The Next Step

Continued from Painting the Troops

So after finishing my tanks I managed to get in a game that I won 6-1 (Check out my post on Waryammer for the details). That inspired me to get my tankodesantniki finished so that I had my complete 1500pt force ready to go (minus the aircraft). So what was next?

Next was expanding that force by 500 points. The historical composition of my force was finished at the 1500 pt mark, so my only self-imposed historical limit was that anything I added should be historically possible. In other words, it should be equipment and units that actually existed in May of 1942. That wasn't much of a problem as most non-historical equipment was already denied to me due to using a mixed tankovy batalon organization.

So began the number crunching. I had 505 points to work with. First I looked at what I had. I had strong anti-tank capability against medium and light tanks. I also had good anti-infantry capability in the form of my T-60 tanks and my tankodesantniki equipped T-34 tanks. I had some anti-air and anti-tank capability agains heavy tanks with my Shturmoviks, but it was unreliable. What I lacked were reliable ways to deal with heavy tanks and aircraft. I also lacked infantry and artillery.

I also decided to get rid of my airpower, which would leave me further weakened in a couple areas. Airpower has a bad reputation among some Flames of War players, but for me it was mainly 120 points that I didn't need to paint. Now that I had my main force done I could replace it with something else. That left me with 625 points to work with for a 2000 point force.

After looking at a number of different options, I settled on the following: For 365 points I could add a full tank rider company. For another 250 I could add a guards rocket mortar battery (katyusha of one platoon with loading crews. That's a total of 615, leaving me at 1990pts. It would be nice to find another 10 points somewhere, but there really aren't any options I can take, so it's close enough.

Of course, this left me with the daunting prospect of painting 133 infantry figures (including the katyusha crews), plus assembling two of the most complex models in the Flames of War range (the aforementioned katyushas). On the other hand, painting the katyushas and their supporting trucks should be easy after my experience with the tanks.

With all that in mind, I decided to start on the infantry. I'll cover that process soon.

Continued in Painting the Hordes.