WWII - inside the box

With the arrival of my Rapid Fire rule book, thoughts have turned to what figures to field. As mentioned previously I have already bought the Airfix WWII British and German boxes, so I sat down with the sprues, knife and a glass of wine to see what I had and how the contents lined up against the expected force lists.





First off the British: (Click the picture)

As You can see the breakdown is :

• 15 Rifles
• 3 Rifles throwing grenades
• 12 Sub machine guns (Thomsons?)
• 3 Prone (with what look like Brens)
• 2 PIAT
• 3 Vickers MG Teams
• 1 Radio Operator
• 2 Officers
• 4 Character/diorama/marker figures (2 carrying wounded man and 2 using rifle butt as club)

Now I have 2 rule sets I am going to use. The aforementioned Rapid Fire, and Two Hour Wargames Nuts!.

The example 1944 British Infantry Battalion lines up (relevent figure wise) thus:



Rapid Fire!



NUTS!

As you can see for Rapid Fire! If we ignore the vehicles I'm at least 2 rifles short of the 4 Rifle Companies ( assuming a can use the SMG figures in there, as RF shooting appears to be by squad), a 2" mortar and 2 figures short of the HQ. I can easily convert the prone Brens to make up the PIAT teams. For NUTS!, the fighting sizes are more randomly generated, but BA Rifles and SMGs are seperately considered, so I'm way short of the required 18 - 27 rifles needed for 3 companies.



And now onto the Germans:



Firgue breakdown:

• 13 Rifles
• 9 SMG
• 4 prone with rifle
• 3 grenade throwers with rifle
• 3 flamethrower
• 3 MG teams
• 1 Officer
• 6 casual marching (3 MG, 3 rifle)
• 3 Character/diorama/marker figures

The books say:

Rapid Fire!



NUTS!

For Rapid Fire! I am OK for infantry (assuming rifles = SMG here again) but have no Panzerfaust. For NUTS! I am potentially 5 rifles short of the 3 squads.

Now the two games are aimed at different levels of combat I know, which is why both rules are being adopted. But I am obviously still short of rifle numbers on both sides and a few specialists on either side. NUTS! needs less figures, to start with, but I could still do with more numbers and a variety for scenarios. This is a new setting for me and also my first historical genre, so I'm still learning/deciding how set the numbers and make-up of the forces on each side have to be.

The big question is: buy more airfix, or find another compatible manufacturer?

Rulebook images used with permission. Thanks guys.