MDF Ruins

 As previously mentioned I bought a Normandy farm in MDF. I also bought a pack of assorted ruins. This week I put them together. I am over all pretty pleased. You can see from below that some of them are literally a corner of a building. I will base those on a rough shape and add more rubble when the time comes. I mean they are pretty simple, I wasn't expecting much. I have other corner parts of buildings that are better - things I bought ages ago but have lived, unbuilt in a box since 2013. 

Below is some kind of workshop. It has doors for the front that I will put on at some point. I quite like it. Again, it will end up on a little base with some rubble. I am trying to work out how to make a tub of rubble that I can just pour onto the table when and where I need it. I have seen stuff you can buy but feel that is a waste. I have cat litter somewhere...

The frustrating thing about the below ruin is that the two walls don't fit together. Look, the longer wall extends out beyond where is should go. This complaint is minor. But it really does annoy me. 

Below looks like it is meant to be a flat topped building. I will probably just use it anyway in Normandy.

Below is one step up from a corner ruin. It reminds me a little of the Airfix Forward Command Post kit (which I have). I should dig that out and improve it. I built up a  bank around it to create a courtyard type area. I might add some bocage or something to it. This building will just go on as small a footprint as possible. 

What you can't see is the one ruin section where the first storey floor doesn't fit into the slots. It is frustrating because it is one of the coolest looking ruined sections. I will see what I can do with it, I might just leave the floor out of it. 

For the cost, these are a high recommend from me. They will certainly do the job I need them to do. 

JB MDF Farm - mostly painted

After putting the farm together it sat on the top of my Billy bookcase for a couple of weeks. This weekend I primed it and then put a lot of paint onto the buildings. I am pretty happy with the result to be honest. I would actually be happy popping this onto the table as is to be fair. 

To aid this, currently I am popping into B&Q every week to check their "free wood and offcuts" box to see whether they have any hardboard. I want the hardboard to use as a loosely okay cobblestone-esque section of the table. I want to be able to put the buildings on top of it. I found one to pay for: £8 for a big piece. £12 for a piece double the size but I would need to store it. I want to be efficient with costs but also have limited space for storing large sheets of wood. Bonus - I did find a section of MDF that is a good thickness for walls and is actually the perfect size to just cut into strips to make a variety of both man-height obstacles, and low obstacles for a little light cover. 

To paint these I took Vallejo Red Brown (I use it for leather) and watered it down then let it flow over the roof. You can see where I watered it down too much and too little.

The walls are simply a white heavy mix of white and a little black from generic craft paints from The Works. Doors are either Vallejo Beige brown, or Citadel Staken green. Windows are that same green. The black parts are just black. The door knobs are just dots of paint. 

The gaps between the roof and the wall is starting to bother me a little, but hopefully won't matter once on a table. I like the almost cartoony nature of the door - but this isn't 6mm so once the bullets start flying and my 20mm Brits are taking cover, I might get annoyed by it. Then I will give it a wash!

I still can't decide what to do with the doors on the end of the barn. Glue them open or closed. I will probably go with closed. 

I am pretty happy with this set of buildings though. Looking forward to putting the ruins together. I will have to break out my cat litter to make rubble. 

Heroics and Ros Wehrmacht and terrain

 I have made some more progress over the Half Term break. 

My son made these industrial terrain features by just glueing a bunch of junk from my junk boxes onto some MDF squares. The MDF squares I bought at 2012 Gencon thinking they would be perfect for basing 20mm miniatures on for Crossfire (a ruleset I have yet to play). I based three stands of infantry and then removed them. Since then I have used these squares for gun teams and 6mm terrain bases. 

The ruin is leftover parts from some MDF 6mm Normandy buildings that I bought in 2016 when making the jump over to 6mm. The rubble are various beads and flock from cheap Chinese trees. It looks okay. The other building is a repaint and redecoration of something I built in 2016. It is made from baby food squeezy pouches - the lid part. I wanted to see what it looked like not for desert terrain. 

