Off on Holiday!

My wife and I are off for a long overdue and well needed holiday in our RV motorhome. We'll be starting off in Carslile, PA by attending the Polecat/Soaring Circuits 2K11 Open Soar sailplane contest.

After that we're heading to Hershey, PA, the sweetest town on earth. While there we'll be visiting Hershey Park, Hershey Chocolate World and the Hershey Gardens with their excellent butterfly aviary.

On the way out of PA we'll also be stopping for a day at Dorney Park. Hershey Park and Dorney Park hold some of the country's classic park ride treasures including between the two of them four carousels (my wife's favorite) and two of the few remaining still operating models of the turn of the century classic ride, "The Whip".  Strangely I only know of four copies of the ride currently operating and they're all in Pennsylvania: Hershey Park, Dorney Park, Knobles Park and Kennywood Park. I'm sure there are others that I don't know about.

We'll be back home around the 4th of July. Until then the blog will most likely go dark.

North Africa - Light Armoured Squadron (2)

This is the second combat platoon for my British North Africa light armored squadron. It's a platoon of three Crusader II tanks. These are painted up similarly to my first combat platoon in two-color disruptive pattern.

I decided to go with a full platoon of three Crusader II tanks after reading up on various design methodologies for this army list. Most of the posts on the FOW forums indicate that people like to use this list as a swarming light tank list. The Crusader II tanks with their "Tally Ho!" rule, which allows them to fire at full rate of fire on the move, are the workhorse of this tactic. If I'm going to play the list like the 'pros' do I'll at least have to build it like they do. This platoon is the start of that effort. My other platoon with one Crusader II and two Crusader III tanks is still a good asset with the up-gunned Crusader III tanks able to add some punch to an otherwise featherweight hitter. Eventually I may mix the platoons as one Crusader III and two Crusader II tanks per platoon. We'll see how it goes.


Next up on the painting table is a battery of British 25-lb artillery to go with this company.

North Africa Campaign (1)

Saturday I played a Flames of War game with Eric at Adler hobby as part of our continuing North Africa campaign. I brought my British armour and Eric pushed Gordon's Italian armour company. On paper I thought I was in good position to carry extra armour weight against the lightly armoured Italian tanks. No plan survives contact with the enemy as they say. Once we selected our Firestorm units things turned the other way around. I was given an extra unit comprised of all things, Italian M14/41 tanks. Eric drew a unit of three Shermans IIs.

I underestimated how potent the Shermans would be and committed two platoons of Crusaders to counter them: two Crusader III tanks and four Crusader II tanks. In the middle I placed my HQ and Grants to press the objective against Eric's platoon of Italian tanks. On the left my 'captured' Italian tanks faced off against Eric's tanks.

Things went fairly well for me early with me knocking out Eric's AA trucks. Then I shot my Crusader II tanks against the Shermans. A quick look at the table showed me that to my 2-lb main guns the Shermans might as well be King Tigers. I couldn't penetrate them. My two Crusader III tanks with their 6-lb guns had a better chance, but were quickly knocked out before they could be brought to bear on the captured Sherman tanks in Italian service.

In the middle combined fire from the Grants and some Hurricane air support brought Eric's battery close to the breaking point but they passed morale with a single gun left. Similarly Eric's battered tank platoon on his right held tough long enough for his Shermans to knock out my HQ tanks and all three Grants.

Without a company commander my company was forced to withdraw losing 3-4. This was a close-fought game with Eric's three Firestorm Shermans causing all but one of my company's casualties.

I think my force is going to have similar trouble with Panzer IV and Tiger forces as it did with the Shermans. I think I had best figure out a solution for this challenge or I'm going to be in trouble. Good thing for me I have some 25-Lb artillery on the painting table!

ACW Re-basing Project (2)

This is the final instalment of my 15mm ACW re-basing project. I've now fully converted all of my Fire & Fury lead to Volley & Bayonet basing. The Union figures consist of a dozen artillery bases of various types from smooth bore field guns all the way to siege mortars, a brigade of infantry and a regiment of dismounted cavalry. The latter includes a horse holder on the stand and is mounted as a linear infantry stand representing the less dense formation dismounted cavalry adopted compared to infantry brigades.

