6mm German reinforcements

And here comes the German infantry. Now there's a nice core of infantry for both armies and I think I can pull off more scenarios.

 The grand total for both armies starts to look pretty nice!

 

 

 

6mm Soviet WW2 reinforcements

More infantry into the fray! Once I complete a similar set to the Germans too, I should have enough for a decent Microarmor engagement. Infantry figures are Heroics and Ros based on 30mm squares.

 

All my soviets at the moment

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

6mm WW2 Soviet Infantry for Spearhead

I couldn't find my camera so I these were taken with my cell phone. Just some 6mm WW2 soviet infantry as a palate cleanser after all that 28mm I've been doing lately.

Here's everything I have for spearhead so far. I'm starting to have enough for a nice scenario but I still have quite a bit to finish before having proper Spearhead-sized OOB's

Spearhead test battle with a kriegspiel twist

I built enough forces to play the introductory scenario "Attack This" from the Spearhead rulebook. It's a small one with just a battalion worth of troops per side and a 30" table representing a three kilometer square of actual terrain. I decided to play it solitaire to teach myself the rules. I've played the cold war variant a few times, but I have to admit that my opponent has handled most of the rules.

A simple solitaire game would have been a bit dull, so I invited a couple of voluteer generals from a wargaming Facebook group I hang out in to form the battle plan for their respective sides and do all the tough decisions during the battle without seeing all the action. With limited knowledge of the battleground and the mechanics, I hoped to create a kriegspiel-like experience.

I sent them both a quick brief of the situation and some technical notes on the rules which would affect their deployment. Here's the material (translated from Finnish)

Scenario map I enclosed in both briefings (North to the top)

"aerial reconnaissance" photo I enclosed in both briefings

German briefing: 

Leningrad front, May 1942

---------------------------------

The winter has been relatively quiet once the siege of Leningrad began in 1941. Come May, things have become more lively however, and the Soviets are on the move. The first battalion of the 124th infantry regiment has been assigned on a three kilometer stretch on the front. Intel suggests the Soviets are massing armored units in this area so an attack on your sector seems likely. Division has sent additional AT guns to you, but no armored support is available. The Soviets must not be allowed to break through!

Troops available:

----------------------------

124th infantry regiment, first battalion.
The battalion consists of the HQ, three infantry companies, a machine gun company, a mortar platoon and a reinforced AT company. Offboard artillery is available.

The German player enclosed this very cool battle plan (It's only in Finnish, sorry!) link to pdf

Soviet briefing: 

Leningrad front, May 1942

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The Soviet Union has achieved the impossible and stopped the fascist warmachine at the brink of ruin. The grand German offensive lost momentum late in 1941 and now it is our turn to show them that socialists know how to blitzkrieg as well! The main attack is planned in Kharkov to retake the city from the Nazis, but besieged Leningrad is also in need of relief. The 92nd armored brigade is to punch a hole in the German line and cause enough casualties for the Germans so that the breakthrough can be exploited. 

Troops available:

---------------------------

32. Tank Corps, 92. Tank Brigade

The Tank Brigade consists of the brigade HQ and two armored battalions.

The Soviet player enclosed this plan:

"The red line marks the route of the brigade HQ.

The first armored battalion reinforced with the recon platoon advances on the eastern side of the line so that the KV-1 platoon with the T-34's operate closest to the HQ along the line Hill 301 and the field -> The forest east of Hill 302 -> the Pass between Hills 303 and 304. The two T-26's of the battalion and the other T-34 platoon will circle around the wood with the field (to distract and draw fire).

The second armored battalion reinforced with the engineers will advance directly via hills 301, 302 and 303 and aim for a quick breakthrough attack. If necessary, any fascists hiding in the woods next to hill 302 will be driven out by the engineers and the tanks of the 2nd armored battalion."

The battle:

Now I had what I needed to run the game without "playing against myself". The only adjustment I needed to make was shift the position of both players' HQ units so that their entire OOB was in command range. The German HQ was moved from the forest to hill 304 and the Soviet HQ had to start moving a bit more to the east from the initial plan.


Throughout the game I would give the commanders updates on their situation. I gave them good information on things happening in the vicinity of their HQ, but was vague on things happening further out. This is a small scenario so there wasn't much for them to do mid-battle (I handled all movement and combat for the forces according to the plan) but they did do small adjustments to the plan based on how they perceived the events.

Turn 1 (south at the top of image): The Soviets advance according to plan, but no visual contact is yet made with the enemy. The Germans spot the Soviet armor (armor moving in the open is seen 18" out while infantry in woods only to 3")

Turn 2: The soviet "feint" to the east comes under fire by Pak35's. They fail to damage the tanks,but a German infantry company reaches the soviet T-26's with their panzerfausts with predictable results. The Soviet recon platoon spots the German company in the.. lets call it "Half acre wood" and the tanks close in to fire at them.

