Forward- to the WEST!

It's the Gulags for me...

2011-10-10T12:17:00.002+09:00

The recent games day at the West Tokyo Wargamers saw Brian and I try our hands at another WW2 game using Blitzkrieg Commander II.

Let the recriminations begin: The NKVD were to have a busy day...

Brian has a British army for BKC II, but this time he wanted to try his hand at taking on the Soviets, and I was willing to oblige. So for this game, he arranged to borrow Giovanni's Germans. We decided that the scenario would see the Germans attacking a settlement defended by the Soviets, sometime in late 1943. Germans had 1750 pts, the Soviets just over 1500.

We were joined for this game by Sawamoto-san, a young university student here with an interest in WW2. He had seen our blog and showed up to the club to see what we were all about. He had never played a miniature wargame before (he had some experience with computer games), but he was very willing to give it a go. For a first time player, he did very well, and clearly understood how to use his armoured infantry properly!

Giovanni was generous enough to bring much of his terrain and vehicles for us to use. But he hadn't bought much in the way of infantry, so Brian had little choice but to devise an armour-heavy, elite force which would be tasked with trying to winkle the Popovs out of a defensive position.

I wasn't unduly concerned at this, given the difficulties of nailing infantry in cover in BKC II. The terrain was dense, and not really conducive to armour operations- it would be tough for him to take- and importantly to hold- the ground. While it would be tough for me to deal with all that armour, I felt it could be done with the force at my disposal, which had a good amount of artillery for its size. I was reasonably confident my Russkis would give a good account of themselves.

The table setup- view from the German side

Wrong!!! Unfortunately, just about everything that could go wrong for the Soviets, did! I made some fundamental deployment errors at the beginning, and to make matters worse my die rolling could not be more abysmal. A command blunder resulted in a large part of my force virtually committing suicide. Let's say for now that will be no more room at the Gulag this week, and supplies of cigarettes and blindfolds for the officers involved are running low.

The settlement- lots of good cover for Ivan

The Soviet forces prior to deployment

Lots of infantry!

...supported by a couple of T-70m light tanks

As well as meatier stuff! This is an OT-34 flamethrower tank I made years ago, with an SU-122 behind it.

The Soviets take their positions on the left

...while the Germans enter the field. The Sturmtiger is proxying for a Brummbar.

Soviet armour heads down the road. A decision the Soviet command would later regret...

On the right, the Popovs prepare A/T positions and orders are given.

I've always found the 120mm mortar an extremely useful asset, and this game was no exception.

Major Wretchedski assures the C/O that everything is under control..

Great cover, A/T weapons, mortar support- what could possibly go wrong?

Fascists in the woods!

"Something wicked this way comes..."

Gepanzert troops approach from the opposite flank, armed to the teeth with weaponry, brickwork and other construction materials.

"Maxim Sergeivitch, I really don't like the look of this!"

The halftracks dropped the infantry off in the woods

As a pincer attack is clearly taking shape

"Oh why...

..didn't I think...

...to put the OT-34...

...behind some decent cover?!?"

Stug III's enter the fray

"Where are you, Little Popov?

Brian had clearly been learning the tricks of the BKC II trade since the last time I played with him. and has learned that when you have those 7.5 cm KwK 40 guns at your disposal, you don't need to get close- stand off and hit the enemy from a distance, with as many vehicles as you can bear on the target. And I obliged by stupidly putting my tank in the open.

But despite losing the OT-34 (and with it's 12 attack dice, I really could have kicked myself for not using it more effectively), my situation was by no means a desperate one. The Germans infantry had infiltrated the woods on the left, but could not see the Russians behind cover, who were waiting for the Germans to make the first move so they could open up on them with everything they had.

But then, disaster struck with my first command blunder of the game. And it was a doozy.

The Soviet commander on the left mistakenly ordered his men not just to break cover, but also to charge the nearest enemy to the front. The Soviets were about to recreate the first day of the Somme.

"URRAH!... urk!"

In the process they were pretty much wiped out, a few remaining (and mauled) stands retreating back into cover. Think of that scene at the opening of Enemy at the Gates...

In fact, the next 15 minutes of the game was spent working out the firing for that 80% of the German army who could get a shot in. And few missed! The Fascists rolled fantastically well all game.

As for me, I was rolling high when I wanted low, and vice-versa. Not that it would have made any difference in this situation, and given the volume of firepower I was subject to. Brian was almost embarrassed at the destruction he was doling out, but my agitation was really directed at the dice gods and at my own stupidity, not him!

...and then

...there were none. dakka-dakka-dakka...

An enraged NKVD colonel orders the arrest, interrogation (with extreme prejudice), and liquidation of Major Wretchedski for his failure.

The Germans are quick to capitalize on the Soviet blunder, and assault the remaining platoons in the settlement. An A/T stand fights bravely for a brief time, but is overwhelmed by numbers.

At this point in the battle, discretion is the better part of valour...

The Soviets continue to monotonously fail their command rolls, while the Germans grow weary from the mental effort of having to decide which units to slay next. In all my time playing BKC II, I have never seem myself so completely deserted by the Dice Gods. Usually things balance out over time, but this time Fate was really putting her boot into Popov crotch.

The Devil's last fart in the direction of International Socialism came in the form of another command blunder, this time by the Soviet overall commander. The whole Soviet force, clearly demoralized and disoriented by all the crap coming down their way, pulled back out of their defences exposing themselves again to a blizzard of Krupp steel.

At that point time the sands of time were running out, so the Soviet commander accepted the inevitable and ordered a general retreat. Somewhat academic, as everyone and his pack mule was high-tailing it back to the safety of the Ural mountains anyway.

It will be a dreadful day of reckoning back in Moscow.

It's all over for the Soviet defenders

To the victors, the spoils...

I'd like to say it was fun, and it had it's moments, but in truth I found myself frustrated on numerous occasions. It was quite possibly the very worst defeat I have ever experienced in a wargame. It is easy to blame poor dice rolling (and I will, to an extent!), but there were other factors as well.

One was that I did not use my armour as effectively as I could. Not only the OT-34, but with hindsight I should have placed my A/T gun and/ or the light tanks in the woods where the halftracks infiltrated. I could have hit them coming in, and pulled them back quickly before the inevitable retribution would start heading my way.

Another error was not playing the Soviets to their strengths. The Germans have far more flexibility with their higher CV's, command range of 25cm rather than my 15cm, and in this game at least greater mobility. I would have been better to have concentrated my forces in one half of the settlement where the odds of passing the command rolls would have been higher.

Finally, not that it really mattered the way this game played out, we really need to play with army break points. The Soviets can take a lot of punishment while the Germans really do not like taking too many casualties. In most games this could mean the Germans being more cautious with their assets. Mind you, Brian was being pretty cautious as it was!

But Brian and Sawamoto-san played a very good game, making no mistakes and making sensible use of terrain and of the resources they had. While they were heavy in armour, their force was weak in infantry, and it was infantry that would be needed to assault and turf me out of the settlements. But through my command blunders and my throwing away my armour support, I basically served them the victory; on a platter, with a side order of borscht and washed down with a bottle of strong vodka.

Clearly I lacked sufficient revolutionary zeal, and I would surely be paying the price in days to come.

Oh well, there will be other games, and I'll be having some more friends to help me, too...

Finally, music to listen to while drowning my sorrows in vodka: "Song of the Desantniki"

Reinforcements from the Capitalist West!

2011-08-12T10:27:00.008+09:00

Pride of place to the T-35. Looks impressive, and being made of white metal, it is one heavy model!

I can't believe it has been so long since I posted here, as it's not as if WW2 gaming has been ignored my end. Our group here in Tokyo (The West Tokyo Wargamers) has been involved in many different periods- and recently for me it has been Napoleonics- but WW2 has been a steady favourite, as you can see here.

But as my Soviet collection is more complete than my Napoleonic one, I have been spending more time on building French, Russians and now Prussians rather than churning out T-34's and the like.

However, in July I was back in Vancouver for a spot 'o home leave, where I took the opportunity to pack up and ship my old collection of Soviets that I played with there. These were all built in the eighties and early nineties. I came to Japan originally with the intention of staying for three years. Nineteen years later, and having access to a well-established gaming club, it was time for them to be recommissioned, and to make the voyage westward.

And these are seasoned troops! I played loads and loads of WW2 games in Vancouver back then using a variety of rules.

I was a little concerned if they would survive the journey across the Pacific, as given the cost of postage from Kanuckistan these days, I opted to have them sent by sea mail. Fortunately, damage was very minimal, and nothing that cannot be repaired.

Unfortunately, these do not represent any particular organization. In those days, the German player was spoiled for choice in a a number of ranges of readily-available kits in plastic, resin, and metal. Not so the collector of Soviet vehicles, who really had to hunt around. Getting any Soviet equipment in any quantity then, apart from T-34/85's and KV's. was a real headache (and expensive!).

In the picture, you can see some T-26 variants from the now long-defunct Akheton Models. These were uniformly dreadful, as was my choice of green paint! But in those pre-UM days, beggars couldn't be choosers.

I also built a ISU-152 and IS-2, from a resin producer in California whose name I long forget. The current Fujimi IS-2m is a much, much better kit, as is Pegasus Hobbies' offering for both the IS-2m and the ISU-152. But hey, a bird in the hand...

Now as I mentioned these kits were built a long, long time ago, so I need to cut myself some slack for any inaccuracies. One thing I do regret having done back then is going overboard with the foliage and decals on all the models. I may give some of these kits a new paint job, or at least remove the vegetation! Those T-26's for a start.

The most useful models for my present force are the softskins and transports, not to mention some rather nice artillery pieces, including this pair of 160mm mortars!

One of my favourites was this scratch-built Stalinetz S2 High-Speed Tractor. It looks very reminiscent of a German Raupenschlepper Ost, although I believe the Soviet vehicle was on the scene first.

I took an old Roco 1/87th scale Pz-III. Cut the tracks in the middle and removed a section to shorten them, and cobbled together a cab and flatbed from plastic card and Milliput. The canvas tilt was from, IIRC, a White scout car kit.

I've always been very proud of this one! It's accuracy is suspect, as I was going by a couple of grainy old photos. But it looks okay for the tabletop, and at least it's unique. This will be towing a 76.2mm gun as part of my motorcycle battalion.

I'm also happy with my NKVD staff car, which is a repainted toy car from about 1989 or so (from the Dick Tracy movie, maybe?)

Aside from these painted kits, I also brought back with me some old kits I had lying around- the makings of a pretty good airforce, some more softskins, and even a box of metal figures including a cavalry regiment!

I look forward to these all seeing action in the none-too-distant future!

Eastern Front Railway Station

2010-09-18T20:59:00.005+09:00

I recently came across this resin kit through a post on The Guild wargamer's forum.

A quick check with Hobby Link Japan showed that they had one in in stock, and I finally got around to ordering it today.

This will be ideal addition to the village buildings I already have. It has a spartan, somewhat run-down look about it I like. It should be fun to paint.

All I need is a length of HO/OO track, and it's Tomasovitch the Tank Engine time.

Autumn is here!

2010-09-18T11:49:00.003+09:00

And I am really glad to be saying "sayonara" to the hottest summer I've known since coming to Japan nineteen years ago. Natsu-san, don't let the door hit you on your way out.

In contrast, autumn means cool, dry weather and the opportunity get some painting in. My priority in the coming week (and I'm taking my "summer" (sic) vacation then) is to get some Napoleonics ready for a game next weekend. But then I want to turn again to the Popovs and get some undercoating done. While waiting for the black undercoat to cure properly, I'll brush up on my airbrushing techniques so that I can then "go green" on the first batch.

In other developments:

As you can see from the photo at the top of the page, I received the Aleran decals I ordered from the Michigan Toy Soldier Company. This included some Order of the Red Banner badges for my 12th Heavy Tank Breakthrough Regiment. MTSC didn't have stock of all I needed, so I had to wait three weeks for the backorder to be filled. This was no problem for me, and they were courteous and kept me informed of developments, so I was happy with the service.
I also ordered another six Zvezda T-34/76's from Hannants, so I now have all the T-34/76's I'll ever need. I should be able to field, at some point, an entire tank brigade for 1944 as well as 1943.
Finally, after a long run with a strong yen, the Bank of Japan finally intervened and the yen is losing ground. This is good news from a business point of view even if it means the price of ordering overseas is no longer as cheap as it was. Still, job security trumps cheap models! The good news is that my recent orders went in before the yen fell in value, and what's more, I have now pretty well collected everything I need for the project I set myself, save a few tractors and artillery pieces.

70 years ago today...

2010-09-15T23:35:00.002+09:00

While the Soviet Union slept, the Battle of Britain reached its climax.

Long ago, but made more real for me by family experiences. While my family was basically Royal Navy, my mother is from Sussex, where the threat of invasion was very real. As a young girl living in the countryside, she was never evacuated. She still remembers vividly watching the air battles unfold over her head.

Here's to "The Few". We owe them more than we can ever imagine.

Quantity has a Quality all it's Own.

2010-09-02T15:10:00.004+09:00

Seen here in the form of six Easy Model pre-assembled T-34/76 tanks.

Evidently white camouflage is not so popular with gamers and collectors, as these were being discounted at 450 yen each- about $5.50 Can.- at a large hobby shop here in Japan.

Not the very best models out there- the gun mantlet has been simplified somewhat- but at that price I couldn't go wrong.

They will look just fine once I repaint them, replace some of the heavy plastic handrails on the side, and glue the tracks down to the top of the road wheels.

A fine addition to the RKKA. I was also able to get a slew 'o M4 Shermans for my US collection, as you can see here.

Rising above the Crowd

2010-08-29T12:55:00.010+09:00

Here are some WiP shots of my air support. The Il-2m Sturmovik and the flight stand I've been making for it.

I went to the local craft store which has a wide range of useful goodies, and picked up a Plexiglas disk, some tubing and a length of clear Plexiglas rod. I glued a short length of tubing down to the disk, and the rod just slots into it with no glue required, so it should transport easily.

I then glued a length of the same tubing into the bottom fuselage of the Sturmovik. Short enough to fit inside the model, but long enough so that when placed over the top of the clear plastic rod, the plane will sit firmly on top without fear of being accidentally toppled over.

I glued it in at an angle, so that when the model is placed on top of the stand, it will appear to be diving down, like a mighty socialist falcon, upon the helpless fascist rodents that are to be its prey.

This obviously necessitated some major surgery on the kit, especially the rear seat area of the cockpit. I had to blank off part of the rear cockpit with plastic card, but it should look okay when done. Again, these are meant to be gaming models, not IPMS masterpieces.