Below are the confederates. They're comprised of four artillery stands, three infantry brigades and four dismounted cavalry stands.

This completes another of my goals for 2011. In order to motivate myself to get this one done, I put the box containing the last of the un-based figures on my painting table. Each time I wanted to do a different project I had to move this one out of the way. Eventually I got tired of moving the box each time and got the project finished. Next up is another platoon of British Crusader tanks for my WWII British North Africa armoured force. Maybe when I finish that I'll look into working on finishing up my Seleucid FOG army which was goal #3 on my January list.

British Sherman II

This is a British Sherman II for use in one of my heavy armour platoons. It will be substituted as the command tank with a couple of Grant tanks as the rest of the platoon. I can have whole platoons of Shermans if I like, but honestly I like the Lee's semi-indirect fire rule and multiple guns a lot. Using a single Sherman gives me a little more punch when I have a few extra points to spend.

The cammo scheme is two-color grey over desert sand. I used the grey to simulate scale 'dirty black'. I just can't bring myself to imagine black staying true black in the desert. I found this scheme in the same book that I found my Grant cammo scheme. It looked very striking with the high-contrast stripe on the side of the tank so I thought I'd use it. Since the Shermans were mixed into units as they arrived, having two different cammo schemes within a platoon is fairly historical.

Paint and detailing techniques are the same as I've used on my other British desert tanks. I did leave the ammo tin for the .50 cal in US OD-green under the rationale that they probably wouldn't have re-painted them in dessert sand.

Deacons

There aren't a lot of support options for British tanks in the North Africa campaign. With a horde of tanks you really don't need a lot. This is one platoon I couldn't resist. Although 2lb and 6lb portee AT guns were much more prevalent, I couldn't resist the very 'cool' looking models of the Deacons. These armored 6lb AT guns have more armor on their sides and rear than they do on their front! The photo below on the left is the view my opponents will most likely see during a game.

I mounted the gun mechanism with rare-earth magnets allowing them to pivot and also be removed for storage if desired. For color scheme I had two choices: the very bland desert sand color, or the factory-applied 'Mickey Mouse' cammo scheme. I couldn't find any evidence that the more colorful scheme was used in combat, and it's a terrible pain in the buttocks to paint so I opted for the more plain scheme. Desert rats decals were added to the fenders and rear of the vehicles, again without photographic evidence of their use on the Deacons. Without them the would have looked just too plain.

As for use in game, these hit a lot harder than my 2lb-armed Crusader II tanks but are a lot less armored. They do have the 'tip and run' rule allowing them a short move away from the enemy after firing which might help them conceal themselves. At a similar point value to three Crusader II tanks I'll probably reserve the use of these for 1750 point lists and leave them in the box for 850 point games.

Dominion

Saturday Jerry, Gordon and I played a game of Dominion at Adler Hobby instead of playing Flames of War. I brought the non-collectible card game as a backup game in case we didn't get enough players to play miniatures. As luck would have it we didn't so we played a three player game.

I had only played the game once before, but with that experience and owning the game I was able to struggle through re-learning it myself and teaching Jerry and Gordon. Within a few turns we were all in the swing of things and playing and having fun.

I tried the only strategy I knew, the one I used before which was to choose cards that allowed my deck to draw a lot of times each turn. The theory was cycling through my deck would get me to the coin cards to buy lots of VP cards. Well that was the theory.  Jerry went for a balanced deck design with a little bit of everything except militia, which he had a few more than the rest of us had. Gordon went for a lean and mean deck with nothing but coins and VP cards. In the end this was a winning move with Gordon ending up with 48 victory points while Jerry and I were both in the mid 30s. Good win Gordon....I want a re-match! Fun game and a great alternative when you have an odd number of players.

Dennewitz Lite - Order of Battle

I had a request to share the OB I used for my Dennewitz Lite scenario. If you'd like you can download it here. I'm not sure I'd consider this OB tuned fully yet. The allies need to have their artillery reduced a bit more and at least two of the French cavalry brigades that were removed need to be returned. If this is done I think things will be very close to balanced for a meeting engagement fight.

The only other thing that's slightly un-balancing is the Allies start on the side of the table with the defensible river & stream. This might be mitigated by having the armies fight on the battlefield from east to west instead of north to south. Either that or shift the battlefield a mile to the south so the rivers are just off the table. 

