From GregB: Winter WW2 German 8cm Mortar and MG Team (40 Points)

28mm WW2 Germans in winter kit - figures a mix of Warlord's "Bolt Action" range and Offensive Miniatures' "Elite" range.

The 28mm Winter WW2 project continues to move along. I continue to "round out" my initial German forces with some additional support in the form of an 8cm mortar team and an additional MG42 LMG team.  The mortar team are 28mm figures from Warlord's "Bolt Action" range - the mortar and crew are all metal, while the spotter is a plastic figure. The LMG team are 28mm metal figures from the "Elite" range produced by "Offensive Miniatures" (these are awesome figures, although the name of the business is unfortunate and not ideal for Google searches...)

8cm Mortar Team

Great weapon team from Warlord Games.

On-table mortars and artillery are a bit iffy when in comes to 28mm gaming, but the models are fun and the presence of an 8cm tube is at least somewhat plausible (as opposed to, say, a 12cm mortar).  This is yet another fine piece of sculpting from Warlord's range of metal "Bolt Action" figures.

The crew crowd around, ready to fire another round...

As always, Warlord's winter WW2 German figures have a lot of character.

Love the fellow at the back, pointing to his map - "Are we sure about these coordinates?"

It is often the case in different rules that a spotter of some sort is required in order for the mortar to fire indirectly on enemy targets. I had one figure that would probably do the trick already from the Platoon Command pack, but I wanted to give some of the Warlord 28mm plastic infantry a try, so I put this fellow together - he could act as a spotter/commander for the mortar team, or just a late war German NCO generally.

NCO/spotter - plastic 28mm figure from Warlord.

Not terrible, considering it's a plastic historical figure.

Useful as a commander for the mortar team, or just an NCO figure generally.

I have a generally dim view of plastic historical miniatures, but the plastic WW2 Germans in winter kit from Warlord are not too bad. The selection of poses available for LMG teams in the plastic box is terrible, but for regular infantry and officers, not too bad at all.  The weapon loads definitely skew to late war, which is fine for my project, but if you are looking for winter of 1941 or 1942 they might not be so good.  They paint up OK - not as nice as proper metal figures of course, but they are OK.

MG 42 Team

Snug in winter parkas, ready to bring the MG42 into action.

When I decided I wanted to dive into this project, I naturally had wasted invested much time in many online searches for different figures I might use.  I had seen these "Offensive" miniatures advertised many times, and thought I would give them a go - the sculpts look neat, with a lot of character.  The range is fairly complete - and there are no prone LMG teams, so, a win!

Lots of nice details on these sculpts.

Sadly, they took a long time to arrive in the post. The combination of Canada Post and the Canada Customs agency is a potent force for delay...toss in the Christmas holiday, and it was going to take a long time to arrive.  So by the time they did get here, I had already painted several units of figures from Warlord's Range, leaving these other ones on the back-burner for now.  Still, I am short on LMG teams, and I did want to at least try some of these new ones out, so I pulled this LMG team out of one of the squad packs.

I always enjoy an LMG gunner carrying belts and belts of ammo...

These are very nice sculpts - 28mm for sure, although not as large or heavy as Warlord's "Bolt Action" figures. I also found the faces lacked some of the definition and character you get on the Warlord sculpts.  But overall, these are still wonderful sculpts, and I highly, highly recommend them to folks looking for 28mm late-war Germans!

In terms of points, we have six 28mm infantry figures and one 28mm crew-served weapon, which should be good for 40 points. Thanks for looking!

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Guest minion Byron checking in today, to help out Greg by minioning (that is a verb right?) his entry for him, so he didn't have to post his own.

Another great entry Greg I love the overall look and feel of this project.  I find it amazing how well all these veried and dark colours actually blend into the winter tables you put together.  I find it very counter intuative that dark colours would work in the winter, but man the figures almost disapear against any kind of mixed terrain on the table.

I also find it funny how we all have our preference of material for figures.  I constantly hear Curt, Dallas, and yourself go on about preferring metal over pretty much everything, and sometimes hear about resin, however for myself, plastic is my favourite due to the simplicity of working with it and how forgiving it is (less chipping of paint, less risk of warping like resin, etc).

Keep up the great work though, all of these figures look great, especially with your basing scheme here.

- ByronM