Welcome to the latest installment in 2016's Bolt Action Army Diary. Now that my theme and list have been decided it's time to grab the miniatures which I'll be needed to start assembling the troops.

Grenadiers & Engineers

To make my grenadier and engineer squads I picked up:

• 3× Winter Grenadier Squads
• 1× Heer Pioneer Panzerschreck & Flamethrower Teams

As I mentioned in an earlier post I wrote my list to reflect the models which come in Warlord's winter grenadier squads, so the first 2 boxes give me the main infantry squads perfectly, along with 2 spare light machine gun teams.

These boxes are supplied with a variety of different heads so it is possible to add some small variations between the two units without much effort.

My Assault Engineers squad is a little trickier, since it requires 4 men armed with sub-machine guns as well as a flamethrower. In order to get the extra MP-40s which I needed I asked around at my local gaming club and other players were happy to donate some spares from their bits collections.

Then I used some clippers, files and my pin vice to remove one of the rifles and the light machine gun from those troopers and replace them with the plastic MP-40s.

The flamethrower armed infantryman was going to be a little trickier; removing the flamethrower from the Heer pioneer holding it would be complicated and would completely destroy that model.

So instead I decided to do some converting using greenstuff and sculpt some new details to change his uniform into a winter camouflage smock.

This was really straightforward- I just added a hood , new collar and bulked out the front of the chest.

Since that was so quick I added similar details to the other models from the pioneer blister, so that I have a winter panzerschreck team spare as well.

Headquarters

• 1× German Heer HQ(Winter)

This blister gave me the models for my Lieutenant & accompanying infantryman, medic and an artillery observer who I'll use initially as the spotter for my heavy mortar team.

Since the Lieutenant and his bodyguard come modelled with MP-40s and I want to use assault rifles on them instead for the extra range I clipped of them off. After a short bout of filing the models were ready to have some metal assault rifles added. Components like this are available from Warlord Games direct and we're happy to order them in for people who request them.

Weapons Teams

• 1× German Heer MMG Team (Winter)
• 1× German Heer 120mm Heavy Mortar

These two blister packs round off my infantry needs. The MMG team is already kitted out in winter uniform, so I'll be building that straight out of the pack.

For the heavy mortar team three of the four crew members are already in camouflage smocks with hoods, so I'll just paint those in the winter scheme. The fourth is in a regular uniform tunic, so I'll have to look and see if sculpting the extra detail on him will work, or alternatively I'll replace that model with one of my spare winter grenadiers.

Vehicles

The Panther and the half track in my list offered me a choice between using Warlord Games' plastic kits or those produced by Rubicon Models. Since I've built several of Warlord's vehicles in the past, both plastic & resin, I decided to try out Rubicon's offerings instead this time.

Rubicon's Panther Ausf G will be the basis for my Erastz M10, which means that I'll be doing a lot of scratch building work to make the extra details which formed the disguise. This will be a lot of extra effort, but it enables me to produce a model which is more accurate to the photos which I've seen than Warlord's resin kit.

I'll also be using Rubicon's SdKfz 251/1 Ausf D but I'll be also adding a metal machine gunner from Warlord's range, as hey have a really nice one in winter kit.

So all up the army costs around $260, which is a bit more expensive than the plastic starter army sets which are available. This is because all the infantry are metal models and I also will have some spare infantry & LMG teams left over which can be used to bulk out my squads in other lists.