Here we have the Heroics and Ros late war Germans. There are enough here for 6 infantry squads. Each platoon in Battlegroup contains 3 squads and 3 MG teams. I have enough MG teams for two platoons with more on order. I would like to field an entire company to be honest. I painted these up in a couple of sessions and am working on making my system more efficient. Tutorial to follow.

Heroics and Ros 6mm progress.

 Hi all,

Having not done much in a while I had the opportunity to sit down for two evenings and make progress. My wife was out in London for the day on Saturday, so after a busy day tiring the kids out and having a great time with them and some friends, I sat myself down Saturday evening and started trying to smash out some infantry. 

I painted the green onto quite a lot of US infantry (helmets) and then their gear I painted a lighter green, then washed them. Unfortunately I squeezed too much green paint out so found a bunch of other things to paint. 

I then cut the US infantry off their strips and attached them to bases - this damaged the paint on some of them which has helped me decide how best to paint up my figures now. 

On Sunday night I painted the bases (bare coin) with my sand colour and then covered with flock. I like the basing system I now have, but an improvement will be made by doing the following:

1. Glue unpainted miniatures to bases.

2. Prime the miniature stands white.

3. Paint the bases sand.

4. Paint the miniatures - I think this will be slightly slower as they won't be on strips, but I won't damage the paint removing from strips to put on bases. 

5. Flock bases.

6. Brush the loose flock off of the miniatures.

7. Seal with a spray.

Here are my almost finished miniatures:

I now have a second platoon of Soviets, maybe even a third. You can see some individually based figures - I had originally avoided doing this because most squads don't survive doing down to one man, but I thought I would just in case. And who knows...maybe they will see service in Five Parsecs from Home.

This equals 6 and a bit squads of US infantry. I just need more BAR teams to allow me to field more platoons. I will likely be buying a few strips of BAR teams in my next order - along with some more heavy brits and some Soviet LMG gunners. 

A couple of PIAT teams, a sniper team and some other infantry. I have a couple more stands to make. I want to be able to field 2 platoons but can't quite do that yet. 

Holiday Shenanigans - Terraforming Mars

My brother and his family came over as part of our Christmas celebrations. That mean there were a bunch of kids unter 10 at the house and they needed structure. It gave me a chance to bust out my WotC Star Wars Miniatures. They covered the table with them and played with them making shooty noises. One of my favourite memories of visiting my grandad was getting his old airfix cowboys and native american figures out and play with them. 

After that the eldest couple wanted to play with my WW2 miniatures. They don't get a lot of action to be honest and I was glad to get them out. I made up some rules on the hoof and they enjoyed it. The rules were a mash up of Bolt Action (or what little I could remember of them from 10 years ago) and some vague dice mechanics. It encouraged me to perhaps put together some rules that are a little crunchier than my other attempts. 

My brother and his wife then came back over tonight to play my favourite game - Terraforming Mars. I was completely enthrawled. I love this game so much. It was my fifth play of this game and it was my best attempt yet. I have never won. But I managed to get very close this time round. 

( 

I am the yellow. I smashed it by dominating the map, but my brother had some insane victory point generation machines, while his wife has basically solved the game. They have played it around 150 times each, many of those times were against each other. 

Activities Day 2024 - WW2 homebrew rules.

 Well, it is official. My simple to read and understand, homebrew rules are dreadful. I will have to revisit them ready for next year. They provided a quick game, but it ended up boiling down to one German shooting it out with one Brit, with the German being the last man standing. The whole thing was kind of lame and the rules made no sense. We adapted them as we played. 

I want some kind of objective system in place I think. I feel like I want morale. I also think I want to have it divided into fire teams or something. 

I also forgot to bring my roads. I will have to look for them. Most of my 20mm terrain is boxed away, hidden though. 

My rules reward pouring fire onto one individual figure or gun team. New round, any hit markers are removed so you start again. I will see what I can come up with. Maybe you remove one hit marker at the end of the round. Also, NCOs/officers have literally no impact on the game other than having an SMG which has more firing dice at close range.

Target in cover? Remove one firing die from the firer. That was pretty okay. No impact on saving rolls though. Part way through the game we decided that if you are caught in the open then you have one saving die removed, that started people dying quicker and made us hug cover more. 

