Actually, while I am not personally invested I would look at cutting back on the heads first (particularly any heads options you can get from other British WW1/2 sets you guys do already, you don’t really need to add repeats particularly of helmets), Even just cutting them in half so its so its three of each hat type would work since they would likely have had mixed headgear in the field (this is true particularly for the Homeguard, just pick the heads that look the most fun and keep those) this would likely let you add at least some of the rifles you need.
Also while it is not realistic per say instead of missing out on having tools/weapons in favor of a lot empty left hands, just divvy up single hand weapon/tool poses evenly between the left and and right arms.For example you don’t need the rifle strapped to arm you have on the sprue as much as pistol or the sticky grenade particularly since it is a right arm unless your grenade throwing arm is a lefty or you been thinking of getting rid of one of the two handed firing poses you have in favor of it (which you might want to do anyways), but if it were a left arm it would actually be generally useful and could be swapped in for a lot of stuff.
Likewise you do not need that many automatic weapons, particularly the LMGs. You should get rid of one of the Berns and I recommend having that be the firing bern (probably the ideal option for sprue removal), either that or swapping the firing Lewis gun out for the carry one that way you get more sprue space to play with (point is you only need 1 of each since they both work BEF and Home Guard has following short paragraph). While I personally like the BARs, I have to agree with others you only need one for Home Guard and you should cut it down on the Tommies to 2 maybe even go down to 1.
Now as to Home Guard, in real life they were so under equipped they used everything had and did have had enough weapons to go around till stens where introduced later on. By 1940 they had almost 1 “machine gun”(SMG,LMG,etc.) and a shotgun to every 2 rifles and that would likely be the default base squad makeup up to that point, possibly along some guys armed with pointy sticks and pistols of varying degrees of reliability. So I would only add 3 rifles at most for the Home guard angle since that is more a kitbash army project (ie, someone buying this for home guard is likely also going to pick up at least some sprues of your WW1 British and Partisans, so keep that in mind with regards to the extra parts like the scarf).
I am not really sure if the 2 inch mortar and Boys Anti-Tank Rifle are both real needs for this sprue. Honestly, I kinda of agree with others it might be better to add at least one or both to a future heavy weapon set instead and replacing them with an anti tank grenade or two in this set (or even just that sticky grenade which we all know the Home Guard squad would be more likely to have), but if anti armor is a must cause “Boltaction” I would go with ditching the mortar and keeping the anti tank gun (more flashy and doesn’t need two figures to setup).
You could also try getting rid of a body in addition to cutting down on the headswaps. Its a shame but it would cut down on a lot of parts needed and make this a more doable set for both home guard and BEF (if you decide to ditch the 2 inch mortar, the prone body would be my pick for removal, otherwise likely any of the standing bodies would work, but if there is a way to cut down on needed parts by keeping some bodies and ditching others, do that).
Finally you don’t need the pointy right hand every WW2 set on earth seems to have, they are not actually needed gameplay wise (for most rulesets with decent player bases anyways) so just keep that off its a true waste of sprue space.
Comments
Leave a comment