99 Luftballoons

 Since I returned to the hobby around 15 years ago, I have exclusively played as NATO. I have 1960s British, 3 Commando Brigade and a Turkish armoured brigade. My main army has been West Germans and I could probably field the best part of a division of Bundeswehr troops.

Recently however change has been in the air. Neneh and The Scorpions have been replaced by Das Kapital, schnitzel mit dumplings with wurst goulash and my standing order for NATO Green has been cancelled. Yes, I have turned to the Dark Side and have built an East German panzer brigade, ready for this year's big game. I wanted to give them a runout so a few weeks ago went on a magical mystery tour across the Pennines (as the Snake was shut) for a match up against m'colleague Neil's US Airborne.

The Country: a generic town in Austria.

I sent a T-55AM2 battalion plus BMP-1 mechanised battalion towards the main town on my right and centre.

My other T-55AM2 battalion was sent down the autobahn on my left flank.

With a clatter of rotor blades and blaring of CCW through the loudspeakers, the US Airborne arrived and took possession of the hill on my left.

Their landing deviated too far forward though and they deployed on the front slope of the hill, directly in front of my tank battalion. Under a hail of HE fire, the survivors scrabbled down the hill and took cover in the roadside diner.

In the centre another US battalion arrived in Gamma Goats and took over the used car lot and bierkeller.

In response, my infantry debussed and headed for the woods.

With their dismounts er, dismounted, the BMPs moved off to outflank the Americans.

Over on the left flank Neil's Sheridans came off second best in a one-sided long range duel against my T-55s. The survivors moved to their right, taking cover behind the hill and looking to outflank my tanks.

Meanwhile, back in the town my other tank battalion set about laying down suppressing fire on the infantry in the used car lot and bierkeller, while my infantry moved through the woods in preparation for a close assault.

I managed to call in some air support from a Sukhoi SU-22 but it was driven off by fierce AA fire.

I had better look with this strike from a Mig-23. Initially intended to attack Neil's infantry, a fortuitous deviation saw it slice through most of the remaining Sheridans.

With the bulk of their armour gone, one battalion pinned in the diner and the other threatened with a flanking attack, the US commander decided to call time on their expedition and quit the battlefield.

A good try out for the East Germans then that resulted in a resounding victory. Things could have been very different though. Neil had clearly neglected to make the appropriate sacrifices to the dice gods as he made some spectacularly bad rolls. I only lost one T-55 despite a hail of Dragon and Sheleighly ATGMs fired at me. He also managed to roll 3 blunders, whereas I escaped without any. Artillery was conspicuously absent during the battle. I don't think either of us managed to successfully call in a barrage.

Next up is the delayed annual Cold War Commanders big game. I've seen a sneak preview of some of the terrain and it promises to be a belter of a weekend.

Terrain Talk

 At Joy of Six two years ago, I picked up a set of 3D printed civilian cars. Included in the set was a pair of New York taxis. As I mostly play Cold War Western Europe I couldn't see much use for these so decided to create an American style roadside diner and put a taxi on its roof. I wasn't sure how to make a diner so started researching on Google Images. It turned out though that the easiest way to make such a building was to mention it to m'colleague Neil and he just made it for me:

Neil made the building so all I had to do was base it up and add a painted taxi. The other NY taxi I painted up as a West German police car, which can be seen parked up in the photo above.

Another idea that I have been bouncing around for a while is a used car sales lot. As I now have a few cars from various sources I finally gave it a go:

The portacabin office is from Timecast, the big shed from Leven (I think), with skip and barrels from Perfect Six. The sign says "Used Car Sales" in German and was printed on paper before gluing in place. I'm pretty pleased with this one.

Another idea I had was for a small municipal park:

The central fountain is from Leven, the paving is embossed plasticard and the fencing is N-guage railway stuff, a top tip from Richard Phillips. Since this photo I've added some shrubbery around the fences using larger, darker flock. The park is 10cm square and the intention is to place this in between other buildings and built up areas to create some urban greenery.

The next big thing on the wargames calendar is Joy of Six on 14 July. The Cold War Commanders will be staging a game set in our 1948 Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia. There are some big ideas for the game so it should look good.

They Want You For A New Recruit

 After spending the first part of the year painting stuff for Crisis Point, I've been off on a tangent lately, starting with another Star Wars ship, The YT-49 Decimator:

To date, it hasn't appeared in any film or TV series but was in a video game. In reality I think that they needed an Imperial equivalent of the Millennium Falcon for one of the games. It appears in the X-Wing minis game but this is a 3-D printed one.

I decided that, as a military ship, it needed some markings so got some Imperial transfers off eBay. Compared to the other ships I've made it's an absolute beast, but compared to it's supposed dimensions is again sort of 6mm (and, as a bomber, could be used for close air support...)