I forgot to bring my MG34 team who were already set up. That was kind of lame. The rules with MG teams meant they were hard to work with. I will rework them.

The last man standing. A pyrrhic German victory...

In reality I will put these rules away, then get them out in a year's time and forget every change we made!

Chain of Command - US infantry vs Panzergrenadieren

Last night at the club (I LOVE that I can say that now) we played a pick-up game of Chain of Command. A US platoon vs a Panzergrenadier platoon. I was on the Panzergrenadier side. It was a meeting engagement where there weren't really any objectives other than to break the enemy. 

I am unfamiliar with these rules. I have seen about them and have heard good things, but because it looked like they were marketed at 28mm I didn't really bother. I neither want to collect that scale nor play in it and was unsure that if I ever found a club whether they would go for 20mm. As it stands they play a bit of every scale in loads of different rules. I might have to invest in some more rulesets...something I never thought I would do. 

I don't know what to think of these rules. I need to read them first. I think the scale is just below what I want. Two games and no vehicles so far, but even when we were chosing our support the options were only an Sdkfz 250 with MG team level of vehicle. No tanks. The US player brought no vehicles whatsoever. I would rather have a few tanks and an AT gun. Hence why I like Battlegroup so much. 

There is this initial movement phase where you move these tokens around the table, they must remain within 12' of eachother and as soon as they go within 12' of an enemy token they get locked in place. Then once all are locked down, you triangulate where the jump off points will be. Then and only then do you start bringing units on the table, but that all depends on the command dice rolls. You roll 5 and each number means something else. It is a fascinating mechanic and one I struggle to comprehend how the guys at Two Fat Lardies even came up with it. 

I think I like the rules. It makes for an interesting battle. But we do spend a lot of time checking with the rules. The QRS was like 4 pages long! FRONT AND BACK! I will probably end up buying the rules and having a peruse. 

The way the jump off points ended up we had one behind this bocage and intended to deploy and run up to the barn. Unfortunately the US had a jump off point behind the barn and got there first. We made a decision to not deploy anything there until the US squad was in the barn, then we would land a flamethrower team in the field and blast the barn. They would have no cover and we had 12 attack dice. We knew he would be exposed but thought it would be interesting. As it happened the rolls were dreadful and we had 4/12 dice hit. The US then succeeded the 4 saving rolls. No casualties, no shock. 

Luckily we also deployed a squad who had 21 attack dice. They messed the US team up, and the flamethrower team had another two attempts. We managed to wipe out the fire team in the building and kill the junior officer. In the whole game that was the only unit that got wiped out. There were no other US casualties. They had a lot of shock on this flank though. Our squad stayed behind the bocage just pouring fire into the barn and the rest of the team who were behind that low wall next to it. 

On the other flank, we deployed a full squad in the hope that they could rush up and take the US jump off point to help break their morale. We advanced under a lot of cover, dodging mortar shots. The game ended with the squad here, pretty much unable to move. They were firing into the building behind the high walls just at the top left of the photo. The US player deployed their final squad right in the middle to cover that area. We debated jumping out into the open and taking out the jump off point but decided against it. We had a squad in the middle also who we tried to run up the road to hit the rear of that large US squad in this picture, but the rolls were dreadful. 

We lost a couple of men from this squad. Our senior leader on the long rectangle base was rounded but came back into action. 

The game ended when we ran out of time. Our morale had dropped from 8 to 5. The US had dropped from 9 to 6. They were better off there. But in terms of position on the table, we had two full squads who were about to start flanking around the barn to get behind the remaining US forces. We called it a marginal German victory. The US team said that if it were a campaign game they would have started withdrawing a little while ago. 

Germans on the move!

 I finished a group of late war German transport vehicles! I wanted them to be able to mount FHQ units, infantry squads and other small units in vehicles if needed, thus I painted up a load of Sdkfz 251s, Opel Blitzes, Kübelwagons and some other vehicle that I ordered and I think counts as a "Heavy car" in Battlegroup language. 

