The last part (at least for the moment) of my WW2 Royal Police project is an infantry or in other name rifle platoon. As the HRP had limited amount of armoured vehicles and support weapons, the riflemen were the backbone of their combat units.
My job was quite easy as I already have written about all the uniforms, weapons, minis and colours I also used during painting the infantry. To close the project “officially” I’m going to make a summary, where you can easily find all the posts and topics the project include.
The minis and unit card
Just as in the case of the HMG unit, I used a mixture of 15mm Peter Pig’s miniatures of their WW1 German and WW1, WW2 French sets. The figures are really nice with great details like moustaches, and without any flash. My only problems are that they are hard to cut or shape with a blade, which makes modifying difficult, and that sometimes paint comes off from the edges, so you need to handle them with care until varnishing.
To paint and highlight them I used the usual colours: trousers are simple black, the greatcoat is Revell Aqua Color matt blue, the combat jacket and boots are Vallejo 70995 German grey. The belts, ammo pouches and pistol holsters could be standard brown (Vallejo 70872 Chocolat brown) or black. Helmets are Vallejo 70888 Olive grey, bread and oher bags are Vallejo 70988 Khaki or Vallejo 70921 English uniform. I used brown and black wash and I highlighted the colours with mixture of the original paint plus Vallejo 70884 Stone grey (usually 50-50% ratio).
As with the HMG crew, I tried to paint the extra gear on the minis as they are ‘borrowed’ from the Royal Army. It might decrease historical accuracy but removing them would cause a big delay (and I am sure I would have lost my patience around halfway). I painted some of the pouches, belts and boots with different colour to have a feeling of mixture in uniforms, which was quite the case at the end of the war, especially within the besieged Budapest.
The bases are from Battlefront’s plastic urban bases package, I had to modify a bit the holes, so all the minis could fit. I changed the method of painting them and I like the result better than the HMG bases.
As with the other units, I would like to use this platoon in Flames of War V4. Using the data from the army book of Stalin’s Europe I created a unit card. The platoon’s quality of skill and motivation is the usual police values. For the weapons I used the data of the Hungarian volunteer rifle platoon (önkéntes puskás platoon) as a base. I modified it in a way that the HRP platoon could have no special anti tank weapons (I could not find any sources about the HRP using AT weapons). I prepared my bases as simple rifle teams but you can have have MG gunners too (check this post about the possible weapons).
The points are the following: a platoon with only rifle teams and two squads (3-3 bases per squad plus a CO) cost 5 points. For three squads you will need 7 points. If you want to upgrade your teams to rifle/MG, you will need to spend 1 point per squad.
This platoon will be an exciting support unit or could be a core of a future HRP infantry company. I will make some extras for these units, such as a courier with motorcycle, will increase the number of Csabas and Ansaldos, but I am not planning any big expansion. For the moment of course 😉
Sources:
Battlefront Miniatures: Stalin’s Europe, The Soviet Invasion of Eastern Europe October 1944 – February 1945
Minis with moustaches 
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