To weigh down the stand properly, I will first put some old, broken miniatures under the hammer- literally! The resulting flattened lead lumps will then be epoxied down to the base, which will then be amply covered with epoxy putty and textured.

Note that I gave up on the Airfix Sturmovik. This is an old Polish kit of the aircraft that I picked up years ago, and promptly ignored as it was too crude for words.

However, on looking at pictures of the Il-2m, it was pretty obvious that Airfix had gotten the basic wing plan and fuselage contours -completely- wrong. Although in Airfix's defence, the kit was designed during the height of the Cold War, when any kind of accurate info was extremely scarce.

The Polish kit did much better at capturing the look of the aircraft, so I decided that despite the heavy details, and being moulded from industrial-strength plastic, it would after all be the better bet. The hard plastic was certainly up to being hacked around when it came to adding the length of tubing. The surface details are crude- just raised lines for the most part- but are better than the raised rivets that come with the Airfix kit. And the location slots in the wing roots actually fit the wings!!

Putting the kit together was a bit of an adventure, due to inadequate instructions and an almost total lack of locating holes. This wasn't too much of a drawback as those that were there didn't line up with the pins, or else were too small or large to receive them!

I'll use some parts from the Airfix kit, such as bomb racks, rear machine gun and maybe the pilots. Likewise I'll use the excellent decal sheet from Airfix too- the one that came with the Polish kit being simply dreadful.

I'm much happier with how it is turning out so far, and it certainly looks much more like the Il-2m than did the Airfix kit, which looked as if it was converted from a Fairy Fulmar! A long way to go yet.

*****

Aside from air power, I've also been beavering away at the T-34/76's. I completed another Zvezda kit, and started a couple more UM models (these look good when done, but are a lot less fun to work on, as there are so many fiddly parts- many without locating holes).

In the end I went ahead and added brass wire handles to the turrets. I was surprised to find that this was a lot easier to do than I thought it would be. Certainly the models look better for it.

I've also started on the HQ stand for the 68th Tank Brigade. A UM T-34/76 with the brigade commander. He will be surveying the battlefield with his staff. I think it is going to look really neat when it's done!

Received some more kits this week- transport in the form of Lend-Lease trucks and jeeps! There are also some more surprises on the horizon, and I'll post on these when I get them.

*****

For a few weeks the Soviets will have to take back seat to Napoleonics, as I have a few stands of French that I have to get finished so that we can play our first game at the club at the end of September, although as I can use the Russian buildings as well I will continue to work on those.

But it does means slower progress on the armour for a while, but maybe I need the break from modelling as I find my patience getting thinner these last few days. The summer heat is still oppressive, but hopefully now that September is imminent, the end of the heat wave may finally be in sight. Then I can get out the spray primer and airbrush! I'm anxious to get these guys under a coat of paint.

A Five-Year Plan in Two Months

2010-08-22T13:03:00.010+09:00

Yesterday I managed to commence work on two more T-34's, so at this point I want to remind myself what it is I want to accomplish, and the time frame I am setting myself. Which is really the point of having set up the blog in the first place!

So having set myself the task of building up a mid-war force, here is what is on the table so far. One can almost hear the clank of cranes and conveyor belts, the rat-tat-tat of riveting guns, and the shouts of the foremen. Not to mention the stern warnings of the factory commissars, as they exhort the workers to strive to meet the production quotas set by Comrade Stalin. Or else...

Five T-34's in the front row, two completed, one almost done, and two just starting along the production line. Behind them are four KV-1s heavy tanks, one completed. In their shadow are six BT-light tanks. One has been finished, the others need some more work but are quick to do. Not a priority at this stage, though.

In the background is a BA-7 heavy armoured car, a Gaz truck, and the beginnings of the SU-152 Heavy Assault Gun Regiment.

Some village buildings in the far distance. I really want to get started on these, but I need a large block of free time to work on them, as terrain making is messy stuff.

Look up- way up, and you can see the flying tank. The Il-2m Sturmovik, on a stand I made from a plastic disk and some Plexiglas rods and tubing.

I find I prefer to work on many different models at the same time. This allows me to stay sane by not having to repeating the same model assembly over and over again in one go. It also means that sub-assemblies have the time for cement and putty to dry out thoroughly before I start handling them, as in the meantime I can work on a different vehicle.

Here is the plan. Now, I know from bitter experience that plans have a way of being kicked about like deflated footballs by the evil Gnomes of Circumstance. But failure to plan is planning to fail, as the saying goes.

Plastic model production, in order of priority:

Phase 1:
6x T-34/76' Medium Tanks (one battalion)
4x KV-1s Heavy Tanks (one regiment)
4x BT-7 light tanks (two companies)
1x Il-2m Sturmovik
1x quad AA gun
1x 37mm AA gun
The village!

Phase 2:
4x SU-152 self-propelled assault guns (one regiment)
6x Lend-lease trucks (on their way from Hannants)
2x Lend-lease jeeps (also on their way from Hannants)
1x 76.2mm a/t gun + truck

Apart from the SU-152's, most of the above to make up the motorized rifle battalion of the tank brigade, along with a headquarters unit. I haven't decided yet which vehicles to use for the latter, though.

When done, this will mean that the following units will be ready to take the field:

68th Independent Tank Brigade (1942-43 configuration)
12th Guards Heavy Tank Breakthrough Regiment
1539th SU Regiment

If these can all be done by our next BKC game in middle/late October, I will be a very satisfied man. But I'll settle for getting at least Phase 1 done, with Phase 2 well on it's way by that time.

And of course, I still need to finish off an artillery battalion as well as assorted infantry odd 'n sods, but I should be able to sneak in an hour here and there for painting to break the tedium of being surrounded by liquid cement fumes and plastic shavings.

It's all in the details...

2010-08-21T12:10:00.023+09:00

Despite a busy work schedule- and I do mean busy, fourteen hour working days having been the norm recently- I've been able to unwind a bit by working here and there on the tanks. With the weekend upon me I can now spend an afternoon and evening chugging away at the Soviet armour.

I received the Aber turned aluminum gun barrels within days of getting Cove Model's email reporting them as being dispatched. Here is one of them which I just epoxied on to the KV-1s. They look good, especially the muzzle opening.

In a moment of madness, and inspired by someone's work on a hobby forum, I also thought it would be cool to add some cast turret numbers that were a feature of the KV-1s turret, as you can see here.

I used a new hobby knife to carefully carve off some of the raised part numbers from the UM OT-34 kit sprues, and carefully laid them in place on the turret, settling them in with some liquid cement. This was a lot easier to do than you may think.

They are somewhat over scale, but the effect is good. And it is the effect I'm going after here, rather than trying to create a 100% accurately scaled-down replica.

After painting, I'll lightly dry brush the digits so that they stand out slightly from the turret surface. But no so much as to detract from the unit markings.

And that's the first KV-1s all done, bar the painting. "Only" three more to do, not to mention the three SU-152's that are waiting in the wings.

*****

I was also able to put together another couple of the Zvezda T-34's. Again, I can't stress enough just how impressed I am with this kit. And now that I knew how to assemble those fantastic tracks, the models went together quickly and without any problems.

I decided to take the opportunity to make one of them a commander's vehicle. The Zvezda kit is of the early cast-turret version with the two "Micky Mouse ear" hatches, but I wanted the commander in a later version, with a cupola. Not only would it provide another interesting variation on the T-34 theme within my battalion, but it also has a visibility advantage in the BKC II rules.

Fortunately, the UM OT-34 model- while a real pig to put together with all the myriad of small parts- comes with a lot of options, resulting in plenty of extras for the spare parts box. These include parts for either a flamethrower tank or normal version, rear-box or cylindrical style external fuel containers, and finally a choice of modelling either the earlier turret top, or the later one with cupola. So it was an easy matter to take a spare cupola and add it to the Zvezda kit.

More challenging was modelling the cupola split hatch in open position, but some patient work with a sharp knife did the job easily.

I then added to cupola to a disc of plastic card to give it the required height to fit the Zvezda model, and drilled out holes for brass wire to give the hatches stronger support.

I may well end up adding brass wire handles to the turret sides as well. All that was left was to plop an old Wargames Foundry 20mm tank commander into the hatch and there you have it. Onwards to Victory, Comrades!

*****

The Il-2m Sturmovik has not been forgotten, but there have been many problems encountered along the way, and progress is slow. The story on that will have to wait for a while. Suffice to say for now that armour kits are much easier to work with! But I have succeeded in making a good, strong stand for it, so that I can have it on the battlefield poised menacingly over the Fascist armour ready to do them some GBH. It does involve some major surgery on the model, though. WIP pictures soon, I hope.

*****

Finally, never mind the Party, Comrade Stalin, Exporting the Revolution & International Communism, or the success of the latest Five Year Plan. This was what the Soviet Soldier was really fighting for... *sigh*

"Tarting up" the KV-1s

2010-08-13T18:33:00.016+09:00

Shitty summer here; typhoons, heat, rain, heat and rain, and just plain meteorological filth as far as the weather is concerned.

Airbrushing and spray priming are out of the question for the foreseeable few weeks here, but that hasn't stopped me from working on my Soviets. A bit here, a bit there, but most of all I have been muckin' around with my Pegasus Hobbies KV-1s kits, in particular trying to get one "test model" done.

As I've mentioned earlier, I like these kits a lot, and the KV-1s has long been one of my favourite tanks. So I was determined to do a good job on the four of them that will make up the 12th Heavy Tank Breakthrough Regiment.

Here is the first one done, wanting only for the weather to cooperate (hah!) so that I can give it a black base coat prior to airbrushing. (click on any of the photos to enlarge).

Now this is not about to win any IPMS awards, but I think I've managed to capture the character of the beast a lot more than if I had just built it up straight out of the box.

Looking at pictures of the original vehicle, it was amazing just how "rough-hewn" the armour castings were. Here is an example, and you can see more pictures at this site.

So looking at the models, I decided to modify them.

First I filled in the gaps in the turret assembly and sanded the whole thing down. Then, using two-part epoxy putty, I filled in the gaps between the turret and gun mantlet. I used a needle to texture the putty to get that "rough cut" look.

Using strips of plastic card and rod, I added more substantial side discs and weld seams. For the seams, I soaked the plastic strips in liquid cement, and after about 15 minutes, I took a sharp craft knife and scored in umpteen grooves to get the welded look.

In order to roughen the turret surface, I spread several coats of Gunze-Sangyo's Mr. Surfacer 500 liberally over the turret sides and faces, using old retired paint brushes to texture and stipple the surfaces.

As I got more confident with using it, I was able to vary the consistency of the surfacer with liquid cement. I ended up texturing all the surfaces of the vehicle that would have been cast- or drop-forged, such as armour plate, but not on the pressed-steel components such as track guards and fuel drums.

The surfacer is really versatile stuff, and is just great for getting that unpolished factory finish that was so typical of Soviet mid-war armour.

All things considered, tarting up the turret didn't take all that long.

Purists will note that the weld seams are considerably over scale, but for wargaming models they characterize the look of the KV-1s nicely. Once the tank has been painted dark green and weathered appropriately, they won't stand out so much anyhow.

I also decided to add some more detailing to the tracks. Because of the moulding process, the tread surfaces on the kits are quite smooth and crude. After mulling over whether I really wanted to go through with this- after all, there are three more models to do and some SU-152's as well- I decided to bite the bullet and add chopped up strips of plastic to try and approximate the waffle pattern on the treads where they were visible.

Again, this would not pass muster at an IPMS competition, but I think I did a good job of hinting at the waffle effect. After the liquid cement dried, I gave the tracks a wash of good ol' Mr. Surfacer 500 again.

Once that was done, I epoxied some weights into the hull to give the model some heft, and then glued the lower and upper hulls together. They went together extremely well.

The turret hand rails are just suggested using plastic rod. I was thinking of making them out of brass wire, but in the end decided that it wasn't worth the extra effort, especially as they would easily be prey to clumsy fingers anyway.

Here you can also see what was the biggest pain in the ass to do- the tow cables which were such a feature in photos of Soviet heavy tanks.

I could have ordered some of these as resin and copper wire after-market accessories, but that would have added much to the cost of the models, so I decided against it. Besides, as designed they wouldn't have worked with the way the hooks are modelled on the Pegasus Hobbies kits.

So scratch building it was. I could find the wire easily enough at a local hardware store, and had thin brass wire to make to tow eyes. But it was fiddly, trial-and-error work involving masking tape, lengths of paper clip for hooks, super-glue, epoxy and a mess of cussin'. And it took many a failed attempt before I had a result which I was happy with and which would be sturdy enough to survive the gaming table.

It didn't help that I got impatient and ended up breaking off one of the kit tow hooks, which was a bugger to replace. Now it is placed asymmetrically with the one on the other side, which I will just have to put down to a hasty and inexpert field repair- common enough going by a lot of photos I've seen of Soviet wartime armour.

Note the gun barrel, which is from a UM OT-34 kit and is just there for the photo- it hasn't been cemented in place. I found the barrels on the Pegasus Hobbies kits somewhat anaemic and spindly looking, so I splurged out and ordered some of the Aber turned aluminum gun barrels from Cove Models to replace them. They are on their way as I type. Cove Models is an excellent company to deal with, by the way.

So much for what were meant to be fast-build kits! But having spent so much time on this one vehicle, the others should prove a lot faster to build now that I know what- and what not- to do!

I'm happy with the results so far and look forward to getting the rest done, and to giving them a coat of paint and markings (I've just ordered some decal sets for Soviet armour from Aleran).

Providing the weather sees fit to cooperate, of course...

Going "3D"- the IL-2 Sturmovik

2010-07-25T19:18:00.003+09:00

Fascists beware!!!

While waiting for various components on my heavy tanks to dry out, I decided it was time to look at some air support for the Soviets, started on the Airfix Ilyushin IL-2 Sturmovik kit.

Clearly, Airfix thought the IL in the name stood for "Ill" fitting, and this kit was something of a pig to put together.

All the parts are somewhat heavy, and needed some work with file and sandpaper to make them fit properly, particularly the undercarriage doors. I would have been better of replacing them completely, but instead I used the kit ones and realized that I needed lots of plastic scrap to fill in the gaps. This one will need a fair bit of time with putty and sandpaper.

Still, to be fair the kit is an old and venerable one from Airfix and deserves to be given some allowances for its age. And to tell true I've been enjoying working on my first aircraft model for over twenty years.

The kit comes with a load of bombs, but I'm thinking of adding a pair of underwing 37mm A/T guns, as in the version in the video which I found on YouTube. They shouldn't present any particularly difficulty for scratch building. A little more challenging is how I'm going to make a stand and base that will be solid enough to support the kit over the table, without looking too ungainly and detracting from the tabletop.