One thing I decided was to not bother doing any sort of camo job on the Opel Blitzes, Kübelwagons and the "Heavy car". It just wasn't worth it. You can see from the picture that they all look totally fine. They will do and are very obviously German.

I tried to do some camo on the Sdkfz 251s but gave up. I am definitely unhappy with how the couple turned out - the stripes are just too thick for my liking, and the handful of stripes I liked I struggled to replicate - I think I just need very little paint on the brush...or a thinner brush? Hard to find one that thin though.

This Sdkfz 222 has a little camo. It is okay. Servicable. I think I would rather it have some camo than not. 

I am mostly pleased with how these all turned out though and am looking forward to getting them into action. 

Amateurs talk strategy, professionals talk logistics. US 6mm

 Here are a few more vehicles, that I finished over the course of this week. If you paid any attention to my previous post then you will see my musings on paint jobs. I went with US Dark Green. The soft tops and tilts are British Uniform - a generic canvas sort of colour. 

I like the cartoony look of having blue windows at this scale. With the jeeps and trucks I worried about how they have no doors and are open sided, but due to molding needs they are filled in. How would I paint them then? I think it worked decently to be honest. 

These Chaffees are the new mold. They are pretty gorgeous. I had fun painting them and look forward to them dying quickly to some Panthers...

Painting up some 6mm WW2 British infantry and armour.

 After allowing myself to dilly-dally and not bother doing much, I finally have a platoon plus some support of British infantry. I also have some armour. I was basically unsure about what colour to paint the armour and exactly what to paint on the infantry because I felt like the soldiers would just blend in with their bases, which is kind of what happened. 

I found this link from A Bridge to War blog which gave some interesting tips on painting 6mm WW2 infantry and armour. It goes very much down the "it can all look the same when looking down at a table" route and does enough to make the figures look different while also being simple to paint. 

Infantry

The infantry were essentially primed in a light grey. This differs from that link, but it is all I have for now. I then used all Vallejo paints and painted them in the following order:

Flesh - Light flesh.

Uniform - British Uniform

Helmets - US Dark Green

Weapons - Beige Brown, then Black

Washed with Citadel Agrax Earthshade

Gear - Russian Green (I only painted canteens and a pouch or two)

Light drybrush of Sand.

The original link just paints weapons black. It also primed with brown, which made the need for British Uniform paint layer unnecessary. 

I am pleased with how they turned out. I should have probably painted boots also, but couldn't be bothered. I would have painted them black if I had thought about it.

Armour

I convinced myself I needed Bronze Green to paint my armour, but ended up just painting them US Dark Green, washing with Citadel Nuln Oil, drybrush with Desert Yellow. They look fine to be honest. I have painted up some KV1s and a KV2 using Russian Green, which is noticeably lighter, but after washing with Nuln Oil I literally can't tell the difference between the two colours! 

The link above has inspired me to paint up some Waffen SS though. I had always thought they were too difficult to paint up in 6mm and was just never going to play them. 

Next up, some US logistical vehicles. Then some German trucks and half tracks - they are just waiting for some more colours and a flocking. 

Christmas Haul - The ground sloggers have arrived!

 I have been anxiously awaiting the arrival of the following purchases:

1x late war German infantry (new casts)

1x 1944 British infantry (new casts)

1x 1944 British infantry support weapons (new casts)

1x US infantry (new casts)

1x Soviet infantry (new casts)

a few Achilles TDs, GMC trucks, M20 car, Whites scout car, KV1s and a KV2. 

This was to fill a few holes in terms of vehicles, and having transport for command units etc. 

The quality and poses of all of the infantry are top notch. They really are gorgeous. Some flash, but not much. They are also easy to clip off from the sprues. Now, having begun the process of attaching British figures to bases for painting - I immediately regret this decision. I should have painted them on the strips and clipped them off for basing. Oh well. It has been a few years since I have really painted any H&R infantry en masse. 