For our JoS game, we are planning on a large Prague 48 game, set around the fictional city of Stary Boleslav. This would feature a bridge for the Soviets to capture, which means that there'll be a river. This started me off thinking of minis that could be used on the river and that started me on some boat minis that I have had knocking around for a while:

A couple of US PT boats from Cruel Seas that came free with an issue of Miniature Wargames and a Fairmile D from H&R. I think my original idea was for the Fairmile to be a patrol boat for the Turkish navy, which is why I cut the torpedo launchers off. There's no reason at all why any of these boats would be on the River Elbe in Czechoslovakia in 1948 but I really like them all the same. This has started me on a bit of a naval obsession. I think that I could get into Cruel Seas on the basis of the miniatures alone and now have half-baked ideas of a 1980s Aegean Sea Turkey Vs Greece flare up. Hold that thought.

One ship that might actually find a place in our JoS game is this little tugboat that I bought from Shapeways some time ago:

Not much to say about this other than it's been on my paint station for about 5 years so I'm glad that it's finally done. I thought that I'd painted it in a generic nautical scheme but it turns out that I've painted it like a Mersey ferry! Some subliminal suggestion at work obviously.

Crisis Point 2024

 Last weekend 6-7 April saw the welcome return of the Crisis Point event. Staged in the village of Dungworth just outside Sheffield by Richard Crawley, this weekend had been a highlight of the wargaming calender for many years but hasn't been staged for the last few years, because of reasons. This year Richard had a general theme of Invasion. As it transpired we ran 2 games, both set in the "Crawleyverse" alternative history Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in the summer of 1948, continuing the theme from last year's Joy of Six. Richard organised a large game using the TACWW2 rules. Lots of information about that game can be found over on his blog at thelandofcounterpane.blogspot.com. Meanwhile, m'colleague Neil and I ran a game using Cold War Commander.

I wanted a slightly different challenge to this game, rather than the standard line up the tanks and roll the dice affair. We had a large table, plenty of time but not a lot of miniatures to play with. We used the Breakthrough Attack scenario from the CWC2 rulebook, so the Soviet objective was to get 25% of their battlegroup off the other side of the table. The defending Czechoslovak forces had to prevent this from happening.

Neil's sketch map.

This is how that map translated to the table. The slightly beaten up village of Zblov is in the top left and the larger town of Zlic to the right.

I wanted to create a Soviet advance to contact, with a recce screen feeling out the defences before the main force arrived. Neil brought along a lot of recce units and also had 4 T34/85 Recce Support. The Soviet main force consisted of 2 battalions of T-44s, 2 battalions of infantry in half tracks or trucks, a battalion of JS3s and then various support elements such as mortars and HMGs, backed up by 152mm and rocket artillery. Neil took on the role of Soviet supreme commander, mentor and umpire, with new pals Dex and Rob playing as Soviets.

I acted as GOC and umpire for the Czechs l, with Phil and Ron as the Czechoslovak commanders. I decided to split the Czechs into a tank commander and infantry commander. Phil, the tank commander, had a battalion of T34/85, split into 3 companies of 3, along with a company of 3 infantry units in half-tracks, 2 82mm mortars and a towed quad AA gun. Infantry commander Ron had a battalion of infantry broken down into 3 companies of 3, some half-track transport, a company of 3 Hetzers, 2 Pak 40 AT guns, 2 mortars and another towed quad AA gun.

To help the game run as planned, the defending force started hidden, used the Hidden Units rule. It's the first time that I've tried these rules so I created these markers using 10mm Pendraken Soviet infantry.

I also gave the Czechs some Czech Hedgehog AT defences. These were very common in WW2 but apparently were not so effective against later, heavier tanks. We added a house rule that if a JS3 came into contact with one then they would sweep it aside on a 5+ roll on one D6 (apparently in real life a heavy tank would crush them up to 40% of the time).

Zblov, looking a bit battle worn. We thought that, in 1948, a lot of central Europe would still be in ruins after the War so we had a bombed out church, ruined houses and a tumble down graveyard.

The larger town of Zlic, at the heart of the Czech defences.

The game played out almost exactly as I intended. The Soviets pushed their Recce units forward, scouting out the Hidden Unit markers and revealing which ones were dummies and which concealed the defending troops. In fact, one Recce half-track made it across the board to Zlic and started heading back again before it was stopped by tank fire.

Once the hidden troops were revealed the Soviet main force arrived. The T44 battalions headed over the river on their right flank, making use of their dozer blade tanks to push aside the AT defences. The infantry battalions meanwhile took the more open ground on the left flank. This was the complete opposite of the Czech set up and meant that the T44s were opposed by dug-in infantry while the Soviet infantry came up mainly against tanks.

