Hobby Champions: Richard Gunson’s Italians

We only recently looked at Richard Gunson’s first Bolt Action forces, but the man is absolutely unstoppable – he’s back, this time with a cracking force of Italians that he took to a local tournament. Richard – tell all!

Having well and truly disappeared down the Bolt Action rabbit hole, I was thinking about adding a third army to my roster. I knew that I wanted to spend a bit more time on this one and push it to the next level in terms of painting and theme and, in my humble opinion, the Bolt Action Italian range is pretty much second to none. I also signed up for my first ever Bolt Action tournament – Operation Littlebourne in Canterbury. This not only gave me a deadline (which helps focus the mind) but also the goal of winning ‘best painted’ at the event. 

Now, I’d taken advantage of one of Warlord’s rather splendid army offers and had a bunch of Italians winging their way to me, so this seemed like a good place to start. However, I wanted a strong theme to the force. Looking at the different theatres and pictures of the troops, and after watching a few YouTube videos, I decided that I would theme the army on the defence of Sicily during Operation Husky in 1943. 

This gave me some great painting and modelling opportunities as the Italians were using a mix of their grey-green (Grigio Verde) European theatre uniforms and also the tropical uniform from the North African campaign. This was also the last hurrah of the Italian army as a whole before the Armistice, and also featured the Nembo Paracadutisti, the Tenth Arditi special forces, and an unusual, if somewhat limited, array of armour.  The Armies of Italy Facebook group were also invaluable in helping me with getting historically accurate vehicle and uniform info – thanks gents! 

With the background work done I set about putting together a force with lots of different units to give me a good set of painting opportunities. Although I had an 1,100 point, 16 Order Dice limit for the tournament, I also wanted to add more thematic armour options for personal play.

I began by painting a couple of units of basic troops, each with an LMG to act as back line support. I then added a nice big unit of Blackshirts as I really wanted to roll to see if they became Fanatics or Shirkers when under fire!

Warlord were kind enough to send me a few sprues of the new Paracadutisti, so a unit of Nembo and a unit of X Arditi were earmarked to sally forth and seize objectives. A heavy weapons platoon, an Elefantino AT gun, and a couple of Autoblindas rounded out the force. I also added some more armour options that were present in Sicily, including a rather unusual pair of French Renault R35s, a somewhat sub-standard gift from the Germans to help replace the large amount of armour lost by the Italians in North Africa. 

In terms of painting, I was really pleased with how everything turned out. The Grigio Verde was done using Vallejo German Grey as a base and then adding Army Painter Evergreen Fog to build highlights until reaching a final highlight of pure Evergreen Fog. The Blackshirts look resplendent in their fezzes, but were also known to paint their helmets black, so this served to draw a clear distinction between the units. 

I was unable to find any pictures of the Nembo in Sicily at all. They may have worn the tropical uniform, but I wasn’t going to pass up the opportunity to paint their splendid camouflage. Here I used AK paints: Middle Stone, Hull Red and Gunship Green, which strike the brighter tone of their smocks. 

The X Arditi certainly were still wearing their North African gear and using their Saharianas, I was fortunate to find a photograph of the aftermath of the battle around Primisole Bridge as a source. This provided a great little unit, armed with SMGs and buzzing around in their Sahariana.

Overall I was incredibly pleased with how it all came together!

On the day of the tournament I managed two wins against a US Marine force and a British army, and a loss against a British veteran Para force. But most importantly, I came away with the award for best painted against some very stiff competition! 

It was a great experience painting such characterful models with a strong theme and the payoff of a tournament at the end. I will certainly be attending the next Operation Littlebourne and have already started accumulating a new themed army to use! A big shout out to Oliver Toms for organising it and to all the other players, who were absolute gents.