Gruntz Campaign - New Vistula Legion

We have been planning a little sci fi campaign using the Gruntz rules for a little while, hopefully to kick start in the New Year. I had originally intended to use GZGs "Crustie" aliens in 15mm , but was also hankering after something a little more mainstream - in fact I was pricing up some GZG Colonial Militia for the Christmas sale, when while browsing through ebay I spotted a lot of about 60 painted Oddzial Osmy (O8) miniatures New Vistula Legion, and made a pretty low bid. Much to my surprise, I won. The figures duly arrived, and I was rather impressed.

Here's the group shot of the platoon

O8 are a Polish manufacturer more well known for their 3mm scale Pico Armour, but they also have a small but comprehensive New Vistula Legion sci fi range, which as the name suggests, are a near future \ sci fi Polish faction. A quick look confirms that they are inspired by the modern 21st Century Polish infantry - they have similar helmets and equipment. The assault rifles could easily be modernised versions of the Radom rifle the Poles are adopting, however the SAW is pure Aliens "Smartgun" . The figures themselves are beautiful; nicely proportioned and posed, with some very nice detail.

Here's one of the fire-teams, which are currently deploying as five men with a SAW attached

The ebay seller said they were painted - and they pretty much were, and whoever did them had a good technique - far better than me nowadays. I wasn't too happy with the armour plates and helmets which had been left black - either by design or because he had got fed up with them (we have all been there) so I quickly painted them with green armour and gave the guns a little grey highlight to brighten them up a bit.

The bases were interesting. They came based, or rather stuck to what I initially assumed were very thin steel disks as they were magnetic (bonus). On closer examination the stuff they are based on is not steel at all but something flexible but magnetic. As the figures were all individual and I needed some doubles for specialists etc I peeled some of them off the bases planning to put them on 2p coins (cheaper than washers and still ferrous!). As soon as I started I realised the 2ps were going to be far to thick in relation to the other infantry and would look odd. I was about to order some 2 cm steel disks when I thought - why not try plain magnetic paper? I had some stiff magnetic paper I had used to hold figures in boxes. I dug some out and cut 2p sized discs of it, based the figures up and they look fine. The sand & pva helps give the magnetic paper rigidity.

In our Gruntz campaign these are going to be my core infantry. I'm going for reasonably mid to low tech, so no energy weapons, just projectile weapons and missiles, but the troops themselves being seasoned. Here's my heavy weapon teams, an anti tank missile. HMG and mortar.

Gruntz has a lot of scope for Specialists that can add some additional capabilities to your troops, and also some sci fi flavour. Here's the NVL Medic, Commander, and ECM Specialist Teams.

"My" NVL will also be using a fair amount of recce and scout units. This is a pair of recce specialist teams and a Sniper team.

Lastly there is a squad of Long Range Recce Patrol \ Spetznaz types. These have very high skills \ morale but are lightly equipped.