The 27 Foot Battle

To celebrate a friend of mine's retirement on Friday (Simon), we decided to have an all day battle yesterday on his 27 foot long table using Battlegroup Overlord (BGO).  It was a great day, using use over 1500 points a side, with plenty of swings back and forth, like a tiny unit of British recce troops winning posthumous VCs as they held up the entire German advance with a bren gun!

As I forgot to take photos before the game I'll have to describe the set up - First there was a river with a bridge in the centre of the table held by a small British recce force. 

The Germans also had a recce force that would enter from 1 of 3 roads near the centre of the table.  1 road was on the German side of the bridge - the 2 other roads were on the British side,  The road was determined randomly once the British recce force had set up and it turned out (a 2 in 6 chance) that the German recce unit was on the German side of the river.

Each force had a vanguard of 1 infantry platoon, 1 tank platoon and their Forward HQ that start on a road on the table.  The rest of the forces came in as reserves on turn 3.

Finally each side had one objective on either side of the river, and the bridge counted as an objective worth 2 chits.  If you captured an enemy objective it also forced 2 chits, whereas catching one of your own only forced 1 chit.  We did that as both sides have 90+ Battle Rating (BR).

This is the German vanguard driving as fast as it could up the table towards the bridge - which is so far away that you can't even see it.

The Panther platoon

Fwd HQ Command Track

The PG platoon.  We certainly pushed our luck with these guys - paid off to begin with, but we pushed that luck too far.

Meanwhile at the bridge, the Puma's take out an unsuspecting M5 halftrack.  You can see the bridge at the back of the photo

The troops spill out and are pinned

British reinforcements waiting to come on - my German force beauty shot did not come out...

This damn little Humber LRC survived the whole game, unlike the rest of the British recce force - here the sneaky devil is rudely capturing one of our objectives.

The Puma missed a difficult shot at the LRC, while SdKfz250/9 re-pinned the British infantry and the German Mounted recce patrol assaulted and wiped out the remaing British dismounts

Opel Blitz's leading the vanguard of the German force - and it's all about to go pear-shaped.  One of the trucks and just dismounted it's 3 units, including the Shreck team, which has taken out the Humber IV in the woods.

British reinforcements begin to arrive at a small village near the bridge

More reinforcemetns

Our luck ran out, as a plucky Carrier recce team lit up the first Opel Blitz.  In the ensuring rolling for casualties, they managed to kill a complete 80mm mortar team, an MG Team and a couple of guys from the rifle team.  Ouch - 3 chits for a truck!  You can just see the wall they are hiding behid at the top of the photo.  In the next couple of tuns they would pin and then kill the SF MG42 team as well.

Here we are getting the remaining trucks the hell out of there!

The German reinforcements start to arrive

Our secret weapon... which actually performed pretty poorly compared to the Brits 2 batteries of 25 pdrs.  I going to have to rethink that whole Hummel thing...

Here you can see the little buggers that ruined our day.  They survived numerous attempts to brass up, direct fire HE. Artillery stonks etc - with a ridiculous amount of successful hard cover saves.  Just to put salt on our wounds, they're also sitting on top of one of our objectives.  Gott in Himmel!! Those Englanders fight like madmen!!!

British infantry moving through the houses.  They appeared pretty harmless to me - with the road intersection being well outside 10" PIAT range.  Slight humiliation for me will happen shortly...

British armour heading to the sound of gunfire

But wait... there's more...

Take that!  A Puma nails the carrier... finally.  Now just those 3 damn fella's to kill.

Amazing, on a 27 foot long table, when the Brits timed airstike arrives, it has a target to drop on.  Fortunately for us, our Wirbelwind, which had been waiting 3 turns for this opportunity, hit and pinned him, driving off the strike.

A lone Pzr IVH attempts to head off the LRC.  We generously said we'd take 2 chits if they could drive it off our end of the board...

Close up

Biffo at the bridge.  We were now in a pretty pickle.  The bridgehead was easy pickings for the Brit FO teams, and that bloody little fell with a bren gun was still sitting on our objective.  The red marker was the Brits favourite aiming point for spotter rounds.

More armour cometh...  You can see the Brit FO in a trench near the house, while the Fwd HQ, is in the house.  We managed to pin that unit and kill one chap, but it was not enough.

See! He's still there!!!  Causing all sorts of havoc.  Well not really, but I guess we had a touch of too much target focus there.  can't think of the right phrase - but the one where the pilot is so intent on gunning down the plane he is chasing, he forgets the rest of the battle and is shot down by the bloke who siddles in behind him.  See that one of our Puma's has now been knocked out - direct hit from a 25 pdr bombardment.

Playing on a 27 foot long table, you get attached to racing 48" down roads (which again is relative on such a big table).  So I was a little to keen to get my FO into a decent spot right near the centre of the table and so drove it right through the intersection, with the idea of hiding it behing the knocked out Puma.  Unfortunately I completely forgot about the British infantry in the houses on overwatch.  Note to self - kubelwagens are not tanks...(or even armoured cars...)

Panther slowly moving up, around the burning FO team and their ride.  By now we had reduced the recce bren team to just one man.  All we needed to do was pin him and he'd run away...

British tanks turn off the road and start taking shots at Panthers.  Fortunately for both sides, none of us could roll a 6 to save our lives!

Brit 3" mortars getting into action

Panthers continue to advance

As the game ends, 2 Pzr IVH's close in on the LRC

So the British started off with 98 BR and ended the game with 55.  We had 90 BR and ended with 54 - so I guess we classify that as a British win, even though we held the bridge and all our Panthers ready to put some pain there way in the next couple of turns.

