Tale of 5 Gamers: US 3rd Army (Winter)

Relief of Bastogne

US Third Army

For my second army for the 2019 Tale of Five Gamers I have started the relief of Bastogne to support my 101st Airborne, but also to help get through the HUGE backlog I have for bolt Action. 

This US army will be built, painted and battle in addition to my 101st Airborne ;Battered Bastards of Bastogne Army' and will hopefully give me a sizeable army for the US when the challenge is complete!  

Month one is primarily infantry based, with potential for a Sherman to be added in month 2!  However I do plan on having a 1/2 track to support the US winter army.

Progress so far...

Warlords US Army Veteran Squad (Winter)

Army built

US Army Officer and staff

An Engineer Squad with Flamethrower

Two US Army rifle Squads

Warlords US M3A1 Half-Track

Half-track built!

M3 Half-track

Tale of 5 Gamers: My US Airborne

Battered Bastards of Bastogne

Welcome to my first blog for the 2019 Tale of Five Gamers.  For this challenge I plan to build, paint and fight with two armies - this is the first, my United States 101st Airborne at Bastogne, Battle of the Bulge.  

The army is primarily infantry based, so lots of veteran airborne and some support to tackle the armour in later gamer.  I still have some way to go to finishing this army, but so far so good.

Progress so far...

Warlords US Airborne Squad (Winter)

My Battered Bastards of Bastogne build (1 point)

101st Airborne Lt. Spiers

Airborne Squad

Another 101st Airborne squad

Airborne squad with twin LMG's

Converted 101st Airborne Bazooka

Tale of Five Gamer - Martin's British

Having been an avid gamer for many years, and having very recently been introduced to the wonderful world of Bolt Action I thought it was time to start an army of my own, and what better way than by joining a tale of many gamers!

I have decided to theme my army around Operation Epsom that followed the Normandy landings during the later stages of the war, it was a short and bloody offensive in which thousands gave their lives. Ultimately it was a hard fought British victory. I picked this theme as I really like the British Divisions that fought here, the numerous Scottish Highlander divisions as well as the multiple Armoured Divisions looked very characterful and there are lots of great pictures taken during the operation that I thought would give me some great modelling and painting opportunities!

To start my army i thought the best bet would be Warlords 500pt British starter army, not only would it give me a playable 500pt force it also meant everything included would get used, having studied units and equipment used during Epsom the box fitted what i had planned perfectly.

I opted to build a unit of infantry first, so 10 guys including an officer. I opted to take the two smg options (one on the officer and the other on a regular Tommy) and used the Sten guns, my reasoning behind this was purely themed as having closely studied pictures of the battle I couldn’t help noticing that the Sten guns featured more than once on the British forces. The plastic kits Warlord supply are truly brilliant value for money, the options are almost endless, I did however find assembly a little fiddly. Getting the rifles to sit perfectly in the models hands was quite tricky but they turned out ok, I’m sure the next batch will be easier as there is definitely a nack to it! I hope to build the rest of the models in the next couple of weeks as I’m itching to get painting.