Housing boom, and some suburban transportation.

2010-07-19T17:31:00.007+09:00

I've been quite productive recently with making model kits- I've been churning them out at a great pace.

The weather for the next few months here in Tokyo is going to be hot, humid, and generally unpleasant- which means that any spray painting is out of the question. So it's build, build, and build in the summer months and once the weather becomes cooler and drier, then I'll be able to prime, undercoat, and airbrush the lot in batches.

I've put together all the Pegasus Hobbies buildings which I ordered recently. After looking at pictures of Russian villages online, I've cut out some MDF bases and have been planning the layout.

The brown plastic buildings are the ones from Pegasus Hobbies, with a lone Britannia Miniatures resin house in their midst.

The first step will be to plane down the edges of the bases. Once the buildings have been painted, then I will glue them down and texture the bases with acrylic putty and PVA-soaked offcuts of old cloth to make small potato patches and the like. I'll then add fences, the occasional duck pond, water troughs, wagons, wood piles and other such farmyard impedimenta so that the bases will look a lot less spartan than they do in the photos.

Yet to be done are the "commercial" buildings. A railway station and water tower (as at Ponyri), a grain silo, and an administration building for the local Party bigwigs.

Note the BA-6 and T-34/76 prowling the roads for Fascists. The tank is the Zvezda model.

This is really a great model. The best T-34 kit I've built in this scale so far. It went together fairly quickly (after I corrected my initial mistake when constructing the road wheels and suspension- a classic case of "when all else fails, read the instructions, nitwit!").

This is the kit just as it comes, built straight out of the box. The only non-regulation things I did to it were to drill out the gun muzzle and the exhaust pipes in the rear.

The detail is very fine, and the track assembly system is quite ingenious. I was surprised just how easily almost all the parts fitted together. The 76.2mm gun itself is of very simple construction. None of those ill-fitting, multi-part gun housing/ mantlet pieces that seem to be the curse of many T-34/76 kits.

The only parts requiring filling were some mould sinkholes on the gun mantlet cheeks. You can see one side puttied over in the photo. Once it's cured, I'll sand them down and texture the turret with Mr. Surfacer 500 for the rough-cast look.

Curiously, there are no external fuel tanks provided, but I've seen lots of photos of T-34's without them. And it does make for a faster build (two days.)

I was a little apprehensive as to how the delicate tow cables would fit, and whether they would break while removing them from the sprue, but the whole thing went together really smoothly.

This is definitely my T-34 of choice for 20mm gaming.

Betushkas!

2010-07-17T13:46:00.009+09:00

I came home the other day to find my Pegasus Hobbies BT-7's had arrived. Really simple kits- about 12 parts per model! The track links are a little on the thick side, but nothing to detract from the model. The Pegasus kit captures the look of the Betushka perfectly.

Here they are, assembled but not yet glued together. Some filing, filling, and sanding to be done but not much. Six vehicles, which would be a battalion's worth for service in the Far East, or I can use just four and have them do service as the light companies of the 1942/43 tank brigade.

*****

In the background can be seen the KV-1s models I'm working on. I love these kits, and as there are only to be four of them I'm taking the time to "tart 'em up" a bit. Aside from adding plastic strip stock to suggest more track detail, I want to work more on the turret.

The turret castings of the real things were rough. REALLY rough, as you can see if you click on any of the images here. So I will apply liberal coats of Gunze-Sangyo's product Mr. Surfacer 500 to give the cast parts a really porous-looking finish.

I may also replace the barrels with more substantial turned aluminum after-market parts, but that may have to wait a while. I'll also have to add some towing cables, which were such a noticeable part of the KV's equipment.

One of the KV's is of course to be the regimental command tank, so I also "opened" the hatch, and have yet to make the hatch cover itself from plastic card. Unlike other Soviet tanks, the hatch opened sideways, so I will need to chop up some tankisti miniatures so that I can make a commander who would be holding on the the hatch with his left hand while leaning slightly to the right.

*****

Quick update. Received my order of Zvezda's brand new, snap-together T-34/76's from Hannants in the UK. I'm glad I ordered them when I did- they've already sold out!

First impressions are extremely good. For a snap-together kit, this one is really well-detailed! Not really a quick-build, but it should take a lot less time to put together than the UM kits! There are more parts than is the case with the Pegasus Hobbies models, but it has to be said that overall this one is very finely engineered.

I'm looking forward to getting them done- once I get the current crop of models finished! I may put one together just to see how it goes.

Changes in Plan...

2010-07-04T11:57:00.054+09:00

While looking for information on Guards heavy tank regiments, I found this .pdf file from Battlefront on their Flames of War site. Unfortunately, it looks like the 36th Guards Heavies used the Churchill rather than KV-1's, so a change in the force I want to represent is in order. Bugger.

So I diligently scoured all the Internetz, which led me to come across another article, this one on the 12th Guards Heavy Tank Regiment. It served with the 9th Guard Rifle Corps in the offensive launched after the Battle of Kursk. An interesting order of battle, as it had a tank brigade in support as well.

9th Guards Rifle Corps ( 61st Army)

12th, 76th and 77th Guard Rifle Divisions
68th Independent Tank Brigade
12th Guards Heavy Tank Breakthrough Regiment
1539th SU Regiment (with twelve SU-152s)
16th and 17th Artillery Divisions
13th Mortar Brigade
310th and 311th Guards "Mortar" Regiments (twenty-four BM-13 “Katyusha” rocket launchers each).
310th Army Engineer Battalion

Lots of goodies there. Along with the12th Guards Heavies and the 68th Tank Brigade, I'll focus on recreating the 12th Guards Rifle Division, which stayed with the 9th Rifle Corps for the whole war. According to R.G. Poirier and A.Z. Conner in their very useful book The Red Army Order of Battle in the Great Patriotic War, the 12th Guards Rifle Division consisted of the 29th, 32nd, and 37th Guards Rifle Regiments and the 31st Guards Artillery Regiment.

Originally raised as the 258th Rifle Division, it was used to form the 9th Guards Rifle Corps April 1942. It saw fighting around Bolkov, on the Dnieper River, Belorussia and Poland, as well as in Riga and Berlin. It served a number of times as a "breakthrough" division, for major offensives, and was awarded the Order of the Red Banner for its combat service.

For the 68th Independent Tank Brigade, I'll be needing some light tanks. For a number of reasons, I settled on ordering some Pegasus Hobbies BT-7 tanks.

Now these were on the way out by late 1942 let alone 1943, when they really should be replaced by T-60's, T-70's, or even Lend-Lease Stuarts or Valentines. They aren't even in the BKC II stats for a mid-war Soviet army. But there were a number of practical considerations that made me decide to get them;

The Pegasus models are cheap- and easy to put together.
While absolutely Kat food, the BT-7 looks cool, and has always been one of my favourites.
I can also use them in games set against the Japanese, where they were used right up to 1945.

So I ordered three boxes' worth- six vehicles in all. I can assume that in the aftermath of the high losses taken at Kharkov and Rhzev, reinforcements have been sent from the Far East, and that due to supply and/ or administrative reasons the 68th Tank Brigade has not yet the chance to re-equip it's light companies with something more modern. At some time in the future I can get some Valentines or T-70's if I want to set the games later in the war.

Summer is here, the heat is increasing, and I'm off on a teaching intensive for a week. So updates may be slow in coming for July. When I get back from that business trip the pace at work picks up considerably, and I have to get working on some stuff for July's game as well. Blogging may well have to take a back seat for a while.

Tankograd Tokyo

2010-06-27T20:26:00.012+09:00

The 18-y Tankovy Korpus takes shape!

I received my order of Pegasus Hobbies tanks and buildings, and this weekend has seen me busy putting together T-34/76's, KV-1's, and SU-152's, as well as starting work on some terrain pieces for use in our BKC games.

The Pegasus Hobbies models go together well, and once I got used to the rather ingenious design for putting together the torsion bars and road wheels, they proved really simple to put together. These models have a surprising amount of good detail for what are almost snap-together kits, and the fit of parts is generally excellent.

There are very few sink holes and gaps that need filling, which, after working on some older Fujimi kits recently, is something of a relief! Most are on the underside of the models, where they cannot be seen anyway.

The hardest part was adding the armoured rear plate to the hull, which had to line up with the hull top if the whole thing was to fit together smoothly. It was a bit of a tricky fit, but nothing that liberal applications of liquid cement couldn't fix.

Assembling the tracks and running gear took some time for the first model. But once I figured out how they went together, the pace picked up quickly and once I got into mass-production mode I was able to do both tracks on two vehicles in about 30 minutes or even less.

The trick was to do two road wheels at a time, and then snap the tracks to the locating holes in the chassis so that the glue holding each half of the road wheels together would set with the torsion bars in the right position.

In the meantime work on something else, then go back and add the next pair and again line them up. And so on, until the entire assembly finally just snaps into place and the locating pins on the torsion bars can then be glued from inside the chassis. A lot harder to describe than it was to do!

Once this current batch of armour is put together, I will start work on detailing them. While I really like the track assemblies, from the front and rear the tracks look a little plain due to moulding limitations. I'll be adding some plastic rod to suggest a more "waffle-like" tread pattern which was distinctive of KV tanks. I also want to work on texturing the turrets of the KV-1s tanks, and opening the hatch of one of them for the commander.

The lack of any decals provided with the kits is a bit of a drag, but as Pegasus Hobbies includes two tanks per box for a lot less than what other manufactures charge for one, I'm certainly not complaining. Anyway there are a lot of commercial decals available both online and in my spares box.

The four KV-1s tanks will form the 36th Guards Heavy Tank Regiment (I need to order some decals for Guards units).  Those oh-so-sexy SU-152's will make up the 1543rd Self-Propelled Artillery Regiment.

Turning to the UM OT-34/76 kits I got a few weeks ago, I plucked up the courage to try and put together the chassis and running gear of one of them. It went together much easier than I had ever dared to hope.

The wheel assemblies looked alarmingly flimsy at first, but by the time I glued the tracks on- a relatively straight-forward task- the whole unit, once dried, has a lot of strength.

As I mentioned in my last post, you can see I replaced the road wheels with those from an ESCI T-34 kit, with the front and rear wheels coming from a Fujimi model. There was no real appreciable difference in size, and they did the job nicely. Certainly a lot easier to work with than would have been the crappy vinyl tires that came with the original, and being all polystyrene I could use liquid cement which gave the whole track and wheel assembly greater strength.

Finally, I put together the Pegasus buildings. seen here with a resin model from Brittania Miniatures.

I was doing some reading about what Russian villages would have looked like at the time of the GPW, and decided that having them based on strips of MDF as seen here would be both flexible and allow me to create the "look" of a typical Russian steppe village, such as Ponyri. Each base will a number of buildings with small gardens, fences, woodpiles etc. and the bases will be planed down at the edges and textured.

I have a few more buildings which I've ordered yet to come, and at some point in the future will add a church and train station. As befitting any settlement within the Soviet Utopia, there will of course be a need for an administration building as well as a small grain silo to store the collective harvest. The silo will be scratch built, based on of all things an old Airfix Airfield Control Tower kit that Giovanni gave me.

This will be the month of plastic modelling. I want to spray the models with surface primer and then spray on a black undercoat before airbrushing, but with the horrible humidity that we have here now (it's rainy season in Japan), that will have to wait for a while first. Right now it is get the models built, let them dry thoroughly, and in the meantime paint up some infantry until the weather cooperates.

Mixing and matching T-34's

2010-06-19T15:45:00.005+09:00

Since my last post, the Pegasus Hobbies models have been shipped and I'm just waiting for them to get here any time now. In the meantime, I've been doing a dry fit of one of the UM OT-34's.

On the whole I like 'em. They are more complex than the Fujimi T-34's that I have been used to building, but the trade off is of course better detailing- and no flexible plastic tracks.

There are some things about the kits that I am not so crazy about. These are irritating sink holes that need to be filled, and the etched brass panel used for the rear engine deck, which I think is just an unnecessary complication. UM was perfectly capable of moulding a decent engine deck right into the plastic.

The biggest annoyance, though, is the useless vinyl towing cords and especially the tires meant to fit over the road wheels. They are not well detailed at all, and how they are meant to be attached to the styrene tracks beats me. Most importantly, I do not trust the vinyl not to melt the plastic of the wheels over time, and I suspect they will crumble with age anyway.

The solution is simple. Replace the wheels!

First I looked into getting some replacement resin wheels from some specialist after-market parts makers, but at ten Euros for one tank's worth of wheels, that is more than the kit is worth.

Fortunately, I found that I can replace the road wheels with those I have from my vast stock of Fujimi plastic kits and spares, and cannibalize a pair of old Esci T-34's I still have lying around from twenty years ago!

Now the Fujimi T-34's are 1/76th scale models, while the Esci and UM models are I/72, so you think they wouldn't go together. Interestingly, however, the UM T-34 seems to be closer in size to the Fujimi kit than the Esci one, and when I placed the road wheels side-by-side the difference in size was really quite minimal, and a dry fit showed that the Fujimi wheels won't look out of place on the UM kit.

Esci pressed steel road wheel on the left, UM in the middle with the vinyl tire, and a Fujimi T-34/76 1941 road wheel on the right. The Esci and UM wheels are the same size, the Fujimi one seems to be just under 1mm smaller in diameter. Certainly not enough to notice when in place.

Another benefit is that being styrene plastic, I don't have to faff about with instant glues, and can just join the tracks to the wheels using liquid cement.

In terms of scaling in general, it seems like either the Esci kit is oversized, or else the UM T-34 is undersized. Here is the UM upper hull on the left next to one of the old Esci models I have. The Esci kit is considerably wider and longer.

Which one is more accurately scaled doesn't matter much to me. Visual consistency is more important than scale accuracy for wargaming purposes. The fact that the UM model is closer to the Fujimi T-34's is a plus, as then I can field both on the table without any glaringly obvious size differences.

Which also means that the two T-34/76 model 1942's that I had earlier cobbled together by combining Fujimi hulls with some old Esci/Leva turrets won't look out of place either, so I can go ahead and finish them!

Here they are lined up. From top to bottom, the Esci T-34 hull; a Fujimi T-34/85; the UM OT-34 upper hull; in white, the Revell/Matchbox T-34 with Leva resin turret; and at bottom a Fujimi T-34/76 1941 hull fitted with the Esci 1942 hexagonal turret and a Matchbox gun w/mantlet.

The Esci model stands out as being much larger than all the others- it may go with the Armourfast T-34 kits by Hat, but it dwarfs the 1/76 Fujimi models.

