Mail Day 28.07.2026 - Hicksy's Halflings and an old general

This morning I woke up to a lovely E-Mail telling me that a package had been delivered to my mail box; In the package were two sets of the Hicksy's Halflings range sculpted by Paul Hicks and sold by Footsore Miniatures; There was also a miniature of General Montgomery, a charity miniature supporting the Finley's Touch Charity. If you want to get one yourself, you can buy it here, there is also an accompanying vehicle sold by Mardav Miniatures here.

I have got some plans with these miniatures, so I already assembled three of them to paint tomorrow. The Monty will be my first historical personality I have ever painted. Not that I necessarily have an issue with it per se, but painting actual people, especially from eras like WW2 is a bit of a touchy subject. That being said, he is a charity miniature and I feel it thus justifies it in my mind. 

The other two miniatures are two of the Halflings; They will be painted up as soldiers of the Mootland and used in my Empire collection. These guys are beautifully sculpted and fit in decently well with the 6th edition Fantasy halflings. Their main distinctive characteristic are the faces. To say Paul Hicks has a special style of painting faces would be an understatement; Whenever I see a miniature where I am unsure if he sculpted it, its face is usually the giveaway. That being said, these Halflings have slightly softer sculpts, but still rock that distinctive Hicks style. This is it for today's mail day, just wanted to share the new arrivals! 

Quick look at the new Konflikt 47 Ursus Infantry

 

Credit: Warlord Games

I already showed off the new Automated Infantry which unexpectedly turned up at my doorstep; Well not a week later and I got another mysterious package sent by Warlord Games, inside of which was a horde of wild Ursus infantry! Truth be told I did not expect to be getting my hands on either of these kits and now that I have, I will try to make the best of it. Unlike using the Automated infantry as Italian proxies I have little interest in the Soviet Bloc faction for Konflikt 47. Instead I will turn these big burly bears(Happy Pride btw!) into something else for my own nefarious purposes.

I received a sprue each of both the claw and hammer variants, giving me six bears in total. Luckily the package also included the 40mm bases needed for them, though as you will see later, that was cutting it quite close. At first glance it is interesting to see this kit, since I believe it is my second Warlord Games plastic kit that is essentially monopose (the first are the two event miniatures for Konflikt). That being said the first issue I ran into was the lack of instructions; Now I am sure the proper box will come with one and this is just influencer problems, but sadly the usual solution of following the numbers in ascending order did not work either. And given how these have to be assembled in a specific manner, you need to do a bit of puzzling to find out. In the end I just took a hard look at the sprue and parsed which bits were what.

For my purposes I just need one of these guys assembled, so here is one of the Ursus with claws ready to be painted. My first impressions of these are that they are beautifully sculpted and feel a lot more well scaled than the previous ones(although those certainly looked more bear and these seem more human). However, these have some unseemly gaps, especially around the torso and while I did use sprue goo to fill in most of the gaps, it is still noticeable. Also as you can see this guy is barely fitting on the base thanks to his wide stance; I am sure the other guys will not have as much of an issue since their poses are more closed, but still I wanted to point it out. Now this here is not really a proper review or anything, just a quick update and first look at one of the two kits. 

But what do I have planned for this kit if not a Konflikt Ursus? Well, you will just have to wait and find out... Or you can just go to my Discord Server and find out right now, hah!

Ghurkas, Automatons and more

 So things took yet another tumble and I ended up not painting for a few more days, instead turning to sorting my childhood Lego collection and watching the first season of The Pitt; That is to say, my schedule has been all over the place and will most likely remain so for the next few days as well. In between I did find some time to hobby though, not a lot, but still enough to put together a small post talking about it.

First off I have been painting away at this old metal Ghurka. Seeing as there is a new plastic kit on the horizon I was motivated to dust off the old models I own. I think it was around Christmas two years ago when I picked up the old Ghurka Platoon box and a MMG team, which have since been left untouched. Well not anymore! I also got a bit more space to practice NMM on with this guy. I have said it before and I will say it again, WW2 miniatures are perfect to get into NMM with since there is only ever a small amount present, so you can get some striking results with little effort.