I also had the following situation - the British infantry (and all other nations) are in strips of 5. The infantry pack came with 10 strips. There are no indentifiable Bren guns on these strips, whereas in the old US infantry packs there is definitely a BAR armed figure. I panicked! How was I going to properly equip my infantry sections? I have soviet infantry who are armed with generic looking small guns which I am happy to fudge into rifles. But in reality I want the Bren guns to be featured. Then I opened the support weapons pack and there are a few teams that I thought were sniper teams...but maybe the scope is actually a top feeding magazine? So I decided that these are my Bren teams and that will be that.

I also have one large mortar, a few 2" mortars, six PIAT teams, some men who look like they are throwing grenades? There is a strip of men lying down with binoculars - one of whom I have already enlisted as a sniper spotter. Flame throwers, mine sweepers, and a strip of figures holding long, thin explosives perhaps? Bangalores? I have honestly no idea what they are meant to be. 

I wish there were some command strip thrown in. I will remember this for my next order. As it stands I can make things work with infantry stands and hoping I can remember what stand is what when on the table.  

Christmas Haul - British armour and support. German transport.

 I recieved a large lot of British armour and other support vehicles for Christmas this year. I also got some Chaffee tanks, some Opel Blitzes, Sdkfz 250s, an Sdkfz 222 and a few Kubelwagen. The idea was to get my already existing German infantry more mobile - they can now be Panzergrenadiers or just infantry in trucks. The trucks can also count as supply columns for my Tiger II. The 222 is specifically for recon for Battle of the Bulge. Chaffees are just because they look nice, but also for some more US light tank options. 

The idea behind the British vehicles was to go with the infantry I was hoping to get from my secret santa. Turns out they bought me some Lego instead. That will be fun to build, but now I need some British infantry. I will have to put an order in for some more I guess. 

You can see a couple of Sherman Firelies here, and then three each of Churchills and Comets. Plus a Challenger for funsies. I also got a Humber and a Staghound for recon. The Quad is to go with the 25Pdr that I haven't put together yet. The other vehicle, I can't remember what it is called is to tow things.

Here I have three Cromwells, a 95mm armed Centaur, a 17pdr and two 6pdrs. You can also see unbased Kubelwagens and Jeeps. I intend to base some of those with infantry in order to make some command stands. 

All of these are Heroics and Ros. I am largely impressed by the sculpts. The 17pdr looks absolutely beastly. 

Battlegroup Fall of the Reich Soviets attacking a hasty German defensive line.

Last night I played a "defensive line" game where an ad-hoc Wehrmacht vanguard is attempting to stall the inexorable Soviet advance. I don't think I have played Fall of the Reich yet. It was the one that got away all those years ago, and when they did the reprint I jumped on the chance. Playing it felt a little different, but mainly that it felt like I couldn't afford as much German stuff, with point costs being higher. But that may be imagined. I was also surprised that my two armies ended up with the same Battle Rating. Usually my US armies have a far higher point to reach before breaking. I assumed the Soviets would be the same. But both ended up with BR 23. The Soviets, however had many more infantry to throw at the fascist invaders.

Germans
FHQ is a Panzer IV.
1 infantry platoon.
1 Panzerfaust team
1 80mm mortar team
1 Pak 40 with loader team
1 StuG III
1 sniper + spotter

Soviets
1 infantry platoon
1 T-34/85 platoon
1 Maxim MG team
1 ZiS 76mm gun
1 BA amoured car
1 sniper + spotter
4 trucks and a jeep for the platoon command

A handful of German units held the wooded areas along the road. A sniper team were overlooking the northern fields, a Pak 40 also. An MG team were over looking the southern fields along with the Battlegroup Commander in his Panzer IV. A knocked out Tiger has been left on the road to create an obstacle to an easy advance.

The Soviets advanced across the field with a T-34 out in the open. It took fire from the Pak 40.

It brewed up easily, rounds cooking off inside.

The Soviet armoured car attempted to engage the LMG team, but the fire was ineffective.

In response to movement the LMG team opened fire on an advancing truck.

It blew up, but luckily the squad inside managed to escape. To be honest, advancing a truck was a bad idea, but I wanted to see how it worked shooting against soft skin vehicles.

Due to having to escape under fire, the Russian squad end up pinned.