The UM 1/72 scale model is a much more comfortable match. A bit longer (3-4mm) and wider (2mm or so) than the Fujimi kits, but kept in separate units (my two conversions are meant to be the tank support company from a recce motorcycle battalion) there should be no problem, and by keeping the front track guards on the smaller models while removing them from their 1/72 brethren, the eye can be fooled into thinking that the difference isn't so pronounced.

I also managed to dig out my old Leva models conversion kit for a PT-34 mine-roller kit, so now I have an engineering vehicle as well!

I've also been looking at some AA for the Soviets so as to reduce Giovanni's Stukas to twisted metal wreckage before they can ride roughshod over my armour. As well as a Gaz truck with a quad Maxim mount, I have that new M16 half-track to provide support to the Tankisti, as well as some spare DhsK 12.5mm AAMG's to mount on some suitable trucks I may have lying around.

For some heavier hate to throw at the fascist airmen, I also have some boxes of the Airfix 40mm Bofors AA gun that will have the shields removed, the trucks replaced with Studebakers, and the crew converted to Russians so as to represent the 37mm AA gun company.

Kurskifying the Kollection...

2010-06-12T15:36:00.012+09:00

The West Tokyo Wargamers played another great BKCII game in May. And even if the Russkis got their butts handed to them by the Germans (who were commanded by an Italian, just to rub it in!), it was a lot of fun and we are all busy working on increasing our armies and working on terrain and buildings.

And there are lot of reinforcements coming my way! The first batch arrived from Hannants in the UK yesterday.

Latest acquisitions. Six OT-34 flamethrower tanks, some AA in the form of an M-16 Half-track, and some aerial artillery- the IL-2m Sturmovik.

The UM OT-34 kit also contains the parts for assembling a standard T-34/76, so unless I decide to go for a full battalion of OT-34's- which, while tempting, I'd never be able to field under the rules- some will probably end up just as gun tanks.

I like the shape of the Chelyabinsk UZTM (ChTZ) turret that this version is modelled with.

My Russian army has been designed for late war battles, but after some thought, I have decided that I want to work on building up forces for mid-war as well. Under BKCII, the T-34/85's are great tanks but expensive in terms of points, and- along with other later war tanks- can tend to dominate the battlefield.

I've a fondness for the mid-war T-34 tanks, especially the T-34/76 later versions with the hexagonal turrets. In fact, when I first started collecting 20mm WW2 Russians over 25 years ago, I wanted to use the models from Esci.

But these were impossible to find in any quantity, so I settled on the Fujimi T-34/85, which could be found everywhere and anywhere. But I've always liked the version that Esci did back then, which with its hexagonal turret and 76mm gun was to me really iconic of the sweeping tank battles over the steppes in 1942-43.

Since then there have been a number of newer kits on the market of the T-34/76. But the biggest issue for me has been scale. Most of my late war vehicles are 1/76, while the mid-war T-34's tend to be 1/72. I don't mind mixing scales too much, especially for trucks, half-tracks and the like.

But the larger the vehicle the more pronounced the difference. This ruled out the Hat Armourfast T-34, as by all accounts the Hat model of the T-34's are not all that great, and are considerably over scale to begin with.

But as I found a great deal on the UM OT-34 flamethrower tank, I decided what the hell, and to take the plunge and just start a mid-war tank force as well.

What tipped me over the edge was that Zvezda are releasing this fast-build kit, which means that the project has become viable. Add to that some great and very useful releases from Pegasus Hobbies, and I'm off to the races, or at least to Ponyri Station.

Edit: After doing a bit of comparison shopping on the Internet, I found some more bargains, so I just put in an order for some more vehicles, this time some heavy stuff.

A battalion (four models) of KV-1s tanks to form a Guards Heavy Tank Breakthrough Regiment. At two vehicles to a box, Pegasus kits represent good value, and the detail is pretty good as well. In particular the characteristic track sag between the running wheels.

And what Soviet force for Kursk would be without it's Zvierboys, or "animal hunters"? Not many models of SU-152's out there, and this is a nice one. Two boxes flying my way.

Finally, I took the opportunity of ordering some Russian farm buildings as well, as we are all working on some terrain features for our games, and these look like being quite the thing.

Next on the shopping list are either some T-70's by Britannia Models in resin, or some Lend-Lease Valentine kits by Italeri.

But that decision will have to wait for next month, when I get paid my annual summer bonus!

Soviets Victorious!

2010-04-29T18:55:00.001+09:00

The West Tokyo Wargamers had another great game of BKC last Sunday, and certainly winning one helps to keep up the motivation to churn out more Russians!

We really are getting to grips with the rules, and a lot of things which seemed to be odd are beginning to make sense as we get experience with the rules (as we thought would be the case!). In particular the suppression rules seem to be making much more sense.

Last game saw the closest we had seen to an infantry-vs-infantry combat, but the time it took to slog across the table meant that the game pretty well came to an end before close combat could commence.

Next time we will start from further on the table, and/or have the armour come in later. That, and start buying trucks and halftracks! another option would be to increase movement and firing ranges, maybe by 1.5 those specified in the rules.

We also decided that we need more terrain- a lot more! Between us, that is going to be the big push for this month on the modelling front.

On to another topic, and when I started basing my 20mm figures on the FoW bases, I textured the bases using Tamiya acrylic putty. For reasons I mentioned in my last post, this wasn't really satisfactory.

But I've found that simply covering the stand with PVA and dipping it into a box of budgie sand is indeed the best way to go. When it dries, it sets rock-hard and I can paint and drybrush it the same way I did when using putty. And it blends in just about perfectly with the other stands I have painted as you can see here.

The machine gunners dragging their Maxim gun forward have had the base textured using sand, and I've now painted it to match the others such as the AT rifle stand on the left. This was the last one I did using putty.

The 120mm mortar in the back, along with a prone MMG and flamethrower stand will be the next to get the treatment.

I don't go for a lot of foliage on my WW2 stands. I want a colour palette that matches the minis. I find that simple is more effective, and as the army grows it really gives it a unique- and unified- look.

April Output...

2010-04-25T11:22:00.003+09:00

...was not that great, as it is the busiest month of the year for me.

While I was able to work on some Napoleonics at the beginning of the month, report writing and preparing for a presentation ate up both time and mental focus.

Still, there is a BKC game today, and Daniel and I will be fielding our Soviets against a Japanese-German unholy alliance!

I did manage to get a Soviet MMG team together, and have made progress on the artillery battery. The 76.2mm guns are almost completely painted save the tires- you can see one of them here. I also finished one crew member. My first plastic minis since my Airfix days; years and years and years ago! It took some getting used to the different "feel" of the brush on the figure, but it painted up extremely well and I am very pleased with it.

The MMG team (from Fantassin-now Warmodelling- plus one by FAA) has been based, but not yet painted. I used to apply Tamiya putty to the base and texture it with a toothpick, but it was laborious, messy, and the fumes ate up by already all-too-quickly diminishing number of brain cells, so I needed to find an alternative.

Once the sand has dried out thoroughly, I'll paint it the same colour as my other bases and see how it turns out.

Italeri Zis-3 and "Servants"!

2010-03-28T17:13:00.007+09:00

After our last BKC game, I've decided to beef up the Soviet infantry, and spent the day working on another battalion of seven stands, some support in the form of a 45mm ATG, another 82mm mortar, and have started work on my artillery battery; what is a Soviet army without it!

I'm going "multi-media" with this army, and the guns are the soft plastic ones by Italeri. I had a laugh at the name on the box, but I have to admit I'm really impressed with the contents. Plastics have evidently come a long way since my Airfix days.

I have two boxes of these, and started on one of them. These were a bargain at two to a box, and are extremely nicely detailed. The soft plastic is of the harder variety, and I found that it takes drilling and even sanding quite well. I drilled out the muzzle openings and the tow rings, and cleaned up the minimal flash quite easily.

The only other thing I did was to add a plastic card "lid" to the ammo box of the "servant" dragging it up to the piece, which looked a lot better. This is really a well-sculpted miniature, and is my favourite in the box.

I have a lot of metal miniatures from just about every manufacturer of 20mm WW2 Russians out there, so I mixed the crew for maximum variety. I added gun crew figures from SHQ, Fantassin (now Warmodelling), Dixon, the old Drew's Militia and even an ammo wagon from Lyzard's Grin with an FAA head attached to a German drivers body and given an epoxy putty rain cape.

These figures range fronm 1/76 to 1/72nd scale. I do find that the SHQ are on the small size, and try not to have them stand too close to their much taller Italeri and Warmodelling comrades, but other than that I find the various miniatures manage to co-exist quite comfortably.

I rummaged through my spares box and came across a load of Skytrex ammo boxes, and put them in the back of the wagon. I also added a Platoon 20 figure standing in the back helping to unload them.

The figures go nicely to making a mini diorama; the guns are nearing the end of their ammunition supply and desperately await more. Meanwhile the battery commander looks on while a junior officer implores the telephone operator to pressure HQ for more ammo!

Once I glue the guns together with Araldite, I'll give all the plastic components a vinegar bath, and then another soaking in detergent. I'll then give them all a coat of watered-down PVA prior to priming. I suspect these models will stand up to handling quite well, as there are no bendy-thin rifle barrels to worry about.

I need to get myself a 122mm howitzer which will give me three sections- a full battalion of artillery for the scale I'm using. I'll probably order two, as with the other Italeri box I have, I can then build two battalions, the full complement for a non-Guards rifle division.

Hello Kitty joins Daniel and Friends- in Pomerania!

2010-03-23T23:07:00.012+09:00

We had another game of Blitzkrieg Commander this past Sunday, and it went a lot smoother than the first.

Since my last post, Giovanni received his copy of the new edition of the rules the week before our second game, and after looking through them I realized that they were different enough in detail so that it would be pointless commenting on what we learned from the first try as the new version would play out quite differently.

For example, differences in troop quality are now accounted for, and there are separate factors when firing at armour and when firing at personnel.

In the event, Sunday's game was a combination of continuing on with the old set's mechanisms, but trying out some of the more obvious changes we could glean from the second. Once we have all had a chance to digest the new rulebook we'll give BKC2 a go as written.

This time it was Germans (Daniel and Sam) pitted against the Russians (myself and Dai). Until game day I had no idea what everyone had available in the way of terrain pieces, so just minutes before the game started I came up with a pretty much slap-dash, ersatz scenario that saw the Germans trying to escape from the Soviet armoured clutches over a bridge to safety.

This they managed to to with flair, despite fielding what was largely a force of conscripts. It didn't help the cause of International Socialism that the Soviets couldn't pass more than one friggin' command roll in a row to save their worthless hides, which made mockery of their planned "hammer and anvil" tactics to squeeze the Germans between a holding force of infantry and a swift flanking movement of a battalion of T-34's.

I tell you, the commissar's nerves were pretty well worn out by the morning after the battle- as was his pistol!

The only real Soviet achievement was when the tardy T-34/85's managed to sneak behind a Hun armoured car and send it to Valhalla with a concentrated 85mm-shell enema. Big deal, as by this time the Germans were busy chopping up some Russkis who had managed to get themselves caught in the open in a potato field.

Otherwise the Germans seemed to be quite enjoying their scenic- and largely undisturbed -stroll to the river.

To add insult to injury, the Russians had a considerable body of infantry safely ensconced behind a brick farmhouse, where they unhurriedly dined on sausage and vodka without feeling at all any need to get off their collective duffs and do something- anything!

Lesson learned; Soviets, with their lower command values than the Germans, need to concentrate forces and to attack quickly and en masse. We shouldn't have split the command as we did. Had both command stands been available within command distance it would have increased our chances; if the HQ failed a vital order, then the C-in-C could have diced to see if he could get the job done. As it turned out, splitting our forces was just inviting the Dice Gods to punish our hubris with dreadful dice rolling. They duly obliged.

As far as forces were concerned, we used the BKG army builder online program for two opposing forces at around 1500 points each. As far as models were concerned, in addition to Giovanni's collection I added a 120mm mortar, another MMG stand and some A/T rifles to the Soviets (the second version actually covers these battlefield wonders!). I was able to get my Tiger 1 at least base-coated to gaming standard as some extra muscle for Giovanni's collection of Germans.

On the aesthetics front; although it did not prove the battle winner (it hardly had the opportunity!), the Tiger always looks impressive. One of the guys at the game was getting rid of some old paints, including Citadel ink washes. Now I've never used Citadel paints before, so when I tried some on my Tiger after the game I liked the effect, so that before I knew it I found myself finishing the Tiger the next day!

Here's what Kitty looks like now. This model from Fujimi was a real joy to build.

I undercoated it using a very good general-purpose acrylic flat black that is available here, and than took a can of Tamiya Dark Yellow and sprayed it on in several thin coats.

After applying a few thin washes of the inks, I painted in the details such as the engine grill recesses with flat black. Next, I wet-brushed the vehicle again with Ceramcoat Light Olive, which is bang on being the exact same shade as the Tamiya dark yellow. This was followed by highlighting edges with Ceramcoat's Parchment. The tracks were given a heavy coat of the Citadel brown ink, and then dry brushed in gunmetal. A bit of chipping and rust streaks here and their and it was done.

I'm quite proud of it, although for this one I decided to leave it in a plain dark yellow paint scheme. Once I get my airbrush out I'll try my hand at some camouflage for the second tank in the pair.

Tales from the Front (Part 3)

2010-03-03T23:34:00.007+09:00

Part 3 of the synopsis of our first BKC game. I said it would be the last, but I lied; there will be one more! This post will look at how the battle went, but I decided to hold off my commentary on the rules themselves as I think they deserve a post of their own.

Suffice to say for now that after re-reading the rulebook, and looking at commentary out there on various Internet fora, I'm quite excited about their potential.

*****

As mentioned in the last post, the Soviets were making a frontal assault with their infantry and four T-34/85's against the lines held by the Japanese infantry with their dug-in Type 97 Shinhoto, another dug-in Ho-Ni SPG, and two piss-pot pathetic Ha-Go light tanks as a mobile lightning reserve. Talk about bringing a dull knife to a gunfight.

We played with using measurements as given in the rules, although in subsequent games I think we will multiply them by 1.5 in order to better suit the 20mm miniatures and 1/76 scale models we use.

The game started with the Soviets making a tentative advance on the Japanese position.

As soon as the Red Tide came in range, the Japanese commenced dishing out nastiness in the form of mortar barrages and the fire of the 75mm gun of the Ho-Ni. This disrupted the Soviets neat attack line somewhat, but evidently wasn't causing too much damage.