The new MKI surprisingly can be built doing the classic Italian gesture of disbelief.

Moving forward a few years, I got a surprise package by Warlord Games the other day with a sprue each of the new Automated infantry. I love the new slightly bulkier look of the MK1 and the complete overhaul of the MKII as the hulking monstrosities they are meant to be. As you may know I love painting Italians for Bolt Action, so doing them for K47 is the logical choice. Sadly the Italians have been orphaned between three forces. In Konflikt you can play either allied or axis Italians, playing them as axis is easy since they are all in one faction. When trying to play them as allied it becomes a bit of an issue. They have two rift units, the Bersaglieri armoured infantry and the Firefly Paracadutisti; As you can guess, the Paracadutisti are using the Firefly equipment and are thus available in the US army list. The Bersaglieri however are based on Galahad armoured infantry(They are literally just a head swap) and are thus in the Commonwealth list. This makes it quite hard to build an Italian Konflikt force without using Proxys.

Those goggles with that eye? No sense of fashion.

So this is exactly what I will be doing, I took this opportunity to build some allied Italian Automated Infantry, the MKIs are relatively easy as their heads are just about small enough to fit the Italian helmets(even if I did not make it fit that well). The MKIIs are the trickier of the two as their heads are much bigger. I decided to settle for giving them the goggles from the Italian sprue and a feather from the Alpini; These guys will have their paintjob do most of the heavy lifting.

Last but not least we go back by a few hundred years to the times of the Ottoman invasions of Europe. Warlord Games sent me a big package a while back for their newest Pike and Shotte Supplement and I’ve been working to slowly paint up the new promotional figure Kara Mustafa Pasha. He was a welcome opportunity to practice painting darker skin that is not 'black'(you know what I mean). I am not 100% sold on this scheme yet, but I already repainted his skin once, so I think this will do for now.

While I love painting slow and methodically, I recently felt I should get out of my comfort zone more and try to get quicker. To that end I am trying to emulate the very sketch like style of painting I have seen in many videos online. The yellow cape here felt like a good exercise for this. I definitely need to improve on my smoothing, but I think I managed to place the highlights correctly. This is part of a general attempt to improve my painting by trying new things I would not normally do. 

'Avanti Savoia!' - Reviewing the new Bolt Action Italian Airborne

Following the release schedule for Bolt Action third edition we knew that Armies of Italy would come with yet another Italian plastic kit; I had some theories about a potential winter infantry set(following the Black Feathers White Hell miniature release) and there was a rumour going around that it might be plastic San Marco Marines. In the end Occam's Razor prevailed and we got the Paracadutisti, the Italian Airborne. I say Occam's Razor, because the Folgore Paracadutisti are as far as I can tell the most well known Italian units of World War 2, thus it would be the most obvious choice to put into a plastic kit. 

While the Army, Blackshirts, Bersaglieri, San Marco marines, Colonial auxiliaries, Guastatori and Arditi all received refreshed or new sculpts in 2021, the Paracadutisti were left as were except for some repacks. Seeing how the Paracadutisti are the last remnants of the original Bolt Action Miniatures Italian range it was to be expected that they would get the spotlight for the big release. And what a spotlight it is; A complete multi part plastic kit, 8 new resin officers and the obligatory Medium weapon teams; Curiously there were no new light weapon teams so you still need to get the old flamethrower-, sniper- and light mortar teams. I was absolutely excited for this upcoming release and am incredibly grateful that Warlord Games sent me all of the new releases to mess around with. 