A Soviet recce unit gets too close to the enemy and pays the ultimate price, but reveals the dug-in infantry and Hetzers in the centre of the Czech line.

T44s advance on the Soviet right.

Facing the T44s were more dug-in infantry and the Pak 40s.

As Saturday progressed the T34s on the Czech right, along with multiple artillery strikes from their supporting 105mm gun battery, took a terrible toll on the Soviet infantry and that side of the battle had a Great War feel. On the Czech left, the Pak 40s were quickly despatched but the dug-in infantry continued to hold up the Soviet advance, helped by a truly shocking sequence of command rolls and blunders by the Soviets.

Things were looking good for the Czechs at the end of day one but there was a sense of trouble brewing as the JS3s entered the fray.

Day 2 featured some truly heroic defensive actions from the Czechs, including infantry using initiative actions to leave their trenches and close assault the Soviet tanks, infantry overrunning and KO'ing the Soviet FAO, tanks close assaulting infantry and mortars firing smoke as an offensive action to block line of sight.

Things started to look grim for the Czechs as the Soviet forces got into range and their superior tank numbers were brought to bear. The casualties mounted for both sides and by the end of turn 16 both were nearing their break points.

JS3s and what's left of the Soviet infantry assault the Czech right flank. In the centre, just by the treeline, Ron's infantry (after despatching the Soviet FAO) are now engaging the JS3s with bazookas at point-blank range.

We thought that we had broken the Soviets at the end of turn 16 but had just fallen short. The Czech defences finally crumbled in turn 17 when their break point was reached, I failed the subsequent command roll and the Czechs quit the battlefield.

A victory for the Soviet Union then but the plucky Czechoslovakian army acquitted themselves admirably. They held up the Soviet advance for 16.5 game turns and came within a whisker of victory.

The game in full swing on Sunday.

Team photo. From L to R: Dex, Neil, Rob, Ron, m'self, Phil.

My thanks to Neil for helping to organise and run the game and also to the participating players for making the weekend so enjoyable. As a group, none of the Cold War Commanders are power gamers, much preferring an enjoyable game over victory at all costs. I was pleased also to see that spirit of gentlemanly competitiveness in the chaps who played with us over the weekend.

Massive thanks too to Richard Phillips for the use of his great looking terrain and to the man himself, Richard Crawley, for organising, hosting and feeding us all over the weekend.

I confess, I have no idea what was happening on the other game throughout the weekend but here they are, battling away on the Sunday and seemingly having a great time. More info can be found on the other blogs etc.

Tales from the Dark Side

 Following on from the Millennium Falcon, my next small scale Star Wars build was this:

The "iconic" Sith Infiltrator. I reckon that it had about 15 seconds of screen time so I'm not sure how it could be considered iconic. Anyway, it was a simple enough build but nicely detailed. It even has a fully detailed cockpit with Darth Maul pilot that then gets sealed and completely concealed by the hull so it is a waste of time to paint. I still painted it, of course.

The official colour scheme contrasts a very light grey with a much darker one. I wasn't happy with that so I have toned down the lighter sections on mine:

Here it is side by side with the Falcon. The Falcon is 1/241 whereas the Infiltrator is 1/257 but they sit together well enough. And again, sort of 6mm scale.

I mentioned in a previous post that, following an American War of Independence game, I had a notion to make a certain Hessian mercenary. A few weapon swaps with some Irregular Vikings and I came up with these:

The Hessian in life. I thought that he would look better on a white horse.

The Headless Horseman of Sleepy Hollow! Not sure how I would squeeze him into a game but he was a fun and quick little conversion.

The main gaming focus at the moment is on the Crisis Point weekend on 6-7 April. M'colleague Neil & I will be putting on a CWC2 game set in the fictional Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1948, the excellent campaign thought up by Richard Crawley and the basis of our games at Joy of Six last year. I thought that Bohemia in 1948 would look a bit battle scarred so, while waiting for a big Heroics & Ros order to arrive, I've been making a few terrain pieces.

A ruined farm, using Timecast buildings. I actually made this in 2010 and it has sat on my workstation since so I'm glad I finally got the ruddy thing done and out of the way.

An abandoned graveyard. Walls are Timecast, the graves a mix of Leven and Perfect Six. Plus a lot of flock and static grass.

Finally, a ruined church, a Battlescale sculpt. I tried to paint it to look like sandstone but don't think I've quite got there.

It's a nice scuplt though, with little details like this dismounted bell from the tower.

Next up will be a lot of tanks and mix & match kit for the postwar, pre revolution Czech army.