General Danielov had some abysmal command rolls early in the game, but at this stage it did not seem to make any difference to game play other than giving the Japanese an extra turn to pop off some mildly annoying suppressive fire. In fact, the first impression was that the rules were written by Bertrand Russell, as they certainly did not appear particularly lethal.

But then yours truly discovered that amazingly (ahem) I had gotten it wrong; not only were the infantry saving on anything but a six- it should have been a six only- but I had forgotten that suppressed units receiving subsequent hits have to fall back. This requires a roll of one dice per hit, and the total being the distance a unit retreats. If that distance is over 10cm, then it's down tools and call it a day for the unit(s) concerned.

Well, this changed things pretty dramatically, and now the Soviet infantry must have felt like the French infantry assaulting Les Chemins des Dames in 1917. Andrew with the Japanese twigged on quickly that using your command opportunities to dump as much high-explosive hate as possible amongst the enemy was a pretty efficient way to take them out. The mortar barrages were amazingly effective against troops in the open, and as the Soviet infantry were fairly compact formations, the barrages were soon merrily turning the Soviet assault into a khaki purée, especially once it got into range of the MMG's.

Verdun on the Amur?

In short order the Soviets lost their mortar, one of their MMG stands, and their flamethrowers. One could almost hear the Japanese shouting "No-mon-han! No-mon-han!" in full-throated vengeance.

The two T-34's who were supporting the attack were clearly not in an agressive mood. Gen. Danielov sized up the situation and decided that they would best serve as mobile artillery. Hence the infantry went to ground, and for the rest of the game the Soviet commander used the tanks to "soften up" the defenders, as they pumped round after round of 85mm high-explosive shell onto the Japanese positions.

Hardly armoured spearhead tactics, but it worked; at one point he required a roll of two or less on two D6 to make his command roll. The lucky stiffski ended up rolling snakes-eyes, meaning that not only did he pass, but he got an extra action as well. This knocked out the mortar, followed a short time later by the Ho-Ni.

Losses the Japanese could not afford, seeing as the next turn was to see the flanking force appear on the Japanese right flank. (NB- We decided that the flank attack would come in on the pass of a command role; otherwise, it would be considered lost).

Peace through Superior Firepower...

At this point luck was beginning to desert the defenders, while the Soviets were beginning to flex their full firepower.

First of all, the Japanese began to come under increasingly more intense tank gun fire from the T-34/85's. This resulted in many a unit finding itself suppressed, and then as more shells rained in these were steadily forced back.

But when you are forced back in a trench, and there is no place to go, you end up being knocked out; so now that the Russkis were concentrating their fire from one enemy stand to another at a go, the Japanese found themselves inexorably losing unit after unit.

To make matters worse, the good fortune they had enjoyed in the earlier part of the game concerning the command rolls was beginning to desert them, so the Soviets were beginning to find themselves gaining the battlefield initiative- and more opportunities to pound the Japanese lines.

Gaping holes begin to appear in the flank of the Japanese position.

Meanwhile, the crews of the Ha-Go light tanks sit uselessly in their vehicles,
knocking back sake and playing Mah-Jong...

And bear in mind that at this point the opposing infantry hadn't even fired a shot at each other, apart from the MMG's.

By this time it was clear that the battle was to end in a Soviet victory; now that the enemy guns and mortars were dealt with the armour could just stand back and knock off stand after stand of enemy troops, and then with their (by now re-organized) troops, just assault the survivors and take the works. The Japanese player wisely did not place a lot of faith on the ability of his two remaining Ha-Go light tanks to turn things around.

All the players had by now learned that the secret of success was to concentrate fire, achieve local superiority, and in doing so grind down the opposition until they crack.

Now of course some mechanisms and tabletop events raised some eyebrows, but given our inexperience with the rules and the simplicity of the scenario, the overall feeling was that the rules made for an good game, with the issue being in doubt until towards late in the game. Certainly it was not the "Walk in Gorky Park" that I expected it might be for the Russians given their armour superiority.

*****

The next- and last- post in the report I will look at the rules in more detail- what worked, what we did wrong (quite a bit as it turned out after a re-read of the rule book), what we were not sure how to handle, and what we would do differently next time.

Tales from the Front (Part 2)

2010-02-28T20:11:00.021+09:00

As this was the first game that any of us had played using Blitzkrieg Commander, I expected that the going would be slow, and that we (mainly "I") could be expected to make many a mistake, misunderstanding, and just wallow in cheerful confusion as we got to grips with the rules.

The rules were a radical departure in concept from those that I was used to using for WW2. So I knew it was going to be a bit of a slog, and that most likely it would end in tears of frustration. I was pleasantly surprised that by the end of the game things were moving quite quickly, even if we had been making mistakes along the way.

There were four of us playing the game; Daniel took command of the Soviets (his first WW2 game in fact), while Andrew and Giovanni ran the Japanese. (Giovanni was also playing in the Renaissance naval game at the same time, so was flitting like a drunken moth between the two tables!). I decided to umpire the game, as while each player had a copy of the quick reference sheets, I was the only one with a copy of the rule book. As multi-tasking and wading through instruction books are not amongst my strong points, I knew I would have enough on my plate just trying to look up relevant rule sections.

This was not a scenario designed to test the tactical skills of a budding Zhukov or a Yamashita, so the players weren't expecting any opportunity to dazzle with a display of tactical brilliance.

It was to be a simple advance by the Soviets against a Japanese force entrenched in a low hill. Forces were dictated by what we had painted, and we didn't worry about points at this stage. We just wanted to test out the rule mechanics rather than worry about how balanced a game it was.

It certainly helped that all involved proved to be really understanding and patient, and all approached the game in the most gentlemanly and cooperative spirit. I really appreciated everybody's attitude on this, and it made for a fun game. As it turned out, it was a pretty close one, too.

This would be based on "assault" scenario as specified by the rules. But again, we were going more with what we had than by what was prescribed. The Soviets being the attackers should have had a 2:1 points advantage, but that would have meant me making up the difference with tanks, and as I didn't want to "out-armour" the Japanese, I went with the lists below. I really do need to paint more Soviet infantry!

The two sides were organized as follows:

Soviets
7 infantry stands
3 SMG stands (desantniki)
2 MMG stands
1 flamethrower stand
1 mortar
4 T-34/85's
1 CO
1 HQ

Japanese
10 infantry stands
1 MMG stand
1 mortar
1 CO
2 Ha-Go light tanks
1 Hi-No SPG
1 Shinhota Type 97 tank
2 MMG's in fixed pillboxes

They were deployed on the table according to this map. Pretty much a WW1-style frontal assault against prepared positions. (Ouch!)

Click on map to enlarge

Daniel had the option of a flank attack, and he opted to have a detached force of two T-34's and their tank riders, along with a HQ command, come in from his left on Turn 3. These were to be directed against the right flank of the Japanese defences. The Japanese team knew these were coming on, but not of course when and from what direction.

The Japanese decided to keep a reserve of two light tanks behind the earthworks, and opted to have their more powerful brethren- the Shinhoto Type 97 and the Ho-Ni SPG- "dug in" as part of the trench works themselves.

This struck me as a little odd, given that their mobility could have caused some tactical headaches for the Ivans. But in the event, this was to prove largely an infantry and artillery duel as even the Russians weren't overly aggressive with their armour.

The Japanese in their trenches.

Eagerly awaiting the onslaught of the Red Horde!

We opted not to go for off-table artillery bombardment, and it was probably just as well for a scenario like this.

The third instalment will see how this all played out, what we learned/ screwed up about the rules, as well as those things we liked and those we were not so sure about. Stay tuned.

Tales from the Front (Part 1)

2010-02-28T13:31:00.008+09:00

Weeks spent making the terrain, basing figures, and working into the wee hours in an effort to assemble and paint the vehicles in time for the game. In fact just generally making an unholy mess both of my sleep patterns and my hobby room. And all this, just for the sake of one afternoon's worth of gaming. Was it worth it?

Absolutely!

Saturday marked the first time the West Tokyo Wargamers were able to hold a meeting at our new home in the local community centre; a great facility and conveniently located next to the train station and a major shopping area. The room we used was big enough to set up two large tables, and we had two games going; a very pretty Renaissance naval game pitting Genoese and Spanish galleys against one another, and of course our WW2 Manchurian game using the first edition of Blitzkrieg Commander.

I was able to get almost everything done that I set out to do in preparation for the game. This included:

1) Finishing the trench works, although in the end I decided to make the pillboxes detachable until I decide if I really want to have them permanently fixed on the board.

2) Finishing the Japanese armour. I quite like the models- a lot in fact. But in the end I settled for just spraying on a couple of coats of Gunze-Sangyo Dark Armour Yellow without bothering to add any camouflage.

This was in part due to time (and sanity!) constraints, but the biggest factor was that I am still unsure of the paint scheme used on late-war Japanese armour in the Manchurian campaign- and on how to apply it.

Most schemes I've come across in my books and online seemed to cover only the Pacific theatre or Burma rather than the Manchurian front. More research needed, and I might use my airbrush for these rather than go mad trying to paint camo on road wheels!

Here they are; the Ha-Go light tanks are rather cute- although basically "road kill" for the T-34's. As it transpires, they didn't end up doing much in the game.

3) Basing up a mortar stand and SMG company for my Soviet tank brigade. I didn't do much on these beyond just sticking them on bases. They still need work, but they met the minimum requirements for the tabletop, i.e. they weren't unpainted!

If I don't say so myself, the terrain and figures looked really good on the table. I had actually been harbouring some doubts concerning whether or not I had overdone the shading and the intensity of the colour palette on my Soviets, especially when seen close up or on top of my painting desk. What with the bold brown shading in the uniforms and faces, and the contrasting colours for the equipment and webbing, were the figures looking too "fussy" for WW2 miniatures?

Come gaming day however, and when seen from a proper distance on the large "canvas" that was the gaming table, I realized they looked just fine. If I had gone for more subtle shading and kept everything khaki, they would not have been "swallowed up" visually by the terrain. No doubt that is what the original uniform colours were meant to do, but wargaming is a visual hobby, so for me some artistic license is desirable to make the figures stand out.

And they just looked right, especially with the occasional red flag!

Giovanni provided the Japanese infantry; Plastic figures from Esci for the most part, with a few old Atlantic figures thrown in. I just contributed the armour and a mortar team from SHQ. He did a great job on the painting, and the basing he used really set them off well. All in all, a very attractive game for WW2, although we could have used more terrain pieces as we shall see!

In my next post I'll be talking about the game itself. Hopefully someone (Daniel?) will send me some better pictures of the game than the ones I was able to take using my cellphone camera.

"D" Minus 5...

2010-02-21T22:57:00.002+09:00

...and are we panicking yet?

A little! A lot of loose ends to tie up, not to mention working on the trench piece. This weekend I was able to get some work done, but not as much as I had hoped as there was a lot of "real life" things I had to get done as well.

However, last week I was pleasantly surprised to have received my last-minute order of Japanese guns and vehicles from SHQ Miniatures. Really fast turnaround time- less than a week since placing the order in fact.

Included were the two Ha-Go light tanks, a field gun, and a mortar which the Japanese should find really handy in the game next week. Very nice models they are, too.

Today I cleaned off the flash and assembled the tanks and gun. The tanks just need to have the gun barrels added and they are done.

I wanted to work on the plastic models too, but time- and energy- conspired against me, so I'll work on them tomorrow evening. If I can get them finished Monday night, I'll give them all a spray undercoat.

From what I've been able to ascertain so far, vehicles for Manchuria will be painted a dark yellow (very similar to German dunkelgelb), painted over with khaki green swaths.

And I still need to touch up some Russians and get the trench works done- I can see Friday night may see the burning of considerable midnight oil.

"D" Minus 13...

2010-02-15T17:47:00.005+09:00

Take a a couple of sheets of newspaper torn into strips, soak them overnight, and in the morning boil them into a mash after adding a pinch of salt -yum. (serious about the salt- it is to get rid of any bacteria that could cause mold).

Add some PVA and wall filler and voila- goop. Bon appetit.

The next step was spreading the gunk liberally around the base of the trench pieces and the rocky outcrops, and to smooth out any joins.

And here it is- looking as if someone has thrown up their porridge over it. Maybe a Scottish rugby fan after watching France hand them their butts in the Six Nations tournament (Gloat? Moi?!?).

This is a large but relatively thin model which will be prone to flexing. There is no way to completely avoid some kind of warping on a piece this size, and in this climate (hot, extremely humid summers). So it seems more realistic to aim at reducing warping rather than worrying about trying to eliminate it altogether.

The white patches are pieces of an old dish cloth soaked in PVA and added to those joins that might be vulnerable to cracking over time as the trenches get moved about a lot. The PVA-soaked towel will give and stretch a bit as it flexes, rather than just cracking under the strain as would a more brittle putty.

I learned through bitter experience that one way to reduce warping is to carve out as much of the main contours as possible directly out of foam board. The papier maché is then used only just to texture the surface, rather than being applied in any great depth. In the photo most of the grey gunk you see is over the plastic trench itself or on carved foam.

Where is comes into contact with the base it is only a few millimetres thick- and it is already drying out nicely. But at some point I need to add glue--soaked towelling to the base, and warping well may be an issue. When I do, I'll weight down the model again to see if that helps to keep warping to a minimum.

"D" Minus 14...

2010-02-13T12:12:00.009+09:00

And a three-day weekend for me means I'm able to work on an number of different tasks for my BKC game on the 27th.

Giovanni has painted the Japanese infantry, and is just awaiting the bases- I need to get them up to him this weekend.

On my end, I hope to finish assembling the Japanese AFV's this weekend. The weather is the pits for spray painting as it is spitting rain, but if the dry weather comes back I'll be giving them a black undercoat prior to an overspray of khaki green.

If all goes to plan (hah!) I hope to achieve the following in the next few days;

finish the lists for the opposing forces and post them here.
work on the SMG company for the Soviet tank brigade. Three stands, very "do-able" as they are already undercoated and just need the details added.
ditto with a stand of combat engineers.
work on the Japanese defences.

The latter is going according to plan. Earlier this week I glued the Kallistra trench sections to a baseboard, and left it a few days to thoroughly dry. Then I added some trench ends and outcrops from pieces of leftover foam from my Collina della Formica project (these trenches will be duel-purpose!) and used bits of the same to fill in the gaps where the trench sections meet.

This will have to wait to dry out again, but on Sunday I will fair in the gaps with acrylic wood putty, and then add my own home-brew papier-mâché "gunk" to the baseboard to texture the whole thing. That should all be done by Monday- I took the day off from work just to do this as it can take a while, and is best done without others looking on and freaking out at the mess it creates!

