Magyar Királyi Honvédség - Assembling the Force

My miniatures arrived a couple of days ago and I wasted no time building my army!

The army list I will use is as follows:

Second Lieutnant (Regular) - 50

Light Infantry Section (Veteran)
+ 4 soldiers
+ SMG - 120
Light Infantry Section (Veteran)
+ 4 soldiers
+ SMG - 120
Regular Infantry Section (Regular)
+ 6 soldiers - 110

Sniper Team (Regular) - 50
MMG Team  (Regular) - 50
Medium Artillery (Inexperienced)
+ Spotter - 70

Turan I
+ Upgrade to Turan II - 195
Toldi I - 75
Sd Kfz 234/2 Puma - 160 (Axis Support)

Total: 1000 Punkte

 And here are pictures of the some of the elements:

I went for a rather relaxed pose for the Lieuntant, and decided to arm him with just a pistol. Normally, I would use Officers to get some free SMGs in the force, but this time it somehow didn't feel right.

This is one of the NCOs with SMG. Hungarian used the Danuvia 39M SMG which looked a lot like a normal rifle:

The artillery is a hodgepdoge of miniatures: I stole the gun from my Italians, the metal crew is actually from a mortar and I built two additional crewmen from the Blitzkrieg infantry box.

The MMG on the other hand is straight forward out of the box. I just needed to find a way to mount the separate bases in a reasonable way.

And the sniper team. Due to the separate weapons it was really hard to pose them in a proper way, and I still hope nobody'll look at them too closely.

Last, but not least, the tanks:

I ordered a Puma at our local hobby store, but it didn't arrive yet. If it's not here in time, I'll go back to use the Szebeny's Tank Destroyer as a Marder II.

Next I'll have to remove the last bits of flash and tub, and then they'll all get a nice white primer.

Magyar Királyi Honvédség - The Plan

There is a Bolt Action tournament coming up on February 6th and I decided to use get some Hungarians done for that!

You might remember that I got a a whole bunch of Magyar Steel from Mad Bob Miniatures, and my first idea was to field as much of it as possible. A quick check of the army list showed me that I can get a Toldi I as my armored car and then use the Turan III as a count-as Panzer IV H. The army special rule "Axis Support" allows me to take another unit from the German army list, and the Marder II was a good match for Szebeny's Tank Destroyer.

That would leave me with a couple of hundred points for infantry, so my first list looked like that:

Regular Second Lieutnant - 50
Regular Squad (10) - 100
Regular Squad (10) - 100
Regular Squad (10) - 100
Regular MMG Team - 50
Regular Sniper Team - 50
Regular Panzerschreck Team - 80
Regular Panzer IV H - 235 (Turan III)
Regular Marder II - 160 (Axis Support, Szebeny's Tank Destroyer)
Regular Toldi I - 75
Total: 1000

Solid army,but sadly I completely neglected something I am still not used to here in New Zealand - up to 28 days delivery time for almost anything that is not in stock...

So I was limited to what I could get from the local retailers... And my budget isn't that large, either.

I decided to go for Blitzkrieg Germans as infantry. These pics here show that they should be a good match if just painted green:

I would have preferred great coats (or maybe SS-Smocks), but there was no way to get them in time and for a reasonable prize... So Blitzkrieg it is.

Checking availabilties showed me that this would be a viable list:

Regular Second Lieutnant - 50
Veteran Squad (9) + SMG - 120
Veteran Squad (9) + SMG - 120
Regular Squad (9) - 90
Regular MMG Team - 50
Regular Sniper Team - 50
Regular Medium Mortar Team - 50
Regular Panzer IV H - 235 (Turan III)
Regular Marder II - 160 (Axis Support, Szebeny's Tank Destroyer)
Regular Toldi I - 75
Total: 1000

I tried it today against Soviets with OT-34, Siberians with truck, Combat Engineers with truck, Sniper, Medium Mortar, ZIS-3 and inexperienced squad. We played Hold Until Relieved and Maximum Attrition, and I lost both quite significantly. The message I took home was that my army is too small and too slow (and that I absolutely positively hate vehicle-mounted flamethrowers...).

So there is not much I can do about mass (unless I happen to find another box of Blitzkrieg infantry in some dusty corner of my FLGS, in that case I might drop the Panzer IV to get two more squads), but I realized that a Sd Kfz 234/2 Puma costs exactly the same as the Marder II, but seems to be much more effective. And I am sure I saw one on the shelf the other day... Additionally, I can reduce the quality of one Veteran squad to get a truck in.

New army list:

Regular Second Lieutnant - 50
Veteran Squad (9) - 117
+ inexperienced Truck-  31
Regular Squad (9) - 90
Regular Squad (9) - 90
Regular MMG Team - 50
Regular Sniper Team - 50
Regular Medium Mortar Team - 50

Regular Panzer IV H - 235 (Turan III)
Regular Puma - 160 (Axis Support)
Regular Toldi I - 75

If my miniature get delivered on Thursday as promised, I have to paint a squad, a weapon team and a vehicle per week - Not too crazy ;)