» 28mm British Paratroopers for Bolt action

A few weeks ago I was introduced to The bolt action rules, I’ve known about the game for a while, through the WWPD Podcast, Seeing Warlord Games at Salute last year (see my photos from the event HERE) and through various online articles.

I’d toyed with the idea of buying some figures, but with my attention, and the attention of all the people in my local wargames group firmly on Flames of War, I kinda just let it slide by me. Until of course at my new local club, they were playing a game!

I was hooked instantly. Came home from the first game and ordered the rules online. But whats the rules without models? My first purchase was obviously… A tank.. A cromwell to be precise! Check out my post on that HERE.

After my tank, I thought I should better get some infantry! I Didn’t want to just go straight to warlord games for the infantry, They do some fantastic stuff, but I fancied doing something a little different with this force than just buying everything (or the majority) of the force from one supplier, like I’ve done with my Flames of War or Games workshop forces, I thought I would mix and match a few manufacturers to add some variety and to see what kinds of minis (and service) I’d get from out there in the wider wargaming world.

At this point, my book hadn’t arrived yet, so I had no idea what I was allowed to take in my force. This is a pretty dangerous way to start an army in miniature wargaming!

I thought I would try to play it safe, Bolt action is primarily a platoon level game. Most forces are built around a “reinforced platoon”, with support. I have a bit of a military background so I know quite a bit about platoon structure in the modern military, not so much at the time of world war two though! My plan consisted of getting a few bits and pieces that I knew I would always be able to use, to minimise the chance of ending up with “redundant” figures, and also try and style the force round how a modern platoon is structured.

I should probably have mentioned, even though the title gives it away, that I’ve went for British Paratroopers as my *ahem* First, force for Bolt action.

The first purchase was from Renegade miniatures. I’d heard good things about Renegade’s stuff, and some (if not most of) the german figures I’d used in the game at the club were Renegade figures, which I really liked.
I went to the site, and bought a British Parachute Regiment set. This was partly a mistake…
Only partly because the figures are REALLY nice. The mistake part was that I never checked to see what I was actually getting… I just saw 24 figures and WRONGLY assumed that I would get a mix of rifles, stens and brens. What I actually got was Rifles, stens, brens AND PIATS.

What you complaining for? I hear you cry… Well.. I’m crying because out of 24 figures I was hoping to split into 3 units of 8… I got 8 PIATs… I can use one team. That leaves 6 PIATs spare. Oh, and did I mention that I bought a PIAT team from Artizan designs? Yeah…. oops.

This was totally my own fault, and when I went back to look, it was clearly labeled what you got. So I can’t complain. What I really should have done, was order three individual blisters of rifles stens and brens. That way I would have got exactly what I wanted. Score 1 point common sense. Score 0 points for Chris!

Renegade Miniatures British Paras

The quality of the sculpts was really impressive from Renegade, I like them a lot, I only had one problem with them, which was the PIAT guy with the PIAT on his shoulder (I got two of these), his face was blocked by flash near the PIAT, I couldnt really do much with this so I ended up just painting over it the best I could, at 2 feet away you’d never tell. But up close, I have two PIATs being carried by the elephant man.
On the whole though, and especially for the price, I am very happy with the infantry for my Bolt action Paras!

Next up is Artizan Designs (part of North Star Figures), from here I bought the Command and characters Pack and the PIAT teams. (for those that need a little help counting, I now have 12 PIAT models.. I can use 2. bugger.)
These models are BEAUTIFUL.
I can’t recommend Artizan Models highly enough. These guys truely are stunning, required virtually no clean up work, and, if I’m totally honest, the models arrived in half the time the rest took to arrive.
If anyone has ANY idea about who the guy in the kilt is supposed to represent, I would LOVE if you would tell me, I bought these figures as they look stunning, and I am fairly certain of two of them are Major Allison Digby Tatham-Warter DSO and Major Robert Henry Cain VC, But I can’t be sure.

The third lot of Figures I bought was from Warlord themselves, I picked up a dice set (maroon, obviously!), The British army FOO team (Brits get a Foo for free in every force, its their special rule), The Airborne Vickers team, The radio operator and The medic.

Forward Observation officer and team

Vickers Team

Also, over the past couple of weeks I’ve managed to pick up a few more things. From blacktreedesign.com I’ve picked up a mortar team, a sniper team and a few additional riflemen to boost my force up to a full strength platoon. These guys haven’t arrived yet, and I got them mega cheap, So I can’t yet comment on them, but I can say that they were REALLY cheap. If the quality is even half that of renegade, I will still be happy.
I also got a “battle honors” 75mm pack howitzer on ebay. the description was 25mm/28mm, So I figured from that that it meant “25mm, but really they are too big for 25mm, much closer to 28mm”
What it actually meant was “definately 25mm. 25mm dwarfs.”
These guys are tiny in comparison to all the others, who all fit in very well with each other. The reason I’m not wholey annoyed though is that I THOUGHT I was bidding on one set. But, the Battle honors stuff comes in packs of two! So I actually received two 75mm pack howitzers, and two sets of crew, all for about half the price of one proper 28mm one.

So no doubt these will get painted, and then staight back on ebay!

I’ll post up a few more pictures, and possibly go through how I painted the Paras in a future post.

Thanks for reading, please feel free to comment below!

Chris