Shameless Plug - Re-Post

The Russian figures I posted about a while ago sold, but the German figures did not sell so I've re-listed them again on Ebay at a steep discount. See them here: http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=320894912458

Thanks for looking!

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.

2nd Punic War FOG Campaign (1)

My friend Mike is running a 2nd Punic War campaign with my friend Charlie as the Carthaginian commander and myself as the Roman commander. We're hoping it will generate a few good Field of Glory tabletop games for a bunch of our FOG-playing friends to join into. The campaign system will use the board game "Hannibal".  Mike had Charlie and I over to his place on Friday to do a dry run with the board game.

I have to admit, initially I was overwhelmed with the game. There's a lot of things going on and the board game seems to have quite a few layers of game play. Initially I charged into Span head first with not one but two fine Roman armies only to see Hanibal with his Spanish allies crush my legions to dust do as much to my own incompetence as it was to the lack of skill of the on-board generals the Romans start the game with. I took a few turns to lick my wounds while Charlie took Sicily and Sardinia from me. Towards the end of the game I clawed back some of the northern Italian provinces while Hannibal stalled in a drawn out siege of the Roman walled city on Sicily.

With one last push I sent Scipio Africanus to where else but Africa! With the help of two Numidian revolts, Scipio was able to take two provinces from Africa and hold them by only destroying one of the two armies available to him. This secured a narrow Roman victory. In all reality in campaign terms it was at the best a Pyrrhic victory with the Romans suffering three entire armies totally wiped out and two others significantly depleted. Hannibal suffered only one army lost and some minor losses during several other engagements.  Charlie out played me throughout the game. During the campaign I will have to do better to give the Roman players a fair chance at the table.

Below are the dice used in the board game. The crazy Carthaginian die is on the left and the Roman die is on the right. Both dice are showing a roll of six on the top face.

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.

Life Gets In the Way

We've had some terrible wind here lately. A couple of strong micro bursts knocked down some huge branches off my trees. I didn't think much until I went out to the back yard to pick them up and saw what the wind did to my roof! Holy CRAPOLA Batman!

Anyways, I'll be dealing with replacing my roof for the next couple of weeks. Hopefully I'll be able to get some painting done when it's dark out.

I guess sometimes life just kicks you right in the Jimmy.

Black Powder Dennewitz @ Adler Hobby

The guys from the Boston Trained Bands ran a test run of their Huzzah! Dennewitz scenario today at Adler Hobby. I was happy to help them test it commanding a French brigade. My infantry took a while to get motivated to close, and in the end didn't contribute much to the French effort other than shooting up one cavalry squadron.

This was a fun game with beautiful figures. It will be run on Sunday at the Huzzah! convention. Don't miss it. Plenty of photos are included below.

Another Shameless Plug

I've decided that I've invested so much time and energy in my Flames of War collection that I've come to the decision that I'm most likely never going to use my Spearhead WWII figures again. Sadly I've decided to sell them on Ebay rather than re-base them for Flames of War. 

I'm listing the collections shown in these two photos in two separate Ebay auctions. The German force can bee seen here. The Russian force can be seen here. Thank you very much for looking.

A.J.

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.