Contents

Starting with the new plastic kit, we got quite the choice with this one; Not only can you build that standard Italian airborne as you would expect, but the parts also allow you to assemble Guastatori(engineers) for your paratroopers and the infamous Arditi X commandos. Aside from using this box as is, it also holds potential to kitbash with the other existing Italian plastic kits, but I will go into that later. Something that was missing here is an appropriate decal sheet; We have had a unique decal sheet for each plastic release thus far, so it is a bit sad to see it missing here.

One immediate innovation with this kit is the inclusion of 6 new bodies. You might be wondering why I am praising that, but if you collect Italians you will know that the Alpini, Army and Bersaglieri kits all share most pieces across their sprues. It becomes quite apparent in their bodies as all three kits come with the exact same bodies, only shuffling around some weapons and having different head options. That said, this kit eschews becoming just another clone of the others and is all new.

To equip those six new bodies you have 7 heads each for the Paracadutisti(both with and without the camo wraps) and the Arditi as well as one bare and one with an officer's cap. There are plenty of arms as well, the usual rifles, SMGs(there are enough to equip all six bodies), two LMGs and one single use flamethrower; That last one is something we have not had in plastic yet, so it is a welcome addition to the kitbashing arsenal. On that topic, the sprue also contains a handful of parts that you can use to recreate the 'Samurai' vests worn by the paratroopers and the grenade vests employed by the Guastatori. When it comes to the unusual arms needed to fill special positions this sprue has you covered with pistol arms, pointing arms, binoculars, anti tank grenades, a notepad and curiously an arm attached to a head that seems to be priming a grenade with his mouth. Last but not least the sprue also has the usual amount of pouches and such, but those are not all that interesting. Looking at the special parts this set will allow you to build the following special units apart from the standard infantry squad:

• Separate spotters for various mortars and artillery using the binocular parts
• Forward Observers using either the binocular parts or the maps/notepads
• Any officer using the same parts you would use for NCOs and the peaked cap head option
• Chaplains using the notepad arm and either of the two empty right arms
• Medics using the pistol or pointing arm and the LMG crate arm(painted as a medic bag)

  

  A medic and chaplain assembled from the Airborne Sprue

Kitbashing potential

This section is meant to talk about the kitbashing opportunities that came to my mind when working with this kit; They are most definitely not an exhaustive list of what to do with this kit, rest assured Scale History SLC is going to show me up in that regard soon enough.

Blackshirt 'M' Battalions

There is no difference between the Blackshirts and the Army in terms of uniform, but Bolt Action has never been concerned with keeping it 100% realistic. You are encouraged to differentiate the Army and Blackshirts units in your force with the extra heads on the sprue, you will run into an issue to further differentiate between the Blackshirts and the relatively elite 'M' Battalions. This is where this kit comes in, on Wikipedia page for the 'M' Battalions you will find the following photo. It gave me the idea to combine the parts used for a Blackshirts with the 'Samurai' vests you get in this kit; While you only get 10 of them in this box, you can simply pick a random number of your 'M' Battalion soldiers to give them these vests to stay economical.

While in my haste I ended up using a body from this kit as well, I would say this works extremely well to convey the more elite status of these guys. I add that you need to do some dry fitting and scraping to properly apply the vest to a non-airborne body and might need to add an extra strap on each side to properly 'hold' the vest. 

Gustatori Destruction Group

Thanks to the inclusion of the grenade vests and single use flamethrowers in this kit it is incredibly easy to switch the arms and bits around to make your own plastic Guastatori; For this I converted three Guastatori as an example

First was a rather simple job which is less specific to this kit, but the idea came to me and I could not pass it up. I took the body and a head from the Paratroopers and added the new plastic Flamethrower from the German Veteran Infantry kit; Previously it was difficult to bash that flamethrower with the old Italian kits, since they had smaller shoulders, which required much more work to make the weapon fit. In this instance Warlord seems to have decided that most of the new plastic kits will have a similar shoulder width. Either way, I combined the parts and got this guy; Sure the flamethrower is not the correct model, you could put in the extra work to add the characteristic nozzle and all that, but for a quick arm swap it will serve, especially when looking at it from afar.