But regardless - a great game was had by everyone and the whole 27 foot long table thing worked quite well.

Richard

25pdr 2 Gun Battery

Over the weekend I started and finished a project for a quick build run on The Guild

This is what I had on Saturday morning:

Basicaly that's a couple of Altaya 25 pdrs, broken down into bits, 8 AB British 25 pdr crew figures and 2 GW 60mm bases previosuly covered in spakfilla.

An hour or so later and the 25 pdrs had been sprayed black and then sprayed British Armour Green (using PSC sprays), the bases had been painted Vallejo Green Brown, and I'd started base coating the figures.

A little while later and the guns were essentially finished (washed and then dry-brushed up) while the figures had had a couple more colours added.

That night I added grass to the bases, and then the next day dry-brushed the wheels, and finished all the base colours on the figures.

I then washed the figures with Army painter Quickshade strong tone wash - not the dip.  I'd never used the product before, and had picked it up as my dip had dried up.  I was very impressed with the results.

Once dry, I highlighted the figures with the original colours.  I did not bother with their faces, or helmets as I was quite happy with the look given by the wash.  I then added pins to 1 foot of each figure to help them be fixed to the bases.

And here's the final look:

So that's it.  One 2 gun battery painted over a weekend (probably in 5 or 6 hours) with plenty of time to spare.  Quite interesting to see what can be achieved if I put my mind to it, am prepared, and don't muck around.

Thanks

Richard

Airfix PE.2

First up - apologies to the slackness on this blog - lots has been going on but most of it on my "main" blog" - so finally here we are.

A friend asked me to build and paint an Airfix PE.2 for him.  That was all pretty straight forward, but once it was painted in the base colours and decaled, I asked him if he wanted it to be weathered.  Yes, a little was the reply.  So I finally got to use my Flory Model Wash on a proper model.  And here is the result:

Pretty yucky huh!  That's how it looks after sitting in a couple of gloss coats for just over 20 minutes.  Then I cleaned it up, using a decent quality paper towel and it looked like this:

Finally after adding the bombs and props, weathering the top, plus a little charcoal, and it looked like this:

It still needs to be dull coated, but my friend can do that.

Reasonably happy with how it came out - my first proper use of the product and I'm happy with it.

Thanks

Richard

British Armoured Troop

Some more pics of finished kit.  Here's some Airfix Cromwells, joined by an old Revell (previously Matchbox) Firefly.

All vehicles have been sprayed black, and then base coated with PSC British Armour spray.  They were then worked up to this state.

Stowage is a mix of handmade and some from Milicast Models, decals are pretty much all Battlefront which in my opinion fit very well despite them being 15mm.  The one crewman is from AB Figures from Eureka Miniatures

I've used Vallejo pigments - my first attempt - but was not really happy with their colour, so I'll be using another pigment in the future.

Thanks

Richard

The Russian horde arrives!

Finally... a post here of some completed work - and I should have a few of those of the next week or so.

I said I would never paint/collect a WW2 Soviet force - not after spending so much time collecting and painting a Cold War Soviet force.  Then one day I came across a platoon box of Zvezda Soviet infantry for about $15 and I was hooked...  So much for my will power.

I decided I'd do a complete company of infantry and attach a few bits and peices to it.  Right now I'm about a third of the way through the project so here they are thus far:

This is a Zvezda 76mm Infantry Gun - with two Zvezda crew and a PSC crewman, seperately based.  After looking at these pics I decided that in the future, I'd place the sperately based figures beside the gun, rather than on the base...

Now I think this is an SHQ 76.2mm Zis-3 (it's metal anyway) with 3 PSC crew.  You always need a bit of AT don't you.

The Zvezda Maxim MG box comes with 2 maxim guns and crews - here is the first one (the only one I've completed to date)

Zvezda 80mm mortar teams with PSC additional crew (the separately based figures)

My first squad - all Zvezda figures from a couple of different boxes

The second squad.  The LMG gunner and loader are PSC and the rest are Zvezda

The third squad.  The NCO and one of the riflemen are PSC and the rest are Zvezda - from a couple of different boxes.

The Platoon Command squad - all Zvezda figures.  I love the officer on the left - very cool figure.

My FO team - both Zvezda - but 1 from the recon box and the officer from the Paratrooper box

Some more AT weaponry - Ivan and his mutt - out for a walk looking for panzers.  Ivan is a Zvezda figure while Fido is an Airfix modern NATO guard dog - slightly modified.

This is the whole lot - typically these 3 photos also show the one figure I forgot to photograph individually - the sniper (who is lying at an angle to the left of the Platoon Command) - and left of Ivan and Fido.

So that's my first lot of Soviets.  It may take a while for the next tranch of them to make it to the top of my painting list, but I plan of completing this project over the course of the year.

Thanks

Richard

The Russian Horde Begins...

So it seems I have started down the road I swore I would never go down - a WW2 Soviet army.  "No, no..." I exclaimed, "One Soviet Cold war army is enough for me - I'll never do Russians in WW2 - too many infantry!"

So here I am now starting a Soviet WW2 force.  I blame:

1.  Warwick Kinrade and his Battlegroup books, including the upcoming Barbarossa
2.  Zvezda
3.  Plastic Soldier Company
4.  Pegasus

Soon I will also be blaming S-Models.  It's obviously not my fault!

Leaping in - which is the only way to start a Soviet force - I decided I needed a whole company of infantry.  Here they are being organised:

Things have moved along since this photo was taken - and I now have the first batch painted.  Photos to follow shortly (when I take them!)

Thanks

Richard