Turn 3: The Soviets on the eastern flank suffer losses and retreat towards the main group. A firefight breaks out at the half acre wood, but with no results. At this point, the Soviet player decides to commit forces from this breakthrough force to flank the half acre wood. One of the T-34's destroy a Pak35 platoon at hill 303.

Turn 4:  The engineers and tanks roll into the half acre wood, making good progress. Those flamethrowers the engineers have sure come in handy when fighting in cover! The German infantry company moves from the woods in the east towards Hill 305 according to the pre made plan, but come under fire by the tanks, also retreating.

Turn 5: The battle for the half acre wood looks bad for the Germans, but they are also causing casualties to the Soviet tanks. The Germans consolidate their position along hills 304-305.

Turn 6 (end): The German forces hang on in the half acre wood, and the Soviets have an unobstructed path to go for the breakthrough, but their morale fails them. Soviets roll their grade during the battle and they came out Green. That means that they roll whether they retreat at 33% casualties, and failed that roll.

The communication between me and the generals was nice and atmospheric during the game, but I cannot be arsed to translate it (If anyone actually reads this far, give me a shout. I think few people read battle reports but rather just skim the pictures). I think with a bigger game there's lots of potential for some double blind action but I need to paint a big bunch of figures for that. As for this game, it was surprisingly entertaining with just the single battalion per side. Sort of a microarmor skirmish game!

WW2 German infantry battalion for Spearhead

Being active on the painting front after some weeks of not picking up a brush! Here are the first infantry units for my microarmor project. They took me two or three evenings to do so they're pretty fast to paint. These represent a German infantry battalion in Spearhead, reinforced with some Paks. They are for the first scenario in the Spearhead rulebook. Next, I'll finish up the Russians for that scenario and I can finally get a game in with these figures!

Microarmor WW2 German trucks

Productive weekend! I finished these trucks I printed, too. My microarmor is based on 30mm squares but I decived to base the trucks on 2x4cm rectangles to achieve the look I wanted. Now when in a road column they look appropriately like an endless queue of trucks heading towards their doom in the eastern front!

Yet more microarmor

Now I have Tigers! And to even the scales, some Soviet armored cars!

A bunch of microarmor stuff

Not much to see but I'll log it here nonetheless. I did a small bunch of WW2 german tanks on my airbrush as well as those village bases from total battle miniatures. I've had difficulty with my airbrush clogging while doing those tank camos but it looks like flow improver does the trick and I should enjoy airbrushing a bit more from now on. Fingers crossed!

Some 6mm tanks for the Eastern Front

Not much to say about these except they're effortless to paint and should yield a nice game at some point.

20mm Soviet tankodesantniki platoon for Chain of Command

I painted these in the spring already but haven't gotten around to taking photos of them. The tank rider platoon is a nice, small project for chain of command and especially in 20mm as there are just a few figures to paint. They can't field three tanks in Chain of Command obviously but the plastic soldier company box includes three and there are even turret variants for each so I decided to paint them all for completeness.

As for playing them, the tank rider platoon is a risky pick in CoC. Up close, they have lots of firepower because of all those SMG's, but they can't shoot anything at a distance (especially if they lack the support points for armored support in the scenario). Their limited numbers also mean that they can't really take a punch so you need to handle them carefully.

I had a hard time finding a good shade for the uniforms. I wanted green so that was no mistake, I just couldn't get the shade to look like the pictures. Well, that's the kind of cloth that was produced when these guys were issued their uniforms and there was plenty of variation!

The plastic soldier company T-34 box has complete variant turrets so you can change between a couple of versions which is really nice! Some trouble getting the tone right with these as well.

I still need to do a couple of low-tier supports for these and later paint a bunch of riflemen so I can field a rifle platoon as well.

SCS Day of Days

A month ago I had the opportunity to participate in my first hex&counter wargame that could be described as a "monster" game. It's MMP's Day of Days, a fresh Standard Combat Series game focusing on the first ten days of the Normandy campaign. The map scale is about 700 meters per hex and the counters represent mostly company-sized forces. Four mapsheets and a ton of cardboard on top!

It's a struggle to present the game in a way that you, my dear readers might enjoy even slightly, so I will only outline the main developments or lack of them per turn. There's a lot to cover even in the main points so I hope the photos make some sense into it. We managed to play the first 9 turns during the weekend in some 22 hours of gameplay including two hours to set up.

Turn 1 + Turn 2 (D-Day begins)

During the first two turns of the game, there isn't much for the players to do other than to roll the dice. Very little choice involved. Big piles of troops are moved ashore and then put back into their plastic bags.

The landing parties at Omaha Beach have to deal with a lot of German strongpoints

US paradrop area and Utah Beach

During the allied paradrops, there was a lot of dispersion for the US forces. The preliminary bombardment went well for the  US, not so much for the British, who did not receive any air support. After the first two landing waves and a ton of dice rolling, Utah beach was clear and Omaha contested. Gold, Juno and Sword were clear also, although there were plenty of strongpoints still close to Sword.