Then it is a matter of adding the wood to the trench sides, some sandbags to the parapet, and adding a detachable observation post using a plastic kit I have lying around.

I picked up this kit for a pittance at a hobby shop years ago. I'll use it for the observation post and pillbox. Simple to construct, and they should look good.

The kit comes with two rather Germanic-looking pillboxes. I've glued them together and cut out an embrasure on the end of the trench- one will be covering the approach to the front of the trenches, the other will cover the flank.

Later the pillboxes will be blended into the works with putty and rubble, so they should look much more menacing- as well as hiding their rather "Teutonic" heritage so that they will appear more generic, and not look out of place when I use 28mm minis with it.

Although designed for 28mm, the Kallistra trenches certainly work with my based 20mm figures, as this photo shows.

If I can get the texturing out of the way by Monday, I can then work on the details a bit at a time on weeknights. This hopefully means being able to paint the whole thing next weekend- well ahead of schedule for the game.

Having worked on the anthill last year means I have a pretty good idea how much work in involved, and this is a comparatively much simpler project.

If time allows, I'll also work on some barbed wire belts, but I don't want to bite off more than I can chew.

Manchuria, 1945

2010-02-10T22:16:00.003+09:00

A bit of background for our upcoming game...

There are 10 episodes in all. Worth watching, as generally there has been very little coverage of this brief- but breathtakingly successful- campaign.

Given the numbers involved, and the nature of the operations, the butcher's bill on the Soviet side was remarkably low. The distances covered were vast, and the campaign was fought over a surprisingly varied terrain; from desert and mountains to inhospitable marshland. It involved sweeping tank manoeuvres, resupply from the air, urban fighting, attacks on fortifications, and amphibious landings.

In fact it seems to have a lot more wargames potential than would at first be apparent.

Countdown and Progress: "D" Minus 19

2010-02-08T08:34:00.001+09:00

Rolling up the shirtsleeves and getting to work for our game on Feb. 27th. Managed to work on three things over the weekend:

1) Chose scenario from BKC rules, and made up a preliminary force composition list for both sides. Will type it up tonight.

2) Assembled the chassis of the Fujimi Shinhoto and Ho-ni models.

3) Began work on "tarting up" the Kallistra trenches; chopped various offcuts of thin wooden strips to 30mm lengths and started gluing them to the trench sides. Somewhat monotonous work, and lots of these to do, but a little every day should see them done by the end of the week. Then I can then work on building up the parapets and adding sandbags using putty.

Amboshan Hill

2010-02-06T13:55:00.009+09:00

The clock is ticking down to February 27th; on that day the West Tokyo Wargamers have their first games day at the local community centre, and one of the games slated for that day is our first try at Blitzkrieg Commander in an August 1945 scenario set in Manchuria.

The scenario is basically a simple one to try out the rules (the old edition rather than the new revised set, which I don't yet have).

A battalion of Japanese infantry is dug in along a trench line on the Amboshan hills surrounding the city of Hailar, which is a strategic objective of the Soviet forces in the region.

The Forward Detachment of the 36th Army has been sent to reconnoitre the area, to disrupt the Japanese defences and to make sure that the initiative is siezed and held by the RKKA. A battalion of the 220th Independent Tank Brigade, with supporting infantry and other assets, has been tasked with trying to winkle them out.

The Japanese force is basically infantry. They can count on on-board support in the way of a section (1 model) of Shinhota Type 97 tanks and one of Ho-Ni SPG's.

Additional support may consist of two sections of Ha-Go tankettes and some guns and mortars. But this will be subject to the fog of war (and the post office- I just ordered these today from SHQ Miniatures in the UK). If not, then we will just use off-table artillery.

Giovanni and I sat down yesterday and commenced work on painting the Japanese. Plastic figures from Esci and Atlantic which, while they will not be contenders for any painting awards, will do the job.

The more fortunate Russians will have an overwhelming advantage in armour in both numbers and quality, not to mention support weapons, but the Japanese will be entrenched and will benefit from hidden deployment. I've no idea how this will play out in terms of balance of forces, but that is not really the purpose of the game; we want to see how the rules work!

So what needs to be done before the day of battle? A fair amount still!

1) The 1st Battalion of the 220th Tank Brigade is ready to roll, as is most of its infantry. I still need to paint the SMG stands and a 76.2mm ATG, but essentially they are chomping on the bit and ready for action at last.

2) Trenches and terrain- I will be using Kallistra trenches which I bought for some WW1 Italian theatre games intended for 28mm figures, but 20mm miniature stands will fit nicely. I need to add some wooden parapets and sandbags, texture the trench tops and paint them all. Straightforward, if somewhat monotonous (and messy!) work.

Other terrain will be a bunker or two and maybe a building, but as the game is set on a mountain side there is not so much need for buildings, as there is for rocky outcrops.

3) Japanese tanks- I need to build and paint these this coming week. Not difficult models, and they will simply get a coat of khaki drab rather than the more intricate camouflage schemes used in the Pacific.

But whatever colour I paint them, they will look sadly inadequate when placed next to the T-34/85's. The Russian tanks are not only qualitatively light-years ahead of the Japanese vehicles, but operate to a doctrine developed by an army which had just a few months earlier whipped the German Wehrmacht- the previous masters of armoured warfare- and which had learned to beat the Germans at their own game.

I was hoping to field more tanks for the Japanese, but Fujimi has- rather treacherously!- taken them both out of production, so a single Shinhoto and one Ho-Ni is all the Japanese are going to get unless SHQ come through with the tankettes in time for the game!

Not that they will have the Soviet tankers trembling in their boots, mind...

If anyone out there has any of these two kits surplus to requirements, I'd be glad to take them off your hands!

Tanks, a lot!

2010-02-06T12:30:00.000+09:00

My friend Dave Morgan sent me some pictures from a Kursk game he had recently in Sumas, Washington state. 15mm Flames of War figures.

I just love the sight of those massed Russian artillery batteries! Warms the cockles of any oh-so-politically correct, socialist heart...

It looks like it must have been a great game, Dave, and I'd have loved to have been there kicking Major Bundt's pasty white posterior across the steppes.

Ah well, there in spirit!

Forward Detachment- Organization and Point Chart

2009-12-05T17:43:00.009+09:00

A quick post before I'm away on business for a week.

Not much visible progress, but I was able to assemble a bunch of road wheels, work on the engineer's halftrack, sand down some join lines and putty, and most obviously to add the decals to the commanders tanks now that I got that order from HLJ.

I thought I would put up some screen shots I took of my organization and point chart that I'm working on for my Forward Detachment. Points are for Blitzkrieg Commander rules. Click on the charts to enlarge.

First, the Motorcycle Battalion. I have everything I need for this now that I have the BA-6's, and all the models are being built- the battalion as a whole is about 40% done so far.

And here is the chart for the 220th Tank Brigade. This one is really taking shape fast. The only things I still have to get are the Lend-Lease AA halftracks, which I will order soon.

Once I get back and into the hobby groove again, I'll continue work on the models.

When it rains...

2009-12-03T12:13:00.003+09:00

It pours.

Christmas came early. Not for the first time, packages I had ordered weeks apart happened to arrive on the same day! Here is a photo of the loot.

From an online hobby shop in the UK came two boxes of Zis-3 AT guns from Italeri (four guns in total), and a box of two BA-6 armoured cars. Very pleased with these so far.

The guns are very well detailed and are made of a very sturdy soft plastic, considerably harder than the plastic I was used to from old Airfix HO/OO kits in the past. The figures themselves ("servants" as it says on the box art) are in cold weather wear and are very nice indeed. They will make for a great looking vignette of a gun in action.

The BA-6's are actually rather cute looking models, straightforward and perfect for gaming as they are easy to put together and robust, yet with a good amount of detail. I'll be ordering Pegasus Model kits again. Although I somehow doubt that the BA-6 was air-portable, as this close-up of the box art on the Pegasus kit seems to suggest...

From Hobby Link Japan (much closer to home!) I ordered four boxes of Fujimi KV-2 kits- basically just for the excellent decals, which will give me enough turret numbers to outfit my complete tank brigade. But I have a couple of ideas on how I might make use of the actual kits themselves at a later date. These were a steal at 380 yen each, and arrived the day after they were dispatched. Cheaper than it would have been for me to order enough decals from an overseas specialist supplier.

*****

Not much time to work on them this weekend, though- I'm off to teach an intensive Business English course for a group of medical researchers and pharmacists next week at a retreat near Mount Fuji. No opportunity for working on figures or models, and as the pace is pretty demanding, there is not a lot of free time in the evenings.

Still, I usually end up getting in some good reading time, and I welcome a week free from commuting and cats! Being near Fuji-san the view from the seminar room is amazing, as you can see from this photo I took the last time I taught there.

Now I just need to decide what to take with me for reading!

Taking shape...

2009-11-29T20:54:00.000+09:00

The First battalion of the 220th has been "decaled up" and is ready for weathering! In the distance are a lend-lease halftrack and the Brigade Commanders' tank- I ran out of decals for this model, and I'm awaiting some more I ordered yesterday.

I also started on the Brigade Commander- a converted FAA Naval infantry officer. He is wearing black tankers overall and a cap rather than a tankers helmet. Black is a difficult colour to portray convincingly, but I'm happy with the way this guy is turning out. I ended up using Ceramcoat's Dark Night Blue, highlighted with Norsk Blue, and then given a few black washes.

The Long March Begins...

2009-11-26T11:03:00.007+09:00

Patience, Courageous Comrades! The rumble of the tracks can be heard as our Brave Armoured Forces begin their trek from the factories in the Urals, fresh from the labours of the Diligent Soviet Worker!

This has been a very productive week- finished models! The monotony of gluing on the road wheels is paying off, models are either done or nearing completion, and the First Battalion of the 220th Independent Tank Brigade is just one command tank away from being combat-ready. All are itching to teach the Fascists a lesson they won't forget.

Three of the tanks are completely finished. Here's #12. I had fun removing mud guards, adding such things as tarps, extra spare tracks, and other assorted doohickeys typical of WW2 tanks and beloved of modellers.

And here is the whole brigade so far.

The two grey beasties in the background are commanders tanks, one for the battalion and the other is the brigade commanders tank. I spray them with a rough primer that provides a good "key" for the paint, resulting in a finish that gives the turrets that typical rough-cast look.

Behind them can be seen the second battalion in progress- hulls and turrets nearing completion, blemishes and gaps filled with putty and sanded off, and three of them awaiting the addition of road wheels and external fuel tanks. The third battalion will join later, after I work on some infantry. I also want to get working on a Recce motorcycle battalion as well. (I'll most likely be needing a break from T-34's for a while!)

Note the vehicle numbers. I most likely will be playing two rule sets, both Flames of War and Blitzkrieg Commander (there seems to be a lot of interest at our club for the latter). FoW has a one model = one vehicle ratio, while for BKC I want to game at a higher level of representation- one model or stand equals a platoon.

Therefore after some pondering I came up with the following numbering systems. (You can click on each picture to enlarge).

This is the organization for games of BKC, and represents all the tanks of the brigade.

For FoW, the brigade commander's tank becomes a company commanders, I don't use the battalion command tanks, and voila, I have a tank company;

The only hitch is that I need to get a few more KV-2 kits from Fujimi. I don't really need the vehicles themselves, but the kit comes with a great decal sheet with the numbers I need to complete the tank numbering. I did a bit of number crunching, and buying the kits still works out as being cheaper than ordering the decals I need from a specialist supplier.

I can always mount the big KV-2 turrets with their 152mm howitzers on fortifications or river monitors, so nothing will be wasted.

Everyone needs...

2009-11-16T15:01:00.015+09:00

The forces of darkness, evil and despair. If only to provide a target-rich environment for waves of T-34/85's.

So here is the start of Kampfgruppe Kunersdorf.

Click to enlarge- warts 'n all.

While rifling the boxes at the back of my closet, I came across some half-finished kits, including an ESCI Brummbar that was in fact finished, and which I had already given a base coat of Tamiya's German Armour Yellow spray paint. Another was the Opel Blitz HQ truck by Britannia. Just the thing for planning a futile defence, getting yelled at on the phone by the Fuhrer in the privacy of your own bunk, and as a centre for researching cheap one-way tickets to Argentina or Paraguay.

The later war German armour & vehicle camouflage is interesting, colourful, and makes a nice change from Soviet drab green. But it is a sunnuvabitch to paint, especially around the running gear. Next time I undercoat the vehicles in black first, and then spray the top with dark yellow. This should give me natural shadows to save a lot of painting.

I had tried spray painting the reddish-brown on with card templates attached to the truck, but it was difficult to avoid over-spray, and the result was messy and unsatisfying. So I ended up just brush painting the camouflage directly on and blending in highlights, which I think looks just fine.

I used my favorite Ceramcoat acrylics for the highlighting. Interestingly, the Ceramcoat Olive Yellow is a bang-on exact match for the Tamiya Dark Yellow. I also found that Ceramcoat's Georgia Clay (sounds like the name of a boxer or jazz singer, but is in fact a light reddish-rust colour), when highlighted over a dark reddish-brown, gives a really convincing effect which complements the yellow nicely.

The original Esci kit of the Brummbar did not come with a Zimmerit finish, so I had laboriously added it using model putty, a small hobby screwdriver, and the occasional shot of Bourbon for sanity. The final effect looked cool, but I chickened out with the Shurtzen armour, which looked to be a pain to put together.

I'm not so particularly anal about historical markings (these are only Hitlerites, after all), and having misplaced the kit decals I added some from a Fujimi Pz-III kit. These had to be bullied and cajoled into position, using what seemed like a litre of decal softener; I don't know how effective Zimmerit was at repelling magnetic mines, but it does a pretty effective job at resisting decals. I had my wicked way with it in the end, though, and the decals are fitting nice and snugly now.

I also black-lined in panel and door lines with a fine draughting pen, as I find this makes the model stand out more on the tabletop. It also matches the effect I use on the miniatures. The effect is much less garish on my desk than the poorly-lit photo would suggest.

I still have to work on painting the left-hand track of the Brummbar as well as the stowage and wheels of the Blitz. I will use the airbrush to give a light coat of dust to the lower chassis.

I have to admit this has been fun- I haven't painted a German armour kit since I was in high school!

The officer- my first attempt at the Hun- is dressed in pea-pattern trousers and a faded field grey blouse. A Battlefield miniature IIRC.

