Really Small Skirmishing

 I've been thinking about Black Ops a lot recently. The games are small, suitable for solo play and, apparently, the rules are simple to learn. What stopped me was that it would involve quite an investment in scenery, troops and time to build up a sufficient collection in 20mm or 28mm.

My solution was to swap all distances in the rules from inches to centimetres and play in 6mm. That way, any scenery could also be used for CWC games, so I would get some of my unpainted scenery actually done. Also even with my glacial painting speed it would not take that long to get some forces together for a game. The only question then was what era and theatre of war to choose.

My mucker Neil solved that dilemma by sending me some Middle Eastern buildings that he had knocked together one evening:

He has constructed them by applying sticky envelope labels over chunks of foam. They wouldn't win any modelling competitions, but they only took him about an hour to complete. Cheap, quick scenery made basically out of leftovers, cracking.

So, a Middle East setting then. All that was left was to get some troops ready:

A section of German infantry, patrolling in the Kunduz region of Afghanistan as part of ISAF. Figures are GHQ modern German infantry.

A small Taliban force, led by the self-styled "Lion of Kunduz", a local militia leader who has proved to be a thorn in the side of ISAF. Figures are H&R Mujahadeen/Taliban. 

The  stage is set then. German forces have been tasked with hunting the Lion of Kunduz down. I had hoped to play the game before Christmas, but work, shopping and general malaise have combined to scupper that plan. First game of the new year is planned and ready then!

West German Reinforcements

 Lockdown, Tiers and Lockdown 2.0 have all combined to sap my painting mojo for the last few months. Nonetheless I have ploughed on through the malaise and finally got a few units finished. I decided that my West Germans needed a few reinforcements, mostly from H&R:

I've beefed up my artillery support with some FH70s, which were adopted by the Heer in the mid-80s. I've used H&R West German artillery crew and added a MIDGE launcher for a bit of character, since it's the only use that I can think of for it.

Even more potent is this battery of MLRS. I bought these for a game set in 1989 a few years ago, before looking again at their in service date. It turns out that they weren't in use by the Heer until 1990. As most of our games are set in 1986 I'm not sure if these will ever see action. Still, they look cool and that's reason enough for me to get them painted.

Incidentally, I've added the fiddly GHQ Iron Cross transfers to some of these vehicles, with a small dab of varnish to protect them. The varnish seems to have clouded over again. Hey ho.

Air defence has been enhanced by these Roland launchers from Scotia. I think that they will mostly feature in fixed defensive positions.

Another oddity, a pair of Skorpion minelayers. I don't think that mines can be laid during a game of CWC, so I may have to think of some house rules to get them into action. If not, they can just hang around in REMF positions during a battle. 

Finally, I thought that I should make a new CO stand, so here is General Von Klinkerhoffen explaining his master plan to his subordinates. I've used GHQ M577s with deployed tents, H&R infantry (from their newish West German 1980s range) and a table from a H&R WW2 German command sprue that Andy Kirk kindly let me have for free. I've added a small scrap of paper and painted it up as a map for the table. It works well enough.

It's always good to get some stuff finished and off the lead mountain. I'm off on another tangent for my next project, hopefully more on that soon.