8th Army: Growing the Platoon

As we've not played a campaign game this week I have some time to show off some more of the troops for my 8th Army force, these are all Perry models.

As I'd been painting up a fair bit of infantry I decided to throw a vehicle into the mix and painted up a recon unit with it's jeep. I'm still waiting on the unit decals to arrive so they will be applied later on. 

V for Victory isn't a vehicle heavy game but you can't really do WW2 without the odd vehicle so including a scout unit in a jeep is a good place to start. The crew can dismount so I also painted them up in case they want to leap out and take cover, or if the jeep is destroyed.

Force building in V for Victory is pretty straightforward with each side getting a command section and a couple of infantry sections as a base force and then a certain number of stars to spend on extras. An average game seems to use between 6 - 12 stars of additional troops and you can see the basic options for the British below. AFV's have their own section and can easily run up to 5 - 9 stars so you won't get much else if you bring a couple to the table.

Each unit starts with the number of men and weapons in bold and you can fill out the ranks with reinforcements  bought in to the maximum shown by the greyed out figures. You can also drop a model to swap 4 rifles to SMG's if you want some more close range firepower.

As well as the recon unit I've been working on some 1 star support choices so I've painted up an A/T rifle unit and a sniper unit. 

I've also completed the 2nd and 3rd infantry sections to bring the platoon up to full strength. It remains to be seen if you are better off reinforcing your two starting sections up to 11 men (from 8) or going with a 3rd section.

I had a few models left over on the sprue so I also made up one points worth of reinforcements and also some SMG troops to swap out. SMG's have twice the firepower of rifles when up close so you may want an assault section if you think you are going to be on the offensive.

I also had a few leftovers from the SAS pack I bought to get the sniper model so I've painted them up as well, I'm sure they will come in useful at some point.

And here we have everything I've painted up so far. I'm now working on some more support weapons with a HMG, mortar, and A/T gun next in line to be painted up.