One Box, One Army

 Andrew from the Chicago Dice blog runs a feature called "1 Box, 1 Army", which is a guide for new players on how to build a viable Bolt Action army, legal for Third Edition, using just one platoon box of plastic figures from Warlord Games (or occasionally, Wargames Atlantic).

I submitted an army list for a German Grenadiers army, and you can check it out at this link.  What you get is a 500-point, 30-man platoon that's actually pretty competitive for its point level, and all from a $60 box.

Since the release of the Armies of Germany supplement, the list has become a little outdated.  The first change is that the commanding officer and his orderlies must now pay for weapon upgrade options.  That's a fairly easy change - either equip all three soldiers with rifles, or give all of the SMGs to that little squad.  You could drop an orderly, but it's no longer possible for a Heer army to have more than one assault rifle in that unit.  The best you could get would be the officer with an assault rifle, and one orderly with an SMG (this would save 3 points over the original cost for the unit)

The change that really hurts, however, is that Heer Grenadier squads may now only have one LMG.  In order to have two in a squad, the unit must be either Heer Veteran Grenadiers, or Panzergrenadiers.  This would increase the cost of a 10-man squad by 30 or 40 points, respectively.  As crazy as it sounds (and as much as it hurts to do), I'd recommend keeping the squads at 10 men, dropping the second LMG and replacing it with a Panzerfaust - at least, if you intend to stay at the 500-point level.  It's a case of "boys before toys", and the goal of the exercise is to make use of as much of the box as possible.  So we want to have as many soldiers as we can.

The assault squad remains the same - as they are Veterans already, they are able to make use of the weapon options for which they are equipped, at no change to the points cost.

So, there you have it.  You are still building an army of 29 or 30 soldiers, using as much of the box as possible.  All you're losing is just one orderly, or a couple of machine guns.  That part is the hard choice, since two LMGs per squad was pivotal to late-war Grenadier doctrine, but I guess those troops would have been considered Veterans for the purposes of the game.  You do gain another pair of Panzerfausts, which gives some anti-armor firepower, but at a 500-point game the only vehicles you're likely to see are soft-skinned anyway (and seldom worth investing so many of your limited points).

Here is my recommendation for the new list, legal for use with Armies of Germany:

Rifle Platoon
Platoon Commander (Rifle) – Vet – 39 +2 Additional Men (Rifles) – Vet – 26	65pts
Heer Grenadier Squad – Reg – 10 men – 100 NCO SMG – 4 x1 SMG – 4 x1 LMG – 15 1x Panzerfaust - 15	138pts
Heer Grenadier Squad – Reg – 10 men – 100 NCO SMG – 4 x1 LMG – 30 1x Panzerfaust - 15	134pts
Heer Veteran Grenadier Squad – Vet – 7 men – 91 x7 Assault Rifles – 42 x2 Panzerfausts – 30	163pts
Total – 4 Order Dice	500pts

COFFEE TABLE COMBAT RETURNS!

After an absence of more than three years, I am happy to announce the return of the Coffee Table Combat blog.  A lot has changed for me since 2021, but most significant to this blog is: I'm about to get the coffee table back for gaming (and maybe the dining room table, too)

So, what am I up to game-wise, now?

Well, I'm doing mostly historical miniature gaming now - particularly the First and Second World Wars.  So you'll see content for Bolt Action, Chain of Command, Blood & Valor, Trench Hammer, Scouts Out! and other similar games.  You will probably also see some Battletech and Alpha Strike.

While I've traditionally done 28mm wargaming (and to a great extent, still do), I have begun to accept that space limitations necessitate a smaller scale. There are advantages to that.  While 15mm minis are a bit harder to paint, they're also more forgiving (less detail necessary) and more importantly, they're a LOT more economical. You can literally field a company of troops for less than the price of a single platoon box of 28mm soldiers.  And they take less room to store.

And the best thing is, comparatively, a 30"x30" table for 15mm play is equivalent to a 5-foot square table in 28mm.  And that table takes up less of the room.

So you can probably expect that the true "Coffee Table Combat" reports will be using my 15mm armies, while stuff like 28mm will be done on the dining room table, or at the FLGS if circumstances permit.

Now I'll be honest - it's going to take me some time to get things back on the table.  I'm reconfiguring my living space and if things don't come together as planned I may be moving in the summer.  Right now I'm following the mantra of Paint Every Day - if I'm not painting, I'm building stuff to paint.  Even if it's only a short time each evening after work, slow progress is progress none the less.  So at first, it's likely that we will feature painted miniatures and squads - perhaps I'll break out the light box, and maybe finally figure out how to take photos that truly show off the work I've done!

I've also reserved a YouTube channel of the same name - but videos are going to take a while longer to come about.  I only have a couple hours of free time each night, and production takes a lot of time and effort too.  But we will get there.

Thank you for joining me in the reboot of Coffee Table Combat, and welcome our mascot Joe (pictured above).  Many thanks to Josh from WargamingNewb Historical for assistance with the logo and input on the channel (as well as equipment, advice, and solid friendship and moral support).