The other day had a game of Chain of Command with a Swedish 1943 platoon fighting a German Infantry Platoon and I realised I had forgotten to do some Jump Off points – they are, as you may know, a key feature of the game.

 

In reality this could simply be a round marker with a symbol identifying whose marker it is. However, I prefer the opportunity to do something more and instead create a little bit of immersion.  For the Winter War set-up we have been using the following markers – I especially like the Finnish ones with the skies – they are just strips of plastic slightly bent – and the poles -some cut pieces of brass rod. The idea was that the Finnish ones symbolised the swift and agile Finnish force, vs the more desperate and hopeless Sovietic one.

I also did some suppression/pin markers using some material from a filter trying to give the effect of flying debris from bullets hitting the terrain.

I think they worked well and you can find the full collection here(link).

Back to 1943… To do the Jump-off points I decided that the Swedish markers would have a bicycle on it – symbolising the good old Swedish Airconditioned Person Carrier (APC).  I got the bikes from Peter Pig (link here). Other items came from a pack of German Stowage from Plastic Soldier Company (link here) and some Lorry Loads from QRF (link here). Some items came from the kit box (full of old crap) and I also cut a few helmets from a few spare figure to further Germanise the German jump-off points.

After a little bit of sand, paint, grass and some tufts, the look really well and will blend in on your table.

Using the same approach for the suppression / pinned markers, and using some brown material, dead branches from the garden and stones from the yard, we got the following collection.

Simple and cheap! – and if you do not have Stowage and other small pieces handy (I have bought many of these sets over the years for tank projects) use some green stuff or even a little bit of blue tac (you can add some superglue to protect it, if it is a not to big chunk) to make some rough shapes and then paint, wash and detail – it will look good.

/ Hope this was of some interest