Late War WWII League @ Adler Hobby (1)

Today was the second Saturday session of the late war FOW WWII league at Adler Hobby. I wasn't able to attend the first session due to being out of town. We had a great showing with 9 players playing in two Total War games. Having extra German players I offered to become a turn coat and command an American reconnaissance company lent to me by Gordon. My partner was Scot pushing American infantry. Both of the American forces had two Artillery assets giving us TONS of template fire throughout the game.

The German players had a company of Panther tanks, a company of Panzer IV tanks with AA and engineer support and a core company of three King Tiger tanks. The latter was of great concern to us and garnered most of the attention from our artillery for the majority of the game. Eventually one King Tiger was taken out by artillery, and another was eliminated by some M10 tank hunters with a lucky flank shot. The Panzer IV tanks had good success obliterating both of my recon platoons of M8 armored cars and jeeps, but a reinforcing platoon of three Shermans stabilized the right flank. On the left the Panthers and dug-in American infantry fought to a standstill and in the middle the remaining King Tiger command tank and the Panzer IV CO held the center and repulsed an American assault attempting to re-capture the center objective.

As the game concluded (bottom photos in this section) the Americans eeked out a narrow one point victory, but for all intents and purposes this was a dead-heat draw in my mind. Well played by both sides and good fun to play. It was great to see such a packed table of great models.

On the other table was a fight of American Shermans and British Cromwells facing off against a pair of German Tiger companies. This was a back and forth game with the Germans finally winning a victory, but with many wrecked Tiger tanks littering the right side of their table.

Motorcycle Recon Dismounts

These are two platoons of dismounted motorcycle scouts for my Aufklärungs platoon and my Panzer Scout platoon. The photos in this top section are for the larger Aufklärungs platoon. In addition to being a decent reconnaissance asset for an armor force, the Aufklärungs platoon when dismounted can dig in and provide infantry support to protect an objective or block a choke point in the battlefield. With seven (7) stands in the full platoon it has decent, although not superior staying power. Being completely MG armed even the small-ish platoon can hold its own against enemy infantry assaults.
 

The smaller panzer scout platoon is much more brittle than the larger Aufklärungs platoon, but it can also prove quite valuable when backed up with armor assets such as a platoon of Wirbelwind AA tanks. Together the stands of these two platoons can be combined to form a larger Grenadier platoon. I've refrained from using any tell-tail markings on the figures to allow this use as well. You never know when having a good old infantry unit might be a preferable choice over the motorcycles.

Late War Training Mission

Not quite like the Denzel Washington movie "Training Day", Gordon and I got together yesterday to each try out our late war German forces. Since this was Germany vs. Germany, Flames of War calls it a 'training mission'. I had my Panzerkompanie that I've been working on and Gordon had an Panzerspähkompanie reconnaissance company with swarms and swarms of half tracks and armored cars. As the battle began I smirked at the puny thin-skinned armored cars from the perch high above them in my Panther tanks....

With no fear, Gordon gave my tanks the 'bum rush' and was on me like ugly on an ape right off the bat. I thought, sure I'll just start popping open these tin cans with my 'real' tanks. Then one of his Pumas blew up the first panther. Houston, we have a problem! Gordon contested his objective in my deployment area on Turn two and I was 'feeding in' PANTHERS to keep him from winning the game. Holy crapola Batman. This armored car company he had was serious business.


Over the next 7 or 8 turns we slugged it out with successive incoming waves and constant pressure coming from Gordon's swarm. Gordon was clawing at my soft underbelly and punching me right in the nose at the same time. Eventually he destroyed my entire platoon of Panthers and my rocket launcher battery had 3 of 4 vehicles bailed out. My tiny motorcycle recon unit, sent their cycles to the rear and dug into fox holes immediately and even then were suppressed most of the game. At one point Gordon's Hummel artillery knocked out a second Panther and the remaining one headed for home....the coward. That left me rushing my Wirbelwinds forward to contest the objective to keep from losing the game.

In the end I was just barely able to scrape out a narrow victory thanks to being able to rush Gordon's right flank after catching his 88 battery limbered up. All things considered it was a very close and exciting game. The armored cars gave me more trouble than I expected and almost more than I could handle.