The Panzer IV attempted to fire on the armoured car but missed. You can see a Soviet sniper team and the platoon commander advancing up the field.

Due to the left flank being unopposed, the platoon commander decided to relocate to the central wooded area, in order to best respond to the attackers. The forward infantry squad would soon follow suit, leaving the sniper on the flank to harrass any enemy towards them.

Soviet infantry managed to clear the MG 34 team from the woods, opening up the right flank.

This is the state of things. One lost truck and a T-34 gone. But otherwise, advancing. The ZiS 76mm has been deployed as a Panzer IV has been spotted firing. More troops will advance up. The forward most squad and armoured car will secure the woods ahead.

The Panzer IV and T-34 fired on each other.

With the T-34 coming out on top. The German battlegroup had now lost its overall commander. The platoon commander would attempt to keep the defensive line going. I searched and there didn't seem to be too much of a morale penalty for losing a FHQ unit, or a unit with the rule "senior officer". Maybe I didn't search hard enough. I feel like this should be a bad thing.

The Germans in the central wood managed to manhaldle the Pak 40 and move themselves around to face the enemy. This did, however, leave their new left flank exposed, but the infantry squad kept watch.

The T-34 and Pak 40 exchanged fire across the road. 

The Soviet shots went wild, whereas the Pak 40 scored a direct hit, destroying the attacking tank. The Russian sniper team advanced up through the woods, while the command tank remained just out of vision from that nasty German Pak.

Two Soviet squads and a Maxim team began to advance over the open ground on the newly exposed German flank. The German sniper did his job by providing harrassing fire to them, in an attempt to slow the advance.

The German platoon commander managed to spot the sniper team and fired with no effect.

Not wanting to get pinned down by sniper fire, the infantry squad bravely charged, killing the team and taking no casualties.

The Soviet squad advanced into the southern woods, claiming that objective. They could now provide covering fire while the others advanced up the flank. Inaccurate German mortar fire hit around the T-34 but achieve nothing, except for getting the attention of the Soviet armoured car, who circled the woods and plunged into the German rear to hunt down the mortar team.

Here we can see the Soviet flanking advance. The T-34 platoon commander still hugging the woods, and a truck load of infantry advancing up. Unseen, the ZiS has limbered back up to reposition in case and German armour reserves arrive, the BA armoured car has rushed into the German rear to cause havock, and the infantry squad has advanced to the edge of the woods to provide covering and harrassing fire.

More German sniper fire and he managed to take out the squad LMG gunner.

The central German infantry squad managed to pin a Soviet squad to help stall the advance.

Finally some German reserves arrived! The StuG III engaged and blew up the armoured car, which had been attempting to machine gun the mortar team into submission for a while.

With the armoured car gone, the mortar team was ordered to open up again on the advancing Russian trucks, pinning them. Unfortunately for the Germans the truck had already unloaded it's squad which was advancing towards the Germans in the woods.

The Soviets charged into the woods and destroyed the German squad, killing them to a man. The Russians took casualties themselves, and became pinned after faltering in morale. So they won the Close Assault, but lost three men and became pinned. Not sure it was a good idea. 

At this point it was 23:00 and I was getting tired. The Soviets had pulled 22/23 BR and so were not pulling more chits, leaving quite a lot of units pinned. Meanwhile the Germans, were only on about 12/23 and had finally gotten their reserves to arrive. We were on turn 6 or 7 I think. The Soviet victory conditions were to win by turn 9 by destroying/pinning everything or holding objectives. It looked like I was about to have a second battle within the battle by having most of a German platoon arriving to defend for two turns and time the Soviets out. So it was a pretty good German win. However, I played the Soviets poorly in two areas: 1. I wants to see how squishy T-34s were, so I sent one vs a Pak 40 to die. 2. I wanted to see how easily trucks died, soe let it die vs. an LMG. I would probably not advance trucks so close to the battle again. 

This game I switched inches to centimetres and I must admit my experience was far, far more fun than previously. The table felt the right sort of size for the game. The ranges, looked better when compared to the table. It was pretty cool. My brother is coming over in a few weeks and I imagine we will play. He bought me the Russians after all.