Bolt Action Yanks [38]

In the game the other day Mike used a medium mortar with spotter to pin down one of my infantry units very effectively, while outranging my 60mm light mortar and preventing it from doing it's intended role of laying down smoke to cover my assault. I realised that I could do with up-gunning my mortar capability, so had a rummage in the spares box to locate the 81mm mortar that I didn't get round to painting up when I originally started the project.

 

I found the mortar but couldn't find enough figures to use as crew, at least not ones that looked right together, so was about to give up the whole idea when I realised a very simple solution was staring me in the face. What if I unglued the 60mm mortar from the exiting crew base and substituted the 81mm one instead? I had used three crew for the 60mm mortar, when the rulebook states you only need two, so it was an easy swap over to the larger three man crew base for the 81mm mortar.

 

 

I then thought, why not try to save the 60mm mortar and re-base it with the two crew figures that I had in the spares box? This was a bonus and made good use of the otherwise redundant mortar tube. The Bolt Action main rulebook states that only two crew are needed for the light mortar but the Armies of the United States supplement says you need three, so another rummage turned up a spare MMG ammo supply figure to do the job, just in case.

 

This just left the spotter figure for the 81mm, which was the original purpose of the whole thing, so I based up a prone NCO with walkie-talkie radio on a separate base, ready to be deployed with the mortar as and when I needed some long range fire support. This means that I now will have the option to deploy either a light or a medium mortar complete with a spotter, adding some pretty useful indirect firepower to the reinforced infantry platoon.

 

Job's a good 'un....although I still need to paint them up!