Sword Beach

Juno and Gold

Turn 3

The third landing wave come ashore. The British and especially the Canadians make excellent progress inland, but Sword beach remains bogged down with massive stacks of counters cluttering the area. The British Paratroopers spread out northeast of Caen and take Pegasus Bridge.

Pegasus Bridge was an easy grab, but important. Without this bridge, the British airborne can only trace their supply to their dropzones.

The yanks make good progress inland from Utah. At Omaha the fighting continues, but German strongpoints are surrounded and put out of supply. Pointe Du Hoc mounts a good defence without German losses.

The first German reinforcements arrive swiftly using road movement. Their advance catches some British paras by surprise as they are surrounded.

The German commander plots his moves

Turn 4

The allies get plentiful air support which is put to good use. The more allied forces are landing ashore. Now all the landing areas are clear of Germans save a couple of isolated strongpoints. The allies hit the scattered German defenders hard and the German reinforcements are busy plugging the gaps in their defences. The Germans are also effective in counterattacking some British advance units trying to push as deep inland as possible. A single British tank unit rolls into Caen, but we later found out we had broken an activation rule there. D-Day ends.

I cannot overstate how hard some of these stacks were to handle. Good thing the British spread out from Sword Beach quickly and it was no longer an issue.

Turn 5 (D+1)

Lots of marching about on the British front. You might guess I'm playing the Brits as I have very little time to check on how the Americans are doing. Long lines of battle are forming throughout the map and the Allied advance is slowing down. The Germans defend stubbornly and the British are unable to mount effective assaults. The German players get their long awaited SS troops and finally have some real muscle to put against the Allies.

The US paras get busy

Battlelines are beginning to form near Caen. The SS halt the British advance towards Caen.

Turn 6

The Allies find gaps in the German lines and around flanks and start to pour through. Dangerous bulges in the line are starting to form. Road marches into the rear become a concern for the Germans. The British start to turn the left flank of the German line mid-map in hedgerow country.

A breakthrough of US troops near Omaha, a stalemate elsewhere. Americans are attacking toward Cherbourg. The Allied lack of activations is a hindrance.

Two groups of German units are surrounded and become out of supply.

You can see where the Allied forces are turning the German flank on the middle-to-right side of the picture.

Turn 7: (D+2)

The British continue to turn the German flank, but the Germans deploy a more effective, defensive depth. Fighting north of Caen is a stalemate and the opposing lines become static. Utah front is stable, Carentan is now in reach.

Breakthroughs near Omaha

Turn 8:

              

US forces attack Carentan. The British move in to the countryside in the mid map, blocking several roads. Baeux becomes out of supply Fighting in the mid-map hedgerows is slow, but slight progress made. The allies make dangerous use of road movement to move deep into occupied territory.

The British airborne have been fighting a losing battle against the SS. Now they receive armored support. The Airborne retreat out of contact and the SS receive an artillery pounding. The Tanks move in and break the line. Then they achieve an exploitation breakthrough and wreak havoc on the SS artillery. The Germans scramble to plug the gaping hole so made in the line northeast of Caen.

The Airborne retreat to let the tanks attack the artillery-battered Germans..

The Germans are pushed back and the tanks overrun and exploit..

..to great effect!

Turn 9: (D+3)

The Allied tanks continue their breakthrough northeast of Caen and reach the outskirts of the city.  Mid map, the allies make grand gains by using road movement to capture huge amounts of territory. Some three kampfgruppen are stuck out of supply near Bayeux. Carentan is almost captured, St Lo captured, Villers Bocage captured.

We had to end the game at this point before the German half of the turn, but the result was not in question anymore. The allies had achieved major breakthroughs in the German lines and it was doubtful if the Germans would be able to turn the tide even in a longer game.

The map at game end from left..

..to the center..

..and finally to the right.

Post-battle thoughts:

An exhausting but also rewarding game! We had a good group of players and the whole weekend was enjoyable. I liked the game so much that I went online to buy It Never Snows right away :)

As for the strategy involved, the pressure is on the Germans. The Allies have plenty of troops to just keep hammering away at any weak points they discover even though they can't brute force their way through well defended areas very easily. The Germans, however, are badly outnumbered and have to play their defence smart in order to stay alive. They need to deploy deep and sparse and try not to get swamped. If they try to "hold the line" in one place, they will be hammered by the built-up Allied superiority and lose. There is plenty of bocage to to retreat to however, and the German players have to take advantage of that. Our Germans learnt their lessons and caught on, but it was too late and the campaign was lost. It would be interesting to play this again with the same group and see if the Germans could fare better.

Also, be wary of Road Movement! The German player has to take extra care not to leave any roads open for enemies to march through. The road movement rules allow for simply ridiculous marches into enemy territory and can really ruin your day. I think these rules need an overhaul as the Road Movement rules lead to some pretty unrealistic situations where the Allies can march entire divisions via small country roads into the rear of the German army. This is a minor gripe in a very good game though.