28mm Partisans

I decided I couldnt leave the Red Army facing the hostile world alone on this blog page, without its Partisan allies. These started out intended to be a purely Eastern Front force, equipped mainly with Mosin-Nagant rifles and PPD/PPSh sub-machine guns, but I have since added a few Sten-equipped individuals to make them suitable for use as Polish patriots, and, if no-one at the wargaming table is too fussy, Italian resistance.

I really enjoyed building and painting this partisan wargames band. There is something really appealing to me about about their ragtag appearance, the representation of an (sometimes) idealistic force, and the challenging limitations of gaming with their less-than-ideal equipment and organisation.

 

These two local lads I converted to carry hunting shotguns, to take advantage of the "Hunter" attribute in the Operation Squad partisan lists:

These were painted at least a year ago, and are all Artizan miniatures.

Partisans, are, I figure, a little difficult to develop beyond squads of basic foot soldiers. Without access to any of the supports or heavy weapons that hobbyists usually enjoy adding to their forces, the risk is that building a larger force becomes a cookie-cutter, repetitive exercise. But with a bit of effort spent scouring miniature catalogues for what I had in mind, I now have a plan to expand my partisan force into something approaching the "reinforced platoon" required for Victory Decision, Bolt Action (and forthcoming Assault Platoon rules from the publishers of Operation Squad). I have the following bits lined up to create their transport (horses, mules, donkey carts, bicycles, and liberated Wehrmacht wagons), command, specialists (demolition crews, dispatch riders) and such:






































From the Empress SCW range come the donkey cart, the command post vignette and the lads with Beretta's (to allow more accurate representation of Italian partisans), from Westwind I got the pack mule and the civilians (destined to be hidden/ambush/objective markers), the demo team is from Artizan, and the German wagon, which will be kitbashed to suit, is from Bolt Action/Warlord Games.

They will never be able to take on a conventional force head to head, but I am hoping that given a suitable scenario, they might conduct themselves well and bravely.