Unknown episode of WW2 (part 2)

Last Friday night history of World War II took another surprising turn and had a pleasure to re-enact another unknown episode of war: battle between US and Italian forces against Soviet and French menace. It's another game we had to play at Rilian's place - last time it was Italian vs US and since then we were still kinda hungry got more WW2 gaming.

Since the last game Rilian also found 2 more commanders willing to start Bolt Action adventure, so we had 4 armies on the table - each 1250 pts worth. Must say no matter how much I like the game, the size of battle was just too big: the battle started about 20:30 and the last bullet was fired after 2:00 a.m.
My side clearly lost but we didn't manage to bring game to the 6th turn.

Any post-battle conclusions?
Not realy: it's Bolt Action so no matter what brilliant plan you prepare the dice drawing and rolling is true god of war. Because all other armies were early war, I also had to adjust my force to this period. Sadly that made my unit choice very limited but still it was fun.

Also I tried to upgrade some photos with AI so make the report more eyecatching but I'm not really sure it was good idea. I got feeling the upgraded photos look like taken from WH40000 battle of video game 🤔 Here's the material anyway - judge for yourself:

Below: brave G.I.s defending crucial supplies...

And here: Rilian's seld made aerosans:

That's it. Hope the next time I get opportunity to field proper mid/late war stuff 😎

M1A1 light howitzer

I took quite a long time since my G.I.s got howitzer support, so it was good idea to restore another second hand miniature. Model below was purchased a while agobut when it arrived I realised there was a part missing: gunners left palm holding the rod. Back days had some plans how to repair it but all in all it was put into string bag and forgotten.

Until now.

I found the piece last week and decision was made to cross if off the list of shame. I had some spare bits after painting winter infantry squad so the gunner got his missing palm. Also decided to replace original metal heads with placcy ones. These are great btw.

Colors were chosen to fit "summer" part of the army, Must admit whole force painted with green tones looks just just great especially if placed on fully finished game table. I think problem with painting US army is sth similar to painting skaven or goblin fantasy army: painting basically everything brown or green is just damn boring but when it's done - final result was worthy effort.

So here they are: 45 pts worth light artillery ready to stop nazi offensive. The third guy was placed on separate base so it's easier to mark the casaulty. I did similar thing with medium machine gun team a while back. Which reminds me I must start fielding this thing...

Bits on the base (crate and oil drum) come from Warpainter online store (I got other really cool stuff from this producer back days). Sadly the site is suspended for a while now - looking forward to be re-launched, because there were some WW2 Hungarian army vehicles which I'd love to slap some paint on...