One of the nice thing about doing the losing side is that by the end of the war all those splendid organization charts were going by the board. A deteriorating supply situation, manpower and fuel shortages, and steady casualties at the hand of Uncle Joe's Great Peoples' Armoured Juggernaut (with some token help from the western Allies), all resulted in formations which by 1945 were increasingly ad-hoc.

Which is good, as so is my collection of Germans! I have everything from Marder II's, Wirbelwinds, the usual Big Cats and Panzer-grenadiers in their halftracks, all the way down to platoons of Volksturm, Hitler Youth and even policemen holding the line depending on the scenario.

Meanwhile, my battalion of Soviet T-34/85's nears the first stage of completion. I applied putty to the gaps and seams, and I drilled out the gun muzzles. I have been laboriously putting the road-wheels together. Tedious, but a less of a pain than trying to assemble the roadwheels for Pz-IV's and Churchills!

Czech war movie; "Tank Brigade"

2009-11-07T19:30:00.001+09:00

Found a rather neat YouTube clip of an old post-war Czechoslovakian movie called "Tank Brigade".

Lots of T-34/85's -which isn't surprising for movies made in Eastern Europe at the time- but also actual Stug. III's and Pz-IV's, which are much more of a rarity.

Now I would imagine that as cinema, the film itself is probably full of the turgid prose typical of its genre, but certainly this is a cool video for any Eastern Front buff.

Enjoy!

Tokyovski Tankograd

2009-11-05T14:31:00.008+09:00

Just a quick update to show the current dust-covered mess that passes for my workbench, with a shot of the vehicles that I have been working on recently.

All are in "staggered" stages of production, as I find that I can maintain my interest in the project that way, and it means that while one hull, turret or vehicle chassis is drying out, I can work on something else in the meantime.

The first row is part of what will be my motorcycle battalion.

On the left is a Skytrex BA-64 armoured car, which I have heavily modified with the batallion commander gazing out while perched on top. This particular casting was quite a mess, and took a lot of work with file and a razorsaw to make it look anywhere near acceptable for the tabletop. Turning out pretty well so far, though.

Alongside the BA-64 is a company (two vehicles) of T-34/76's to provide some "muscle" should the recce battalion get into trouble. These are a mish-mash of kits I've had hanging around. The white blur in the middle is a Matchbox 1942 T-34 with a (now defunct) Leva Models resin rounded ChTZ turret, while next to that is a Fujimi T-34 model 1942 with a scavenged ESCI turret.

The turrets are actually 1/72 scale, while the vehicles themselves are 1/76. The Leva turret in particular is on the small size, so goes well with the Matcbox kit. Even the ESCI turret does not look too far out of scale, and after all these are wargaming models not display replicas.

Behind them can be seen the nucleus of my Tank Brigade. HQ company in front, with a command T-34/85, radio truck and a halftrack (need one more of these). Behind the HQ units are eight more T-34/85's. Each has some variation, with differing patterns of road wheels, damaged or missing mudguards, and various stowage.

I may need to build myself up to ten more, which would still give me a good half dozen kits left over!

This pictures shows a close-up of the T-34/76 with the ESCI turret, and next to that are some Britannia Miniatures tank riders.

After some experimentation, I found that the best way to base the Tankovye Desantniki is to glue them on, of all things, poker chips. These fit nicely on the engine deck of a T-34. I'll glue a piece of felt under the chip base to prevent it sliding around, but it is an unobtrusive and very cheap way to mount the riders, and they look the part.

The models in black have been undercoated using a very reasonably priced- yet very matte- high quality black aerosol undercoat by Creative Colour (which will be my primer of choice from now on).

I am still trying to gather the courage to start airbrushing the models. I have an airbrush I bought some time ago, but the last time I airbrushed a tank was an old 1/35 KV-1 model by Tamiya back in 1977!

I do have a practice model to work on first. An old SU-85 model.

I used it to test out the primer coat, and will use it to practice some airbrush techniques first before starting on the other models. It, too, has served.

"Peredovoye Otryad"- building a Forward Detachment

2009-11-01T12:09:00.008+09:00

"One after another the tanks set off down the glassy road, followed by three hundred trucks. Although it might seem strange, Colonel Esipenko placed the main force, including the heavy tank regiment, not at the head of the column but at the tail. He calculated that the enemy, in the process of retreating under the impact of our army, would appear behind the detachment, and it was there that the greatest danger was to be expected. Concealed under tarpaulins, the Katyushas were travelling in the middle of the column.

It was an imposing sight as the column moved along the road- the trucks filled with troops, the tanks, the guns, and the anti-aircraft pieces."

Bokov, quoted in Red Storm on the Reich by C.Duffy (p. 341)

Bokov is recounting the scene as the Forward Detachment of the Fifth Shock Army, under Colonel Episenko, set off to wreak havoc amongst the crumbling German Wehrmacht on January 19th, 1945.

I have always thought that a Forward Detachment (Peredovoye-Otryad in Russian) offered a lot of scope for gaming possibilities. I was obviously not alone in doing so, as I see that the Flames of War website has also recently provided a PDF file for download on building up one of these formations.

And what's not to like? It was a glamorous and dynamic formation, running ahead of the main armies and probing deep behind an enemy's front line, seeking opportunities to destroy enemy rear concentrations and to seize vital junctions and river crossings. On top of that, it was very much a flexible organization, ranging in size from a few companies to over brigade strength.

And you get lots of kewl stuff! For example, the Forward Detachment of the 5th Shock Army consisted of the 65 or so T-34/85's of the 220th Independent Tank Brigade, the 89th Independent Heavy Tank Regiment with it's sexy IS-2m's, and the 1,006th Rifle Regiment- along with various other assets including the Katyusha's mentioned above. These could include towed and self-propelled artillery, assault guns and a variety of other goodies custom-designed to warm the heart of a Soviet player.

You can also use Spetznatz troops using German equipment- including tanks and halftracks- to infiltrate the enemy lines!

Another example of a Forward Detachment comes from the 36th Army in the attack on Harbin during the 1945 Manchurian campaign. Under the command of Maj. Gen. Burmasov, it consisted of the following;

205th Tank Brigade

152nd Rifle Regiment (from 94th Rifle Div.)

158th Tank Destroyer Battn.

1st Battn, Guards Mortar Regiment

97th Light Artillery Regiment

791 SP Artillery Battn. (SU-76m) (from 94th Rifle Div.)

465th A.A. Artillery Battn.

1st Battn. 176th Mortar Regiment

1st Company, 124th Sapper Battn.

(from D. Glanz, August Storm, which can be found here).

Currently I am writing up my own order of battle for my platoon-based Soviet Forward Detachment, based on a number of suggested lists out there. Once I finishing costing out the points for use with Blitzkrieg Commander, I'll post it here.

In other developments, I received notification that my BA-6's and 76.2mm guns have been shipped, and are now simply at the mercy of the labour situation with the Royal Mail. But on the modelling front, a lot has been happening.

I now have two battalions of my Tank Brigade well under construction (one more to go), and today being dry I had the chance to give the first tank battalion, along with part of the headquarters company, a spray of black undercoat.

Once the paint dries thoroughly, out will come the airbrush and I can start painting the beasts.

Forward! To the...East!(???)

2009-10-25T21:50:00.003+09:00

So it appears!

I managed to twist the (rubber!) arm of Giovanni, my regular opponent- and mainspring of The West Tokyo Wargamers- into giving Blitzkrieg Commander a try, probably in January.

But instead of fighting Germans, we are going to have a bash at a Russian vs. Japanese game set in August 1945 when the once-mighty Japanese Kwangtung army was smashed into oblivion in one of the greatest campaigns of manoeuvre in modern history- what has come to be known as the "August Storm", the Blitzkrieg into Manchuria.

This was an extremely well-planned and executed campaign waged by a finely-honed and battle experienced Red Army, flushed with victory over the once invincible Wehrmacht. Confident in its leadership, equipment and skill, it demolished an army which, while well on the road of decline, was nonetheless one to be reckoned with and which was not known for any tendency to go down without a fierce fight.

It was a campaign stretching over an area as large as Western Europe, and from what I have read, the amazing success of the Soviets may had as much of, if not more of an impact on the decision of the Japanese leadership to surrender than did the dropping by the Americans of the atomic bombs, as devastating and traumatic as they indeed were.

So, it all sounds like a lot of fun for the Japanese player, doesn't it?

Well, as a campaign clearly not, and certainly in many respects it is like Barbarossa 1941 in reverse. Still, there is scope for some good scenarios; the Soviets had to keep to rigid timetables, establish bridgeheads as well as communication and supply lines, and there were lots of opportunities for Japanese forces to hinder the Red Army's advance, seeing that they would be pretty tough to winkle out in defence.

The scenario would have to be designed so that the Japanese have a reasonable chance of meeting whatever victory conditions are set, and we'll probably beef up the Japanese side somewhat with more modern tanks compared to what were historically available, although nothing to match a T-34 much less an IS-2 or, God forbid, an ISU-152.

But it means that we can get a game in, as Giovanni (rather foolishly!) has sent his 20mm Germans back to his brother in Italy, and I am nowhere near critical mass for my own Germans. Giovanni, on the other hand, has a zip-lock bag full of Japanese infantry and I have some Fujimi Type 97 Shinhoto tanks as well as some tank destroyers, so it looks like it is the barren Manchurian plateau for us, at least initially!

More thoughts on forces, scenarios and points for the game in future posts.

Goodies on the way...

2009-10-25T16:34:00.002+09:00

I finally caved in and ordered myself some additions to my Soviets the other day. First time in a long while. This included two boxes of the Italeri Zis-3 76.2mm AT guns ("with servants"- had to laugh at that) as well as box of BA-6 armoured cars from Pegasus Hobbies.

At two guns per box for less than five quid, a box, the Italeri guns look not only to be excellent value, but also are very nice models in their own right despite being soft plastic (but apparently of the harder variety). I'll still need to get some 122mm howitzers, but these boxes will make up the artillery battalions for my Rifle Division. The savings on using plastics will allow me to get some more horse-drawn limbers and carts.

The BA-6 kit will be my first try with models from Pegasus Hobbies. I've read some good things about them. They are designed for wargaming with simple construction, and again are good value for money with two vehicles to a box, which is exactly how many I need! I know that by 1944 the BA-6 had probably been phased out from service, but I will stretch their service life a little and have them outfit one company of my recce motorcycle battalion.

There certainly is a lot of good stuff out there for Red Army aficionados these days, and next on the acquisition list are some ISU-152's, some trucks and tractors for my support weapons, and of all things some DUKW's, of which more in a future post.

Meanwhile I have been busy working on a Soviet tank brigade, and I have been churning out T-34/85's in fine style, along with a couple of T-34/76's designated to make up part of a motorcycle battalion.

What life was like from the inside of a T34/85...

2009-10-15T15:01:00.010+09:00

Noisy, cramped and hellish by the looks of things.

I salute the heroes who actually had to fight in these beasts against the Panthers and Tigers.

A great video!

Big Cats

2009-10-13T11:21:00.013+09:00

While going through my stash of 1/76 scale kits, I took stock of what I have for the Germans. Again, it turns out I've amassed a lot more kits than I had thought!

Fujimi Kits:

2x Pz-III N

6x Pz-IV Ausf. J

1x Panther Pz-VG

5x Tigers (!) (I got two more bundled with the Is-2m's as per my previous post, and now have more than I need!)

11x Sdkfz-251's

1x Sdkfz-250

2x Sturmgeschutz III

Matchbox:

2x Wespe SP guns

Esci:

1x Hummel SP gun

1x Wirbelwind SPAA

Hasegawa:

Trucks, trucks, trucks...

This box contains the German air support in the shape of a Stuka and Henschel ground attack aircraft, some assorted extras and of course Tigers, Panthers, and other Big Cats...

"I want to be a Pz-V when I grow up"

Anyway, I have enough kits to build up a very respectable Panzer force for the Wehrmacht. Either that, or I can open my own hobby shop.

Re-programming...

2009-10-11T13:29:00.024+09:00

Well, my excursion into 15mm didn't last long! Some reasons for this.

First of all, I didn't really enjoy painting the smaller scale- partly my ageing eyes, but also just because I found them to be both more fiddly and much less satisfying when painted and placed on the tabletop (the two-foot rule) than are their larger brethren.

Another reason was that when I sat down with a calculator, it became evident that the cost of building up a collection from scratch in 15mm was simply going to be a lot more than I originally estimated, especially seeing as I already have a lot of models and miniatures already in 20mm.

And I mean a lot! The re-think started a few months ago as I was nosing around a flea market here in Tokyo and stumbled across two brand-new boxes of these;

I couldn't resist picking them up, as they were a steal at only 600 yen each, and with each kit containing a 1/76 Tiger and IS-2m. That's 300 yen per vehicle, cheap by any standard! And they are indeed beautiful models.

Recently I met a fellow gamer from Italy, who is like me a long-term resident here in Tokyo. We were discussing possible gaming projects in the future and one of them was WWII. So when I got home I decided to dig out all the kits I had- and found myself astounded at just how many models I have picked up over the last seventeen years or so!

These are what I have just for the Russians.

Not counting these on the workbench;

Fujimi's T-34/85 mould is getting "long in the tooth" and like any kit of its vintage, it has its frustrations and gaps which need filling, not to mention the soft rubber tracks ( I'm one of those madmen who prefers putting together separate link sections in hard styrene, as with the IS-2m kit).

Nevertheless, the T34/85 is on the whole pretty simple to knock together and I find it very much looks the part when finished. I am as much a modeller as I am a gamer and painter, so I have a lot of fun cutting off fenders, adding battle scars and stowage and opening hatches etc. so as to give each vehicle an individual look.

Three are pretty much near completion, and I was able to put the hull and turret of another one together in an hour. While I'm waiting for the glue and/ or putty on one model to dry, I can work on another so that progress is actually pretty swift.

Note the commander in his BA-64 in the back. I've done a lot of conversion on this model too, but the Skytrex white metal castings can be rough and it took a lot more time, effort and bad language to get it presentable than did the Fujimi kits!

Haven't decided on markings yet; I will probably order a few sheets from Aleran who do a good range of 1/76 decals, including vehicle slogans and turret numbers for the Russians.

Power in my palm! Completed model ready for priming and painting.

I have around 24 T-34/85's in total. 21 is enough for either a tank battalion if using Flames of War, or for two entire tank brigades (twelve models each) if I use the Command Decision/ Spearhead organization (which I'm thinking of adopting for Blitzkrieg Commander). In 20mm, these should make for a very impressive looking force.

Also in the picture are five Fujimi IS-2m's, which will make make up either a heavy tank company or regiment, depending on the rules. You can also see some lend-lease half tracks and a few SU-85's which I will convert into recovery vehicles.

