15mm BPM Pak 38

 The Pak 38 is one of the iconic Afrika Corps AT weapons. I already have a couple for use in Europe and Russia, but I wanted to get some dedicated ones for the desert. Nearly all the German motorised battalions had them in their heavy companies, and they were also standard issue in the towed AT battalions. 

I ordered a pair of resin ones from BPM. They are very inexpensive.

They are exquisite models, the resin produces very sharp details indeed. These are as good as injection moulded plastic and a million times better than the standard quality APL prints. They have much smaller wheels than my metal QRF Pak 38s and look are more like the real gun (or at least like the one in the IWM).

No assembly is required, and they just got my standard two coats of Iraqi Sand over a grey undercoat with an inkwash in between and a final highlight of Pale Sand. 

Low slung and lethal. The crews are a mixture of PP and PSC gunners, in the usual polyglot shades of green and sand for DAK uniforms. The guns will also do for the Regimental AT companies of infantry units in 1944, many of which had Pak 38s instead of Pak 40s. 

I have been to... Bamburgh

 I'm just back from a weekend away with friends to Bamburgh. It is a few years since we were last year (before lockdown), and then it was summer and we were swimming in the sea. As the sea temperature is currently 11 degrees, we gave that a miss. Even in wetsuits it is a bit chilly.

The castle bathed in the evening sunshine.

And north towards Lindisfarne in the distance. I love the beaches in Northumberland, they are huge when the tide is out, and very empty.

All the various centuries of construction piled up on each other!

Lindisfarne in the distance again.

The Christmas display was uo already in the castle, themed around myths and legends. These are fairy christmas trees. Avoid dancing around them nine times or you'll be off to Faerie, never to be seen again.

The Laidley Worm! Which may or may not bear some resemblance to the Anglo Saxon 'Beast of Bebbanburg'.

A winter fountain populated with Skelpies.

The Laidley Worm, and the evil Green Witch.

The windmill at the end of the East Ward, beyond the Norman keep. The old entrance (St Oswalds gate) is here.

And back up the curtain wall towards the main part of the castle. The keep is in the right, and before that is the Neville Tower, named after Warwick the Kingmaker. You can rent it out, for a handsome fee.

I also called in at the Armstrong Museum in the grounds.

There was this rather nice little car in there.

And it has many wrecks of aircraft recovered from the sea nearby. This is a Spitfire cockpit. There were also bits of a Hurricane, a Dornier and an He 111.

A rather nice 4" naval gun, wedged in a bove a turboprop engine extracted from a Gannett.

4" gun breech.

Very annoyingly my phone battery ran out at this point, so I missed taking a picture of the excellent (model) Vickers Light Tank in purple brown/smoke grey Caunter camo.

Anyway, it was a pleasant weekend away as ever and a lovely part of the world. 

 

Some Poles Apart - Westerplatte 1939

 One of the very first combat actions of the German invasion of Poland in 1939 was the attack on the installations at Westerplatte near Danzig/Gdansk. Notable for the inclusoon of the Battleship Schleswig Holstein, it is a battle often mentioned in history books but rarely gamed.

That exclusion was rectified by Russell this week, with yet another game in the Postcard series, converted to Powerpoint. 

Tim and Simon got the Poles, while John and I were cast as the wicked Germans. An excuse to break out some hats (I do actually have a Polish hat, but I was on the wrong side for that).

The map is a beautiful scan of the terrain, divided up into areas. The +1/+2 are defensive bonuses applied to the Polish units (only). This is just an example setup with the Schleswig Holstein in the channel area Wb.

The Polish units are platoons or batteries, they have three infantry platoons, an 81mm mortar battery, a 50mm AT battery and a 75mm Field gun battery. The 75s are the unit able to engage the battleship. The infantry and mortars can all take two hits, the artillery just one. Most of the Polish units have a combat strength of 2, 1 when reduced.

