The End of the Beginning

Hi Folks,

I've finally finished the second Grenadier platoon after what felt like a real slog, so to mark point in the project I thought I'd steal a line from Churchill for the title of this post because it seems rather appropriate. As far as painting an army for wargaming goes this is the first army that I have finished…except I'm not finished and I always knew that. But personally this is quite significant in that I completed what I initially set out to complete and for a time I can relish in the achievement, however small it may be!

So what's next?

Well now is probably the appropriate time to start turning this army into exactly that… an army!

I bought both of the books for Operation Market Garden ages ago but I haven't spent much time really using them the way they're intended, i.e. creating army lists and not just looking at the pictures! But now that the army requires expanding into a viable gaming force and Bridge by Bridge is going to help me. After looking through the various lists it soon becomes obvious that for someone who's just bought Open Fire they don't have a lot of choice if they want to use all their models. The Grenadier Kompanie being the only one. Also with so few models to use there would be no point considering using the less experienced and cheaper 59th Inf Division so by default I'm left with the 85th ID aka Kamfgruppe Chill. However having just read 'It never snows in September' about the German forces during Operation Market Garden (lent to me by Ben) and learnt a bit about the Kamfgruppe it gave me a bit more enthusiasm for this list. General Chill was instrumental in forming the defensive 'crust' on the Belgian/Dutch border and set up collection points at all the canal crossing points to round up all the retreating soldiers from all branches of the Wehrmacht and boost the fighting strength of the Kamfgruppe. Unfortunately you don't really get a feel for this from the list as most of the choices represent the remnants of the devision from France but you do get the odd unit from the SS and Luftwaffe.

Confident    Veteran	Grenadierkompanie (.85) Grenadier Company	German Late-War
Infantry Company

Platoon	Qty	Unit	Points
Headquarters
Grenadierkompanie HQ (85.)  p.39	2	Cmd Panzerfaust SMG team	65
Combat Platoons
Grenadier Platoon (85.)  p.39	1 6 1	Cmd Panzerfaust SMG team Rifle/MG team Panzerschreck team	190
Grenadier Platoon (85.)  p.39	1 6 1	Cmd Panzerfaust SMG team Rifle/MG team Panzerschreck team	190
Regimental Support
Grenadier Anti-tank Gun Platoon (85.)  p.41	1 3	Cmd SMG team 7.5cm PaK40 gun	155
Support Platoons
Schwere Panzerjäger Platoon  p.35	3	StuG G	285
Grenadier Artillery Battery (85.)  p.43	1 1 1 2	Cmd SMG team Staff team Observer Rifle team 10.5cm leFH18 howitzer	115
Company Points:			1000

www.EasyArmy.com

Source document: Bridge by Bridge

Using all the models from Open Fire (plus and extra Pak40 & Panzershrek team) the list initially came to 885 points so the addition of one 2 gun section of 10.5cm Artillery gives a nice round thousand points. This leaves me with the hopefully fairly simple task of painting 2 guns, an observer team plus command and staff teams. With any luck I'll be ready for a small game this side of Christmas! Once I've started actually playing I may actually take the whole list writing thing a bit more seriously or I may just go with cool stuff I actually want to paint…. we'll see!

Thanks for reading,

Andy