Second was this Alpini Engineer; There were some issues adapting the vest to the old body as it does not have the suspenders that sell the illusion of the vest. You can work around this with some sculpting putty and a bit of patience or just leave it as is since it still looks okay without. Additionally you will need to scrape away the two pouches that sit where the belt buckle would be. To hide the then ugly looking surface, you can use one of the pouch belts from the paratrooper kit to cover it up. Given the modular nature of the previous three Italian kits you can use this technique to make Guastatori for Bersaglieri, Alpini and Army. 

Last but not least is a Bersaglieri single use flamethrower engineer; This guy is basically just putting the single use flamethrower on an old body. You will need to use some putty or in my case sprue goo to somewhat fill the gaps left between arms and shoulders when assembling him. IF all is done you will have a single use flamethrower guy for any squad, but given how the Gustatori now get to take two of these guys per squad, it is ideal for building Engineers.

Painting

I have painted the old Paracadutisti in the past, so I wanted to see how these new guys paint up. After spending a few evenings on this guy I have to say I am very pleased with the results

Left to right: Original Paul Hicks Paratrooper, New Airborne, Plastic Alpini

While I have had my doubt every now and again with the new direction the Bolt Action sculpts have gone into, I keep being amazed at how well these paint up. I want to first focus on how beautiful the face sculpts are on this kit. Not to say the old Bolt Action facial sculpts are bad, but there was something incredibly cartoonish about them, even the other plastic Italians. These newer kits seem to move towards less harsh gaps in the faces allowing for smoother painting on them. 

Faces aside, the uniform is also modelled very well, it still has the occasional spot where the two mould parts meet and the detail(especially recesses) get a bit vague, but those aside everything is rendered beautifully. Where I had some issues are the water bottles which were moulded onto the bodies; Given the limitations of casting they had very shallow recesses to really differentiate them from the rest of the uniform. I also found the detail on the 'Samurai' vests to be a bit too soft to really translate well without the use of shades to accentuate the lightest recesses(something I tend to not do due to the unpredictability of washes). On that topic, the details of the straps on pouches all over the model were also way too softly cast as you have to manually pick out things like the buttons and buckles which blend into the rest of the material too easy. If you want to see how I painted this guy, then stay tuned as I will be putting together a painting guide soon enough.

Final thoughts

This is usually the part of the review where I tend to struggle to really put my thoughts into words; I really like this kit, it fills multiple purposes in an Italian army collection with both choices of units to build(Arditi and Airborne) and the myriad kitbashing possibilities. It also gives Italian players a new set of bodies to work with, even if they have slightly different uniforms. This is to say, the kit is a well needed breath of fresh air for people who prefer to assemble their armies using plastic rather than metal or resin. Aside from the accessibility benefits, there are also the technical improvements to consider. All three of the other plastic kits for Italy lay firmly in 2nd edition's style of design and sculpting, yet this new kit is in line with the improved details of 3rd edition's design ethos. You have faces with much softer details and the cloth is no longer just exaggerated folds and edges. 

If you are someone who collects World War 2 Italians for Bolt Action or any of the other games out there then I think this kit is definitely worth your money and time; I already highlighted the upsides and while I also brought up the downsides, I feel they become negligible when you start focusing on army painting and playing the game. If you want to pick up a box for yourself let me know how you like them; I also want to put out another huge thank you to Warlord Games for sending me the entire new Italian release wave!

A Very British Intermission

 

A small intermission to my Mutilators; This is one of the new British Infantry in Winter Gear by Warlord Games. I was sent the set on release by Warlord Games but have not had a chance to do much with them, but seeing as I am working on a review for the Army Painter British paint set, this felt pretty fitting. I primarily followed video tutorial provided for the paint set, although I had to improvise on the red jacket. Anyways, I am pretty pleased with how he turned out and felt like sharing.