For the actual game, the Poles went with a defence in depth. A platoon each in E and F, then the guns G and I, with another platoon and the mortars in H. All units can fire two zones (I guess the infantry have attached MGs and mortars) at a range penalty.

The Germans have a ton of stuff, six infantry companies, an engineer platoon, plus offboard artillery, air support and the battleship. Most of the German units have a combat strength of 3, and can take two hits, the BB has a strength of 4. They don't get any defensive benefits for terrain though, which makes them vulnerable to fire.

 It is an activation driven game, each activation  lets one unit move or fire, and picture cards allow a unit to rally a hit off OR activate a whole area. The number of activations is driven by a normal deck of cards, black cards are German, Red are Polish, and the number of activations is half the pip score of the card. Keep drawing cards for each side until a joker is drawn and the turn ends.

In the situation above, the Germans have moved on four rifle companies. The Luftwaffe arrived early (once per turn) and opted for repeated bombardment on the port area which gives a combat bonus. The battleship them managed to reduce the defenders by one step.

Combat is resolved by drawing cards from the same deck as the activations (card value =< modified fire value) so if you are doing a lot of things, you really burn through those cards. This means the game goes much faster than the Siege of Rhodes game,

German fire has managed to reduce another Polish platoon, and the Poles have evacuated the docks. With the onus of moving on the Germans, the Poles have a lot more activations to spend on firing, so one of the German companies has been hit, and in a great insult, so has the Schleswig Holstein!

The Germans start with 9VP, they win if at the end of the game there are no Polish units remaining and they have at least 1VP. They lose 1VP per turn, and 1VP per unit destroyed, so the Germans have to be really careful about losses, and spend some activations to recover damaged units, assuming they get the right cards. 

Things are looking up a bit for the Germans. They've taken the port and destroyed one of the damaged Polish infantry before it could recover. The damaged battleship has withdrawn out of effective range.

The Poles are back on their +2 cover defensive line now.

The Germans manage to destroy another weakened Polish infantry, but not before taking another hit. The dock is unfortunately in easy range of the entire Polish defence force and quite vulnerable. More fresh German forces have come on to relieve the damaged ones.

The deck is finally exhausted and the turn ends. It took a while as we had a number of discussions about rule interpretations, always an issue with very short games rules, but reached a consensus in the end. Hopefully we will make faster progress tomorrow.

We finished ten minutes early, and a chance for Tim to show off some of his SA Militia, being specially painted for a 54mm figures game of the same battle, which also includes a load of German marine infantry and a very big old rusty battleship.

The next evening continued with the Germans banging their head against the Polish defences. The Poles were able to use their activations to shoot like crazy, while we had to use them to manouvre as well. The toll of damaged German units rose, each worth 1 VP to the Poles, and we had to move them out of the way to avoid their outright destruction.

We finally managed to get force and fire superiority (even bringing the Schleswig Holstein back into action having knocked out the shore battery), and the Poles began to look to their rear areas to put some room between them and us.

The remaining Polish units were both reduced, although annoyingly they would sometimes rally back to full strength, and we had to keep grinding forwards.

A hail of Polish defensive fire reduced two more of our units, but the survivors stuck it out and we finally destroyed the last Polish unit just before time ran out. The time taken and our heavy losses meant we scraped to victory with a measly 1 Victory Point!

What a clever game, very impressive. There are a whole bunch of these postcard games available for the princely sum of £1.50 from here: https://www.boardgameguru.co.uk/pocket-battle-game-1-stand-at-mortain-127833-p.asp

15mm QRF Valentine II

 To go with the 15mm Crusaders I wanted some I Tanks, and for some odd reason settled on Valentines and not Matildas. I was thinking more of Gazala, but nearly all the scenarios I have are for Operation Crusader and earlier! One thing in their favour is that Valentines were resolutely plain, no fancy Caunter paint schemes, which seemed fine to start with.

I've already got a QRF Valentine III to use with my Russians, so I got a couple of Mark IIs for the desert, and bravely went for the sand skirt option. These have smaller turret bustles than the Mark IIIs but look quite cute. My headmaster at junior school commanded Valentines in the war, and was wounded by shell splinters while he had his head out of the turret. He liked to show us the scars!

