Bolt Action: Winter US Infantry

The core of Bolt Action is a block of infantry. Given my tight timeline (and fond memories of Band of Brothers), I quickly settled on using Airborne. They’re vets, so more points per model leads to fewer models needed. I mostly used the metal winter infantry set, but with a few plastic paratrooper models for spice. I was quite disappointed to learn that Warlord’s interchangeable head system does not go across plastic and metal sets. The scales don’t quite match.

By the time I was done, I had three squads with nine men each.

Bolt Action: Winter US HQ

As the Team Yankee campaign was winding down, I started looking around for what would come next. Mike, who ran the Team Yankee campaign, was going to be starting a Bolt Action Battle of the Bulge campaign. I had never played but long been interested in Bolt Action, so I got a demo and jumped in head first, with a little over a month to get the army ready.

I had kind of wanted to do Germans, since I almost always end up playing some form of “generic good guy” Americans. I signed up too late, however, and the campaign was short on Americans. Such is life.

I saw someone mentioning putting NCOs on 30mm bases instead of the standard 25mm to help them stand out. I quite liked that idea, and went with it throughout the army. That includes things like the officer.

I adopted a fairly quick-and-dirty paint approach to get it done. Most of the paints are from the Vallejo US Infantry set, with some yellow mixed in to highlight and Secret Weapon armor wash across the whole thing. It’s been a while since I’ve done a game with this kind of model count. I had forgotten how much faster it is to batch paint uniforms than to do a bunch of unique models.

Forward Observer
Forward Observer

Malifaux: Bandersnatch

All of a sudden everybody wants the guy from the Bandersnatch kit to make Prospectors. But you can’t have him. He’s busy as the hapless fool about to be Bandersnatched.

Bandersnatch
Bandersnatch

I’m usually pretty timid with lighting effects. I first painted the man regularly, but it was clear it wasn’t going to work. Why did he have a lantern? How could he not see the giant spider creeping over him?

I decided to try something a little different — object source darkness. The Bandersnatch was sucking the light away. I put some Secret Weapon Tire Black (a nice black with a hint of blue) in the airbrush and went at it. A drybrush of Rubber/Rubber Highlight brought back the shape a bit. Airbrushing over a painted model like this makes me really nervous, since it’s hard to fix any mistakes. But I’m quite pleased with the result.

The shadows don’t quite make sense if the light is coming from the lantern, but if the darkness is coming from the Bandersnatch it works.