28mm Partisans: Heavy Supports

My small partisan force (take a look at the basic infantry and their light supports) is great fun to play using rules like Bolt Action - they are a classic horde force that tends to gain victories by sheer force of numbers. Well-equipped they are not, but they can generate a surprising amount of small-arms firepower. This is great for infantry-only conflicts, but as soon as my opponent fields armored vehicles, even lightly armored troop transports and armored cars, they really find themselves desperately short of heavier weapon options.

With these reinforcements I hope to plug that gap.

First up is a captured Italian Cannone da 75/27 howitzer. It is a bit of a beast for a partisan force - too heavy to be easily towed - and those that were captured in the Balkans were more likely to be destroyed than deployed. But in Bolt Action terms I will use it to represent a light howitzer, the only artillery available to partisan forces. It looks the part.

The kit is the fine offering from Empress Miniatures in their "Italian Conflicts" range, and the crew are from the Empress SCW range, some with headswaps. The Cannone da 75/27 kit is wonderfully detailed, but be warned, it comes without any form of construction diagram, or even a parts list, so a fair bit of sleuthing is required before and during assembly. This is not helped by there being plenty of variations of this artillery piece, and a basic internet search throws up a bewildering array of images that, for the most part, dont appear to share details represented by this kit. That said, I eventually got perfect construction advice from an Empress staff member, and managed to plot the one correct route through a horde of incorrect possibilities...

Next, another recruit from the Empress Miniatures SCW range, with a head swap or two, providing my partisans with a much-needed medium machine-gun option.

In an infantry battle, no-one likes facing an auto canon. And they tend to keep light armored vehicles honest.  Light enough to be transported in the carts and mule trains that make up the transport options for my partisans, this is a really force multiplier. This 20mm Breda, or more correctly, Cannone-Mitragliera da 20/65 Modello 35 is from Company B. A tricky little kit to put together, mostly due to the very soft metal of the casting, it none-the-less produces a neat model.  It represents the weapon without one of the more elaborate anti-aircraft sights, which I thought was an appropriate arrangement for my part-timers. The crew received headswaps from the Empress and Warlord Games ranges.