For the Germans I must have at least a score more, including half a dozen Pz-IV's and eight Sdkfz-251 half tracks. One nice thing about living here in Japan; access to all the available kits, and at a reasonable price once I know where to look.

And all this does not include the models I have in metal! I have loads of Russian infantry, heavy weapons, mortars and command figures. The only thing I need for the Soviets are some rocket launchers and heavier guns, but as these are factored in off-table in many rules, it is really just for the sake of completeness. Such models are not cheap, but again it would cost me a lot more to start over again in 15mm.

For the Germans, I may need to get some more infantry but as I put fewer models on a base (as each infantryman was armed to the teeth when compared to his Russian opponent), there are not a lot I need.

So basically, I realized that despite the attractions of the scale, it would be rash for me to start all over again in 15's. In fact, I've actually got more than I need of some models in 1/76, but I'll probably eBay any extras along with what few 15's I have.

Almost one year to the day...

2009-03-07T13:58:00.019+09:00

...that I posted on this blog! Like a lot of wargamers I float from one project to another with a moth-like lack of discipline, but I usually come back to WW2 and the Great Patriotic War sooner or later.

The big news it that I've got my first batch of 15mm Flames of War miniatures.

Foolish, seeing that I have a lot invested in 20mm? Possibly, but there are some factors at work here which are making me consider an alternate scale.

a) First of all, storage and table space. 15mm models take up a lot less room than their 20mm brethren. This has really become an issue for me, as my table space is really limited, at most 6' by 4'.

b) Secondly, potential convenience. Some people out there seem to loath the Battlefront/ FoW business model, but the truth is it can be a real hassle trying to gather a collection of miniatures together from a number of disparate manufacturers.

Not all are of consistent quality or offer anything like the completeness of the range that Battlefront offers. Battlefront do just about everything a gamer needs, are readily available from any number of sources, and the chances even in Japan of finding opponents who have their own armies ready and based for FoW is much more likely than in other scales.

c) Thirdly, cost performance. I have a lot of 20mm infantry and the major tanks but not enough artillery and other support vehicles. The major vehicles are pretty well generally available in plastic at reasonable prices for their size, but the more obscure stuff is only available in resin or metal. And the price can be hefty, especially if like me someone wants to get in some artillery batteries and tractors.

The postage on the heavier metal models can also add up, especially when sent to Japan from the UK. Add to that the time it takes to put some of these models together (and in some cases to remedy sometimes major casting defects. poor fit of parts, or assembling seemingly endless road wheel or track units), and the simplicity of models in the smaller 15mm scale can start looking really attractive.

d) Last but by no means least, a very important consideration at the present time is the extremely favourable exchange rate for me vis-a-vis the NZ dollar and the Japanese yen, which with all the above helps to make a very strong case for taking the Battlefront route.

So I'll give these a shot. I now have a company of Russki infantry with a Katyusha battery to put together. I can use these just as easily with either the FoW rules or with the Blitzkrieg Commander set. The caveat is whether I will enjoy working on the smaller scales. If I like working on these models, and they turn out well, I may well find myself taking the 15mm route. If not, well, I've a lot of 20mm stuff I can return to and I'd probably have no problem finding a new owner for these in Washington state, I'm sure!

I've also gone and ordered myself one of these, as I love the smell of 76.2mm gunpowder in the morning. Overkill given the number of infantry I have, but again I can always flog the painted minis off on eBay at a profit if I want to.

For the Motherland!

For Dave...

2009-03-07T00:19:00.001+09:00

Mail Call!

2008-03-10T15:14:00.007+09:00

And it looks good! I've only had time for a cursory look over the rules, but there is a LOT of material here! I particularly like the illustrated examples of game play- the kind of useful eye candy I like to see in set of rules.

Full report later. Now it's time to curl up with a bottle or two of vodka, listen to Katyusha on the radio, and digest the "field regulations" while the engine of my T-34 warms up outside...

Everyone loves a Parade...

2008-03-09T09:02:00.012+09:00

...Unless you're from west of the River Oder.

I found this clip on YouTube- highlights of the The Russian Victory Parade in 1945. I find it particularly good for shots of the tractors and artillery.

And of course, at 3:07 it features everybody's fave of fave's, that mighty (if somewhat Freudian) symbol of the Soviet armoured fist, the ISU-152!

Oh, and I'm still waiting for my copy of Blitzkrieg Commander- it should be here by the end of next week. Can't wait!

Rules of Engagement...

2008-03-06T10:35:00.021+09:00

"No mercy to cowards, traitors, rule-lawyers and tread-heads!"

Continuing on my last discussion on rules for Eastern Front games. Not in-depth reviews, just a general guide to my thinking.

As time went by, I realized that I wanted to fight over a larger area than just a few buildings in a village, as had been the case in most of my WW2 gaming in previous years. Basically, I wanted the following:

Speed of Play: clean and quick combat resolution was important. No 1970's style games where more time was spent on calculating hit penetration factors on sloped armour than on determining combat outcomes. Of course I wanted tanks, but I wanted a game where infantry played a central role and where I was making combat decisions, not working out physics algorithms. I have always hated math anyway.

Lots of Pretty Toys: This is why I like wargaming! I know that ranges are huge, and artillery- even mortars- should probably be off-board given ground scale of most rules, but this gamer WANTS to field artillery! Likewise, this is why 6mm and 10mm don't really appeal to me. at that size olive drab is olive drab is olive drab.

(15mm is as low as I'll go, and I confess that I am thinking of going 15mm for my 1942 games as getting a whole force- including infantry- may well work out cheaper than getting 20mm resin or metal BA-7's T-28's and T-26's in the numbers I need! But I digress.)

Company Level Games (or higher): Ideally a basing system that would give me some flexibility here. Subjective call, but I want to be able to have enough manoeuvre units to attack, change direction, retreat and regroup if necessary, and to give a "feel" for the ebb-and-flow of battle.

THE SHORT LIST:

1) Frank Chadwick's Command Decision 1; I had picked up this game back in the lat 1980's (1st edition with what looks like a picture of Robert Culp on the cover), and it seemed to be a real departure from previous "rivet-counter" rules like Tractics (yechh...). I liked the level of play, and Barbarossa 25, the campaign supplement on opening campaign of the Eastern Front, really caught my imagination. I found the representation of the number of infantry too low for my liking, though, (give me HORDES!) and when GDW went out of business I realized that I would have to look elsewhere to find a rule set that would be supported adequately.

Since that time I believe CD II is available again, but the window of opportunity was lost. Anyway, I never really liked CDII.

2) Grey Storm- Red Steel by Barry Lovell (Firebase Games) was another choice. Now this is one impressive set of rules! It was designed so that 1 miniature = 1 vehicle or man, so that it would require a LOT of miniatures! Unfortunately, I felt that the rules weren't laid out all that well and trying to find relevant rule sections quickly was not easy. Nevertheless, being specifically for the Eastern Front this is one of the most well-researched rules out there, and makes fascinating and required reading for anyone interested in the period. Loads of useful information which explains the doctrines, differences, strengths and weaknesses of both the German and Soviet army- covering factors such as communications, weather, and even ergonomics of differing tank designs.

Unfortunately it is now long out of production, but if you ever come across a copy, pick it up for the reference value alone. I'll never part with my copy!

3) Spearhead by Arty Conliffe is an interesting set that meets many of my requirements, with good organization charts, and some interesting rules mechanisms. I may try it from time to time. My main objection- quibble, really- is just with the rulebook itself. Unpainted tanks! Unacceptable to a lover of eye-candy such as myself.

It's odd, but for some reason, Spearhead just doesn't seem to get the juices flowing, despite my liking the "Shako" Napoleonic rules by the same author. There is a kind of "factor X" in what makes me want to try a rule set; this one doesn't have it. Perhaps it's not just me- Spearhead certainly doesn't seem to have made much of a splash in the gaming community. I may give them a go from time to time, though, as they are pretty free and loose on basing sizes, and the set is not without merit.

4)If you call yourself a wargamer, you must have been living in a cave not to have heard of Flames of War. This set of rules from New Zealand must have made one of the biggest impacts on the whole wargaming scene in the past five years or so, and Battlefront have set the bar so much higher as far as production values, marketing and professionalism. The rules- and indeed the whole concept- has its detractors, but what other company has done so much for raising the profile not just of WW2 gaming, but historical wargaming as a whole? It is a well-supported set of rules, with a great website support and you are more likely to be able to find someone who knows the rules and has a force to play with using FoW than for any other WW2 rules out there.

I'll say right now I basically like these rules. Tournament mentality doesn't worry me as I am simply not interested in playing tournaments, so there. My love of history comes from organizing and painting forces for the wargames table. I am willing to take liberties with history on the gaming table as I am not a soldier and fall happily somewhere around the middle of the simulation/ game continuum.

But, the rules are spread out over a number of books that I am not about to buy, and I am not so crazy about some of the mechanisms, but I can live with them and there are always house rules! The problem is the level of representation- like Grey Storm-Red Steel 1 miniature seems to equal 1 vehicle or man (and woman in the case of one Soviet tank commander!), so a Russian force can cost a fair whack.

I can't help but feel that a steady diet of FoW- and FoW- alone for my WW2 fix will bore me. But it is a game that I will be happy to return to from time to time, so it gets a green light from me.

So, that leaves my latest choice for rules, but more on that later- Blitzkrieg Commander is winging its way to me here in Japan as I type!

Rules and Regulations...

2008-03-03T16:26:00.008+09:00

One of the nice things about WW2 gaming is that -basically- bases don't matter all that much! A lot of rules sets seem to be pretty flexible on basing, which means lots of choices!

One thing I didn't want was individually based figures. For years, I had based my WW2 miniatures this way along with the other gamers in my area, and that meant...skirmishes. Even larger games played the same way, and there were no command and control rules to speak of.

When I left for Japan, I was leaving a very active gaming group behind me that had played a LOT of platoon-level WW2 games (I wonder what Dave Drummond and Phil Carpenter are up to these days?). But, it did mean that I would now have the freedom to base figures and play games that represented a higher level of command than had been the case. So, what was out there?

Over the last decade or so the following rule sets have attracted my attention:

Command Decision (w/Barbarossa 25 Campaign Supplement)
Red Storm- Grey Steel
Spearhead
Flames of War
Blitzkrieg Commander

to be continued...

Some Sundry SU's...

2008-03-03T09:38:00.001+09:00

Somewhere in Romania, 1944.
A Soviet SU-76m and SU-122 prowl around a ruined castle.

My photography skills are right up there with my knowledge of bee-keeping in 13th Century Aquitainian monasteries, and my ancient cellphone camera is one step up from the Brownie box-camera, so apologies for the washed-out picture.

There is just something so appealing to me about Soviet assault guns. The SU-122 is one of my favourite vehicles in the Soviet arsenal, topped only by the wonderful, not-so-lean, but oh-so-mean ISU-152 and ISU-122 series. The SU-76m "Suka", based on the T-70 chassis, was the standard SP support gun for the front-line Motorized Infantry divisions.

These are white metal Skytrex models- they took a lot of filing and fitting to make them look good, perhaps too much to be really cost efficient. I like the look of the SHQ versions, but with the exchange rate being what it is these days they are not a priority. White metal is heavy, though- I should really check out resin kits to cut down on weight.

I should mention here that while I like the vehicles, I am primary an infantry guy- I tend to get more excited about new ranges of Russki figures and transport- especially the horse-drawn variety- than I do about the armour.

Having said that, when I started the Soviets there was absolutely no early war stuff available- the T-35's, T-28's, BT-7's and T-26's et al. This is no longer the case, and I have begun to look at doing a winter 1942 battle group. Well, early spring anyway as I am not confident about covering all my tanks and bases in snow...

"Let Us All Rise Up and Protect the Motherland!"

2008-03-02T17:06:00.003+09:00

"All hail the glorious Soviet Union, and join in the Crusade against the Fascist Hitlerite horde, blah blah blah..."

I have always had a fascination for the Soviet army in WWII (or the Great Patriotic War, as it is known in Russia) ever since watching the "Stalingrad" episode on the old 1960's World At War TV series when I was a kid. Not only that, but one of the first wargames I remember seeing was an Eastern Front WWII game at a cousin's house in Vancouver, where he had a huge collection of what I now realize would have been Roco Minitanks. I was no more than nine at the time, and it must have made an impression- I've been hooked on wargaming & military history ever since.

Back in the 1970's when I started collecting, the only scale then available for gaming WWII was 1/76 or HO/OO scale. Plastic figures and models by Airfix and Fujimi.

Back then the Soviets were a real challenge to collect, though. Over the years just about every German vehicle that ever saw the light of day- or so much as a blueprint- seemed to get the attention of the model kit producers. From uber-tank prototypes, all the way down to the lowliest field kitchen and bicycles, just about every German machine on wheels was reproduced in just about every scale out there.

Who DID win the war anyway?

With the Soviets it was "make do with what you could get". Some Airfix and Esci infantry, a few models of T-34's, a KV-1 and KV-2 by Fujimi, and that was about it. No trucks, guns or any other tanks available. The western allies did somewhat better- at least they had trucks.

If I am good at plastic modelling and converting, it is because I had to be! Airfix Magazine used to have some good articles on scratch building and converting- projects that my teenage hands really didn't have the skill or patience for.

I could never understand why the lack of interest in a nation that had taken part- successfully- in such a titanic struggle, but I suppose Cold War sensibilities, along with the over-secretiveness on the part of the (then) Soviet Union itself, both played their part.

Anyway, things have changed for the better. In the last ten years or so there has been an explosion in the number of models available in all scales for the RKKA- or the People's Red Army. Recently, the success of the Flames of War miniature and rules has led to a lot of interest in 15mm scale gaming, but with having so much over the years invested in 1/76 and 20mm scale miniatures, I am not about to change course now!

My collection is eclectic, with a mix of figures from a number of manufacturers, in metal, resin and plastic. Infantry are SHQ, Platoon 20, Britannia, FAA, and Dixon. More recently I have been picking up some stuff by Fantassin. While there are some differences in style and sculpting, 20mm is pretty forgiving when it comes to mixing manufacturers, and they look good together- a consistent paint job ties them all together quite nicely.

Vehicles are from Fujimi, Skytrex, and SHQ. Being in Japan has it's benefits- I was able to get access at a reasonable price to all those Fujimi kits, and could negotiate for an entire brigade of T-35-85's for less than 500 yen a kit at a hobby shop here, and later was able to special-order a regiment of IS-2m's!

So over the years, my Red Army collection has been able to grow in strength- and lethality!- as did the original in those brutal years from 1941 to 1945.