39.M Csaba (Hungarian army)

Bolt Action is on a roll at the beginning of 2026!

After dealing with two entries for painting contest (infantry squad and vehicle) I decided paint one more toy for VERY slowly growing Hungarian army. 

At first it even wasn't second army project - I simply liked camouflage pattern (nice change after painting US stuff olive, olive and olive) and some weirdo Hungarian vehicles. But during the painting contest on Strategie.net.pl I spotted some printed entries - which were remarkably cool! 

So I got 3 models, which means this with 38.M Toldi and Hetzer makes the armored platoon full... 

In new edition of Bolt Action we can field more vehicles then in the previous one. Hungarians have many rather cheap models available (absolutely most expensive is Hetzer from Axis support: barely over 200 points) so I plan to field full armored platoon: 5 vehicles. Battle experience clearly shows cheap, mostly anti-infantry vehicles are much better investment then expensive, fat über-tank.

For this one I tried another version of ambush camouflage. It's much more "vivid" compared to previous models, because during painting I ran out of olive green and the only color available was light green from Vallejo line. I didn't want to wait for delivery so it was mixed with bronze and violet to make useful base color and all in all final result is acceptable. Maybe not enough dirt for my taste, yet still cool. The turret got magnet to secure it from falling off (this resin or whatever it really is) is quite fragile and I do not want to risk breaking the barrel.

Apparently I f#cked magnet inserting, becuase the gap between turret bottom and hull seems to be just too large. Might put it on hobby station to fix it.
And add more dirt... 😁

And below - new Hungarian ride together with it's tracked cousin 38.M Toldi and Hetzer from German support. Warlord Games sells Hungarian tank crew to I hope to get this set and replace officer in Hetzer:

Bolt Action bunker

After dealing with Slaanesh cavalry I had to take a breaf from painting ping, purple and other disguisting colors of God ov Forbidden Pleasures. Some time ago my buddy brought me a souvenir from his trip - which surprisingly turned out to be Warlord's bunker. 

The model was assembled like 1,5 year ago, but since our  gaming kinda dropped, there was not much motivation to do anything with the piece. Until now: solid chunk of dirt and reinforced WWII concrete was great material material from painting fantasy stuff.

In order to provide better view for the bunker crew (and also to make model look better on the battlefield) I put it on a hill. Hill couldn't be steep, so infantry models can be placed on it without walling, so during the process it grew kinda more then initially planned. In fact it was so big painting it on hobby station was just impossible. See?

I didn't want it to be just a sand dune, so static grass was applied on top - we play our battles in European was theatres. The grass turned out much flatter then I expected - I assume it's because of applicator I use, which is home-made device. Apparently I should invest in better hardware before starting works on the next terrain piece 😁

Some scale shots - that thing is just one big line of sight blocker!

Some scale shots with other terrain features:

And the cherry on top: some high class special effects:

And the applicator - looks like some kinda gretchin torture device 😁

Next stop: converted exhalted champion of Chaos (hopefully).

38.M Toldi

So after dealing with several models from fantasy and dark (yet pretty pointy-teeth and vivid) future range World War II theme stepped on my painting desk once again. This time it's something rather unique: hungarian light tank 38.M Toldi from Warpainter's range. 

I must say I got this cute model a while back but couldn't find decals for Hungarian armor. But thank to Marcin, who's running Bolt Action dedicated blog - 4generals (there're tons of supercool photos and scenarios - definitely recommended!) shared some spares with me. Which means long waited painting process could be started! 🥳

Painting was pretty challenging - Hungarian army ain't very popular among Bolt Action players, so there's not much pics of painted miniatures in the webspace (compared to US, Soviets or Germans that is). Basic idea was to give a try to camo pattern. What you see below is the very first WW2 camouflage from under my brush, but I really like the final result. Hope to test it also on 40.M Turan.

After model was sealed I had that strong urge (once again...) to add some mud effect but my experience is after the mud jar is opened I can never stop before model is at least half-dirty. So in order to make it look kinda "clean" I used only dry pigments. Which actually makes perfect sense: the tank got dusty while running away from the soviet front 😊

Hope you like the final result:

And here's the answer to big question: 

why Hungarian army got ass kicked in Soviet Union... 😋😉