Wayne’s Hungarian Assault Guns

Bagration: Axis Allies Wayne’s Hungarian Assault Guns
 
I was pretty excited to work on Stalin’s Europe back in 2009-2010. The Hungarians are one of my favourite armies of the war and I wanted to add some of their interestingly unique forces to the book. One of these forces is the Rohamágyús Üteg (assault gun battery, pronounced ro-ham-ar-goose ew-teg). These forces were created in 1943 to provide the infantry divisions with armoured support. Eventually they ended up fighting with the armoured divisions as well and were used wherever some armoured forces were needed.

To put my painting time where my mouth was I painted a Rohamágyús Üteg of my own (plus I had a couple of other Hungarian forces on the boil). I based my force on the 10th Assault Gun Battalion fighting in Transylvania against the Romanians and Soviets in September 1944. To capture the flavour of the fighting in this border region I’ve incorporated units from the two divisions fighting alongside the 10th Assault Gun Battalion.

Now we have updated the Hungarian forces for the latest edition of the Flames of War rules and they now appear in the Bagration: Axis Allies book.

The Hungarian assault artillery troops were the elite of the artillery forces and in Flames Of War are rated Fearless Veteran.

The bulk of the company consists of Zrínyi II assault howitzers. This is a native Hungarian design based on their Turán tank hull. This has good frontal protection (a front armour rating of 7) and is fitted with a 105mm howitzer that has good anti-tank performance (AT 10) and a high firepower for digging out stubborn infantry (FP 2+), and can fire as artillery. It is also a very cool looking model with it very low silhouette.

My force core consists of:
 
Rohamágyús Üteg

Zrínyi Assault Gun Battery HQ
1x Zrínyi (105mm) - 6 points.

Rohamágyús Üteg Company HQ
Zrínyi Assault Gun Platoon
3x Zrínyi (105mm) - 16 points.
The first Rohamágyús Platoon
Zrínyi Assault Gun Platoon
3x Zrínyi (105mm) - 16 points.
The second Rohamágyús Platoon
Zrínyi Assault Gun Platoon
3x Zrínyi (105mm) - 16 points.
The third Rohamágyús Platoon
For infantry support from the 25th Infantry Division I’ve added:
 
Rifle Platoon
10x 31M MG & 95M rifle team with Panzerfaust anti-tank
 - 12 points.
Volunteer Rifle Platoon command card - -4 points.
Önkéntes Puskás Platoon
I decided to make my Rifle Platoon one from a Önkéntes Puskás Század (volunteer rifle company, pronounced un-ken-tesh push-kars sar-zod) to represents the infantry fighting in Budapest, but can also represent infantry forces fighting elsewhere. To do this I've used the Volunteer Rifle Command Card. It’s a nice big unit with a total of ten teams, including a panzerfausts.

From the 2nd Armoured Division I’ve selected a platoon of Ervin Tarczay’s Panther tanks and some of the division’s medium artillery. I’ll have more on Tarczay, the new Hungarian Warrior, in the future.
 
Panther Tank Platoon
2x Panther (7.5cm) - 19 points
.
Harckocsizó Platoon
The Panther Tank Platoon comes from the Panther Tank Company (Harckocsizó Század, or armoured company, pronounced harks-koch-sheez-oh). The Hungarians used a variety of tanks in their two armoured divisions including Tiger, Panthers, Panzer IV H and their own native Turán and Toldi tanks. I went for the Panthers as they fought alongside the 10th Assault Gun Battery in Transylvania.

149mm Artillery Battery
4x 149mm howitzers - 11 points.
149mm Artillery Battery command card - +2 points.
Motorised Artillery Battery

Finally the assault guns are backed up by their artillery brothers from the 2nd Armoured Division.

By 1944 the Hungarian has replaced their 80mm field guns with 100mm 14M Howitzers (as found in the Italian range as the 100/17). The role of the 100mm howitzer in the divisions was taken over by the former corps level 149mm howitzer. These two guns are similar Skoda howitzers, but now Evan has sculpted up a new 149mm barrel to go with the 100/17 carriage and shield. This gun will be available in a new gun box set for the Hungarians (HBX02) to come out with Stalin’s Europe. The armoured divisions are a little different and use the German 105mm 37M howitzer (10.5cm leFH18), but also have the 149mm 14/31M howitzer in their medium batteries.

Total Points: 94 points.

To pushed it up to 100 points I could the Ervin Tarczay command card to one of the Panthers for +6 points.

Wayne's Rohamágyús Üteg
Stalin's Europe Logo I’ve really enjoyed playing with this force so far. It got its baptism of fire when I took it to the New Zealand Late-war Grand Tournament on the weekend of 23-24 October 2010 back under under the 3rd Edition rules when this force first came out in Stalin's Europe.