WIP Armoured Rocket Launcher Battery

On the day after Battlefront announces their new boxed set with sexy terrained bases and new models, I've finished up painting the vehicle models for my Armoured Rocket Battery using their single-model blister packs. Although the models are finished, the platoon is still a work in progress (WIP) as I still have to paint up the 20 optional 'extra crew' and mount the crew on a terrained base that these Panzerwerfer 42s can sit on. The extra crews allow each model to count as two when calculating the size of the battery. This will allow these four armoured rocket launchers to use a double width bombardment template.

I chose these as the artillery option for my Panzerkompanie as I felt they kept to the theme of the company better than infantry nebelwerfers or standard LeFh18 10.5 cm artillery pieces. Finishing up the extra crew is in the queue on my painting table behind the dismounts for my Aufklärungs platoon and my Panzer Scout platoon which I've just stated working on simultaneously. If I'm lucky maybe I'll finish them sometime next week.

Tiger I Platoon

This is a platoon of Tiger I H tanks for my late war German Panzerkompanie. The models are from Forged in Battle and come as a platoon pack of the three tanks shown. Provided are three commanders, but I chose to only use one so I can easily identify my platoon commander. I've also used Battlefront decals on the rear of the turret to number each tank to help me identify each tank's tiger Ace skill.

I like the detail of the Forged in Battle models. It's quite crisp and the resin and metal parts had very little flash. There were some air bubbles in the resin parts, but these were very small. I suppose you could fill them, but I didn't bother. Once painted I didn't find them all that visible.

In a Flames of War Panzerkompanie, Tigers can be used in a platoon of 2,3 or 4 models. I'm not sure buying the full platoon of four tanks is cost effective, but I may use three from time to time so I chose to buy the platoon pack and paint all three of the included tanks in the same scheme. For the cammo pattern I used my airbrush and opted for the classic tiger stripe pattern. If I do a second platoon of these sometime I'll do a different cammo pattern to help distinguish the platoons.

Wirbelwind Platoon

This is a platoon of three Wirbelwind Flakpanzer IV tanks that I've painted up as a support platoon for my late war Panzerkompanie. If you look close you'll notice that one of the models is different from the other two. All are Battlefront models. One I purchased many years ago, before the Flames of War rules even existed. The other two I picked up recently as a free prize for participating in the Adler Hobby escalation league.

I've painted these up in a three color late-war cammo scheme and added some Silfor foliage to help unify the look of the two different model types. I'm liking the effect enough that I may use it on some Stug G tanks I'll be painting in the future.

For the foliage I was hoping to achieve a look that was something similar to these photos I found on the Internet.

General Dietrich Von Sauken

General Dietrich Von Sauken is they only hero in Flames of War available to a German Panzerkompanie from the Grey Wolf army book. In our league we're going to be playing at several point totals and it's quite probably that with at least one of those being able to spend a mere 65 points on a hero might just be the thing that makes a list work out. Plus Von Sauken comes in a pretty neat SdKfz 250 halftrack and has some useful advantages.

As a dismounted stand Von Sauken is a higher level command SMG infantry stand. To distinguish him from average run of the mill infantry I've modeled him in a ruined section of house. The terrain piece is sold by Sentinel Miniature Painting Service. The SMG figure,  commander, half track and table are part of the General Rommel blister pack from Battlefront. Since Von Sauken also rides an SdKfz 250 I didn't think Rommel would mind. The radio version of the vehicle just seems 'right' for a general visiting a panzer company. Somehow when I un-packed the blister I lost the top of the antenna array, so I scratch built a replacement from piano wire. I think it came out ok.

This is the last of the vehicles from the last airbrush session. Next up on the table are the dismounts for both of my motorcycle recon platoons. After that I fire up the airbrush and try my hand at doing three-color cammo patterns on actual tanks: Stugs, Wirbelwinds and even a few Tigers. Wish me luck!