Let me know if you give it a go! I most likely will be giving this another try with the modifications I mentioned.

Dennewitz Lite & Game Day

Saturday our club held it's monthly event. Instead of the usual Friday night, this month we had a day long event with two gaming periods. This was a theme day covering the Wars of France throughout history. With the weather breaking for the first good day of the springtime here in New Hampshire we had fewer attendees than expected, but we still had four great games run and played and everyone seemed to have a good day.

My contribution was a re-play of my previously run Dennewitz game. This version was a what-if scenario using portions of each force using the hypothetical assumption that Napoleon allotted less troops to the push towards Berlin and similarly the allies were able to muster only a portion of their historical defending force. This resulted in similarly sized armies and a game I hoped would complete in under three hours.

Below are the players. On the left, the French, Dave and Ed. On the right are Bob and Kevin. Above the starting positions after each team deployed their forces during the 'night' turn.

During the opening moves the Prusso-Russian force was able to press forward into the town in the middle of the table. This key terrain was part of the scenario victory conditions. The French pressed forward with a solid line of infantry and guns to assault the town, but as the battle progressed the allies brought up more and more reinforcements while relying on the stream on their left to protect their weak flank. During the final turns a large-scale morale break in the French lines was experienced due to their prolonged close proximity of the Allied gun cannister shot, while the Allies remained steady under similar pressure. The Prussian cavalry was able to  capitalize on this morale break and seal the fate for the French. Well played by both sides. I think I will need to adjust the OB even a bit more for a fast game and while doing so further reduce the allied artillery to bring it more in line with what the French have.

Earlier in the day I played in Ed's MASSIVE 6mm Nine Year's War (1698-1697 French vs Anglo-allied army) while several others played in Earl's award winning (at Huzzah!) French & Indian war skirmish game in 28mm.

While my Dennewitz game was being run, Michael ran a medieval castle skirmish game using his own rules, "Have fun storming the castle lads". In the photo are two guests I brought, Gordon (left) and Eric (right). Some may recognize them from my Adler Hobby Thursday night posts.

More photos of the games are available on the Northern Conspiracy's photo gallery page.

Tabletop Thursdays

Last night I stopped by Adler hobby for their 'Tabletop Thursday' game night. I don't usually make the long drive on a work night, but I had some items to give to one of the Thursday regulars so I made the trip. Adam and I tried to play an 850-point North Africa FOW game. I used my British armor, Adam used a German armor force with attached Fallschirmjägers on motorcycles.  I was suspicious of using any scenario other than 'Free for All' with such a low point total, but we gave it a go. We rolled 'Cauldron' . With three platoons in my force two started off board and one started in ambush. That gave me a single platoon and my HQ to protect the center of the board from all sides. Adam had four platoons thanks to some creative kamphgrouping which gave him two platoons on board to start.

In my first turn I failed to get reserves, and with an 88 and a platoon of infantry on board I decided to smoke the 88 with my HQ tanks and assault the infantry. I managed to kill the only stand I could reach in my assault. In Adam's turn he received reinforcements, used the platoon of newly arrived tanks and his HQ to kill my two HQ tanks. Game over. I had nothing that could reach the objectives to contest them after Adam would capture them the next turn. Lesson learned: trying to roll for scenarios for 850 points will give you some unplayable games. Play free for all or pick a scenario both players can agree upon. I don't think either Adam or myself would have picked cauldron with such small forces.

After that I dropped into a game of  Wings of War that was being played. Since the two players were learning the rules they were doing a mission against some observation balloons and some 'Archie'. I rolled in with a Spad XIII to try to spoil their raid. I was able to shoot down one Albatros D.Va before getting gunned down by a Halberstadt CII's tail gunner. I think maybe Wings of War has the tail gunners a bit over powered for my tastes, but still a fun game. Maybe if there is a two seater on each side it will balance things out a bit more.

Meanwhile while we were dog fighting over the trenches of WWI, Adam and Chris were playing another game of FOW. Chris brought his newly painted Matilda company. I took a few photos of Chris' Matildas which were beautifully painted with full Caunter cammo scheme and hand-enscribed tank names using a technical pen. Awesome stuff.