They went together very well, although there aren't many bits to stick on. I had to look at a couple of photos to work out where the cylinder thing went, and realised it needed quite a bit of filing down to fit.

The sand skirts also went on OK, although they are very asymmetrical and I had to  look at many photos to work out which way round they went on. Who knew the rails were on the outside, and not to locate them on the inside of the mudguards? The vehicles are cast as models without sand skirts, so you have to trim down some external parts of the mudguards to get the skirts to fit. After a few dry runs, they eventually went on perfectly without any unsightly gaps.

Its a Valentine, so has masses of raised detail. Perfect for washes and drybrushing. Just look at that engine deck!

Valentines were generally plain sand, but rather than Light Stone, I wanted to try a Light Mud/Desert Pink finish on these. The base colour was VJ Dark Sand (supposedly a match for the Italian Uniform colour), which came out of the dropper bottle a very similar shade to my old Humbrol Desert Sand.

The method was the same as the Crusaders, a heavy damp brush, wash, then another damp brush, followed by a light drybrush of Pale Sand. They came out noticeably darker and more earthy than the Crusaders, which was exactly the effect I was after, and it will be useful for both later war vehicles in Desert Pink, as well as early ones in Light Mud.

Infantry tanks generally had more prominent markings than Cruisers, so these both got Crusader Stripes on the sand skirts. I thought about doing them on the turret rear as well, but that seemed a bit over the top as these already stand out quite brightly. I painted the basic design, and then squared them off with my new Posca Paint Pens.

Hopefully they will see some action. Infantry Tank Brigades had a mix of Matildas and Valentines for much of the campaign, but it made me resolve to get some Matildas too.

Counterattack at Mortain - Postcard game

 This is another postcard game in the same series as Westerplatte and the Siege of Rhodes. It covers the German counterattack at Mortain against 30th US Div. Unlike the other games we played, this one uses a conventional hex grid, and I get the impression it is one of the earlier ones in the series.

It is on a grid, so I'm going to play it on my Hexon! Battlefield from the south. It is a 9x5 grid so the top row of hexes is unplayable (I put trees on them to remind me).

Mortain is the town at the crossroads and the village of St Barthelmy further up the road.

The US start with 30 Div on the map. This apparently consists of three infantry regiments and both a towed and SP tank destroyer battalion. I put one Regiment up on the hill in the north with the towed tank destroyers. Units on hills can fire an extra hex (3), which is handy.

In reserve is the entire 3rd Armored Division with three Combat Commands (CCA, CCB and CCR).

The mechanisms are otherwise very similar to Westerplatte, combat ranges of 2, card based activation and combat resolution, various covers benefits (woods, village +1, Mortain +2). The only difference from Westerplatte is that units can't recover steps, and the combat resolution is more bloody with much higher to hit numbers.

The US have offtable air and artillery, and as in Westerplatte the planes can conduct a single airstrike or conduct interdiction/suppression which last the whole turn and affects seven hexes(!).

The Germans. 17th SS Panzergrenadier Div with a Stug battalion and two PG regiments. 2nd SS Panzer with two armoured kampfgruppes and two infantry kampfgruppes - I assume the panzer units are supposed to be supported by integral infantry. 

The units are all rated for anti-armour and anti-infantry combat, the Germans are a bit worse vs infantry, presumably as their KG only represent two battalions. Or something. The Tiger (SS SchwPz Abt 102) is a special unit which stacks and activates for free and gets a +1 attack vs armour but only has one step, unlike all the other units which have two.

These are very manageable OOBs which would translate well to One Hour Wargames...

The Germans decided to sneak through the woods to the south. They provide cover and block fire through them, avoiding that nasty strongpoint on the hill. As in the other games, you activate units based on a card draw - half the value of the card, fractions rounded up gives the number of activations. 

