work in progress. Ivano and Riccardo are fine painters and their miniatures increase their valor on a good table but their work is very significant stand alone too.

Ivano painted Italians …

… while Riccardo works on UK elements

But now a look at the table before to summarize the fight

Riccardo and his troops started with a preliminary bombardment

And the PINS arrive

English sniper hits several times Italian artillery destroying it …

… and the spotter remains alone

Commonwealth troops advance

Italians, with their HMG, try to push down the enemy but it is an hard work

Now it is time for the armored unit

Unfortunately the M40 75/18 is destroyed

Italian sniper hits some enemy units but the advance continues

The last turns are an hand-to-hand fight

At the end the Italian officer has to declare his defeat

Cross Fire play test: Dec, 9 2017

Thanks to the great work did by Alberto (one of my club mates) that prepared a stunning table …

… last Saturday Alberto and Ezio played a test match using Cross Fire. Cross Fire is a Ww2 set of rules at company level, it is focuses in particular on infantry fights. Scenario they chose is included into the rule book (“bridgehead”) and they decided for a Normandy background.

Germans are in defense while Us troops have to advance and to take the control of (at least) four houses by enemy' reinforcements arrival.

All miniatures are painted by Alberto and are in 1/72 scale … but now some imagines of the battle

To start, a quick look to the two HQ’s commanders

Before US attack, Germans troops hide themselves into the village

An American armored column starts his approach to the village but the lane is blocked

From the church bell tower, a German HMG forces the Yankees to keep their heads down

Us troops continues their approach to the village but …

… even if German reinforcements arrived under an heavy enemy fire … the Americans doesn’t reach their goals …

… and Germans keep the control of the village

German late war soldiers

In September I finished my volksgrenadiers and waffen ss in 28 mm but, only today, I took some pictures of them. As I did in other post I included into this article also some real photos.

I have to point out that the Puma and the Panzer IV are painted by Maurizio ... I used my colors on them only for few details ...   while sceneries are prepared by my club mates (in particular by Alberto, Ezio and Flavio).

Below my version of a German PAK 40. 

Pak 40 was a very efficent anti-tank gun but it is hard to find historical colorized photos of it. 

During late part of the war, volksgrenadiers and ss troops wore different kind of camouflage uniforms. I tried to reproduce two of them using original photos. One version more light ...

... the second one more dark and green

In the complex, using the right background, the effect can be considered acceptable

I painted also some heavy MG 34 on a stationary tripod mount ... 

and 88 mm mortar

During the late part of the war, German troops suffered the effects of Allied air supremacy, so it was not difficult to find a column of soldiers in this situation

I tried to reproduce this atmosphere in the following three photos taken from different point of view