The Artillery Comes Rolling In For Bolt Action From Warlord
October 19, 2015 by stvitusdancern
If you have been around any sort of military, then you would know that it is expected of the infantryman to be able to carry almost their body weight in equipment. However, there are some items that this is either extremely difficult or near to impossible. ( I will never say never), take the 81 mm mortar.
She is a beast, and heavy to boot! The base plate alone on this monster weights in at approximately 30lbs, add in the tube, mount and sight along with the ammunition to make it effective and you become immobile rather quickly.
During WWII the US Army came up with a solution to have these hand little artillery pieces become a little more practical and mobile. They mounted them into the M3 Halftrack to make them a go anywhere, set up, fire and be on the move again as quickly as the battlefront moves.
Now, Warlord Games has released a lovely model, the M21 Mortar Carrier that gives a nicely detailed representation of how this vehicle was set up wit the tube and a pintle mounted HMG. It comes with a crew of three and external stores that adds some nice details to the vehicle.
A couple of these would add so other options for a mechanized company and be able to keep up with the "big" push towards Berlin and the end of the war!
Can you keep up with the troops?
"She is a beast, and heavy to boot!"
That looks like a rather nice kit.
The more of these transports that aren’t really transports are really going to start to poke holes in a rapidly becoming threadbare rules set. Warlord Games should really think about creating a second edition to clean these issues up.
They aren’t in the lists as transports so it doesn’t really strain the rules. Take the Universal Carrier, for example, if you take it as a transport for your troops then it has the downsides of being a transport (destroyed if too close to the enemy and so on) but if you take it as a Mortar Carrier or even a Reece Carrier then it follows the rules for self propelled gun and armoured cars, respectively. It’s not too big of a deal on that front. I think an errata would be more use than a whole 2nd edition as… Read more »
nice.