Early War - Polish HMG platoon II

I bought a few additions to support my infantry battalion. A second HMG platoon for second company. As I have 3 infantry platoons I figured I would have first company with 2 platoons + hmg platoon and second company with 1 platoon +  hmg platoon. Ideally I would reinforce second company with another platoon honestly the prospect of painting even more grunts isn't that appealing.



Especially since I figured I would buy a couple of Forged in Battle French and use them as a dismounted cavalry company to boost my infantry numbers with something "better" and more interesting.

Here are a few pictures of the second HMG platoon from Battlefront and a couple of comparison pictures with the Forged in Battle HMG platoon. Battlefront sells their HMG platoons with 3 hmg teams and a command team, while FiB sells 4 HMG teams with no command team. The BF are to the left and FiB (slightly smaller) to the right.

The Infantry battalion only requires 3 hmg teams in their hmg platoon. But the cavalry and motorized cavalry company uses 4 teams.

The little wall piece on one of the HMG teams was made as a test as I intend to build a few such walls for a Westerplatte scenario.

So before I continue on painting that last infantry platoon of mine I will squeeze in the 155mm artillery (or BFG's to use a Doom reference) and a second 37mm Bofors AT platoon.

The reasoning about these additions was spawned after my last couple of games. Clearly my second company need some fire support so another HMG platoon was needed. Playing the infantry battalion I rather spend points on more infantry and cheap AT guns like the 37mm AT platoon than having to rely on the very frail 7TP tanks.

Buying a BFG platoon of artillery left me with the choice of either going 105mm or 155mm. I checked the rulebook and saw that firing direct fire the 10.5 had 24" range while the 155 only had 16" range. The 105 also had a couple of inches longer range for their indirect fire barrage as well. However I then saw that both type of guns only have Rate of Fire 1 which would make them very weak in "direct fire combat" and the sacrifice of a few inches of indirect fire range was compensated by AT5 and firepower 2+ for the 155mm. No hard choice after that. I will need a can opener unit like that to stem the tide of panzers as I was made aware of in the 4000pts game two weeks ago.

Another thing about the big nasty artillery, as you may already know I'm a supporter of the "Across the Volga" rule that uses artillery firing indirect fire off table. I still bought the models for a couple of reasons. Beside them looking cool, I will not always play with people who like the Across the Volga rule, so having the models will of course be necessary. And even in games where you use the Across the Volga rule I think bringing a real unit to a game will not only remind you of its existence but also not come across as "cheap" in the sense that you use units that you actually don't have.

There will be Flames of War (1500pts) and Secrets of the Third Reich (55RP, gonna use my Soviet platoon this time) games played tomorrow down at the club, so battle reports and pictures will follow.

As always, the Battlefront artilery and support options I use comes from GameManiacs.