Sd.Kfz.9 'Famo' Recovery Halftrack

This is an Sd.Kfz.9 'Famo' recovery halftrack for my late-war German Panzerkompanie. This is a model I've had in my stash for a long time. I originally thought I might use it with my Panzerkampfwagen 35(t) tanks as part of a Czech Panzerkompanie. In the end the Czech tanks ended up not really needing it so it sat about in my dead lead box until now. With my late war Panzers I'm going to very much want to have this additional asset in my headquarters company. For 5 points it's valuable if only to soak up an extra hit now and again. The added benefit of it being able to rescue bogged or broken down tanks is icing on the cake.

The Battlefront model came with a driver, the fuel drums and a removable canvas top. I ditched the top in favor of having the bed exposed showing the fuel drums. I added a few loose crates I had in my bits box, and some extra loose crew riding in the back seat and riding shotgun.

Think a halftrack pulling a tank sounds rediculous? Well think again. This beast was a full 18 Tons and was larger than a Tiger tank. Here's a photo of one doing it's job towing a Panzer IV.

Panzer Scout Platoon

When I decided to swap one of my motorcycle teams out for an SdKfz 2 Kettenkrad in my Aufklärungs platoon I ended up with a spare painted motorcycle. Recently at the Adler Hobby 'bring out your dead lead' day I was able to pick up a cheap blister of Kübelwagens from another gamer's dead lead stash. I added a new blister to that and another from my spares box to make this platoon. I airbrushed these at the same time as the Kettenkrad to save time, but painted the crews later. These three scout squads and command stand use the 'Motorcycle Recon' rules in Flames of War even though they're modeled with the Kübelwagen models. I added the spare motorcycle to one stand to hopefully help remind my opponents that these are motorcycle recon stands.

I probably won't ever want both recon platoons in a 'tournament' single-player army, but with our upcoming Total War league it's quite possible that my German partner may not have any recon and having this second small unit available to help cover the larger battlefield could prove quite valuable. Considering the low points cost for the unit and the small monetary investment I thought the time taken to paint this unit up was quite worth the effort. Sure they're not half as 'cool' ad my Aufklärungs platoon but they're still pretty neat.

Aufklärungs Platoon - Finished

This is my completed Aufklärungs platoon. Three motorcycle scout sections of two bases each, and an officer. I will need to paint up infantry dismount stands for these in the future. The figures are all Battlefront figures. I decided to do some creative modeling with this unit utilizing a SdKfz 2 Kettenkrad towing an ammunition trailer with some troopers riding on top. It's my favorite part of the unit! My thoughts were it wouldn't be completely unreasonable for some enterprising troopers to get a hold of one to use as an improvised recovery vehicle for the platoon.

I've based these with a combination of Scenic Express, Silfor and Gale Force 9 products. I haven't been particularly happy with the basing on my Finnish army, so I decided to try a new process for my Germans. Although I like these stands better, I think there are still some improvements that can be made. Hopefully whatever I come up with can be added to these stands retroactively.

WIP Aufklärungs Platoon (2)

This is another update on my in-progress Aufklärungs Platoon. I've now finished painting up the cycles and crews and I have them all assembled. All that I have left is to base everything up. In the past I haven't been very happy with my European bases, so I'm going to wait to finish these until I can look over the basing kits from Gale Force 9 at the LHS. I'm hoping one of those will help me bring my bases up to a level that's worthy of the figures.

WIP Aufklärungs Platoon

This is a late war Aufklärungs (motorcycle reconnaissance) platoon that will be the first new platoon for my late war German tank company. I don't usually post work-in-progress (WIP) posts, but this platoon has been taking me a lot longer than a normal platoon, and I wanted to post a progress report for some of my friends who have been helping me with historical information about the cycles and uniforms.

The advice I received on the Flames of War forums was to paint the cycles in the same scheme as the majority of the tanks in my tank company, which is how I settled on the primary colors. I painted them on with my airbrush then filled in the details like I normally would on any figures. These will get a black wash after the crews (all 39 of them!) are added. I'm anticipating the wash will bring a lot more of the detail out of the cycles.

Sorry for the shoddy photos, I took these off my dirty workbench using my painting light. I'm five (5) evenings into this project so far. I'm figuring another 2-3 evenings to paint the crews and 1-2 evenings for basing. I was hoping to get these done for this weekend, but at this point I'm less than optimistic that I'll be able to achieve that lofty goal.