Friday 4 February 2011

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.

4 comments:

  1. The box art from a long way back...definately Airfix but the contents esci (airfix re-released)
    Odd, one would have thought they would have changed the box art.
    Still a nice set. I would get this set;
    http://www.plasticsoldierreview.com/Review.aspx?id=1141
    to add to the Airfix ones. They look very compatible from size and style.
    Cheers
    Paul

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  2. Hi, the plastic Figures from valiant are ideal for rapid fire, as they come with RF unit cards.... Having played NUTS they are good for those too I recon, altho I am currently playing fubar from a yahoo group or operation:squad from warlord.... When we aren't playing flying lead from Ganesha games.... But I am moving to 15mm as my gaming space has reduced down recently.

    Shaun

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  3. Thanks for the suggestions. One reservation I had about the Valiant set is their size, as the review had mentioned they were a tad big. Once on the field do they look too out of place to mix?

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  4. Valiant are way too big to place alongside Airfix. For mortar teams etc take a look at HaT pieces. They are fine alongside Airfix.

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