The Germans drew a whole bunch of black cards and came piling on. The Americans....drew no cards at all. In fact they had drawn a red first, and then a joker, so this was going to be a whole deck turn. I obviously hadn't shuffled the deck well enough. 

Those black cards kept on coming and the panzers rolled up to the US position in the woods.

And blew it to pieces in short order. The Germans kept drawing black cards and despite some losses (an infantry regiment seems to be missing here), rolled on to Mortain and shot up the defending infantry, who suffered a step loss but otherwise survived.

To win the Germans either have to exit five units from the western edge or destroy every US unit on the board(!).

US casualties to date.

The US airforce finally turned up and interdicted the Germans as the battered US infantry retreated into Mortain. The northernmost Germans had wandered into the (three hex) range of the hill strongpoint and finally the US started drawing cards. The AT guns opened a withering fire and took out the Tigers first, then chipped a step off the Panthers. Ouch!

The Germans responded by advancing further west, which put them out of LOS of the deadly AT guns. Their headlong advance had left most of 17th SS far behind. Readers who can count will note that there are five German units still in play here, so in theory they can get off and win. There is still another German infantry unit in reserve.

However, the interminable turn finally ends as the deck runs out. Turn two is more favourable to the US and 3rd Armored comes motoring on, as do the jabos, before the Germans can respond. More air interdiction, it is just so more effective than a pointless low odds bombing run.

CCA and CCR draw five activations, then roll forward and blow away the Panthers with a massive attack. Their combined AT strength is 8, you need to draw that value or less on one card to hit. +1 if adjacent to the enemy. Combat is much bloodier than in Westerplatte.

Another US card. Now the Pz IVs get hit. This is going really badly for the panzerwaffe now.

Another round of US fire demolished the last German units near Mortain, and I called it a day at that point as the few remaining German units had no chance of winning.

OK, that was interesting as a first run. I cant believe every game is over in one and half turns so I set it up again.

This time the US concentrated a bit more near to Mortain trying to get some interlocked fields of fire.

Having been shot to bits going south, the Germans went north. The US did draw some cards but with no Germans nearby, there wasn't much they could do. Eventually the German rolled on with two strong kampfgruppes each of one tank, one infantry plus the Tiger Bn.

They then proceeded to shoot up the towed tank destroyers.

And eventually knocked them out after a couple of rounds of fire. The US drew some cards and returned fire focussing on the infantry. A hail of low odds attacks (trying to burn the card deck) took out one German infantry and damaged another.

More US activations, more attacks. They finished off the other German infantry and then knocked out the Tigers. After burning through half the deck with US infantry fire, the turn ended as the joker was drawn.

Turn 2 and lots of US activations saw 3rd Armored Div arrive in Mortain itself.

And US aircraft all over the remaining Germans. Rather than pack it in, I thought I'd go for a 'kill the US' victory, and the Germans began to head south towards the comforting forest.

Eventually the remains of 2nd SS linked with 17th SS, and off they went through the woods once more. Presumably there was a long run of German activations until this point as each hex moved required a separate activation. 

A bit more shuffling forward and the Germans manage to put a hit on the US infantry.

And.... it all goes horribly wrong the moment the Germans move into range. The US TD battalion knocks out the Pz IVs, P47s swoop and CCB pushes forwards.

The US keeps pushing forwards, hitting the Stugs. For some reason the German infantry have bunched up away from the tanks, maybe to shoot the US infantry.

The US finish off the Stugs.

The Germans keep plugging away and remove the weakened US infantry unit, but really it is hopeless at this point. The German infantry aren't much good against US armour, and the US tankers can just drive away to deny the Germans victory.

OK, another interesting run though. This game reminded me why I hate games where turns end on the draw of a 'random' card. I had the same issue with IABSM, but this one was even worse as there were long, long runs where one side activated time and again and blew the other one away. Now, I could probably have shuffled the deck better, but tbh, if you are going to have card driven activation, a constrained deck (like that in Fireball Forward) is probably a better bet.

This is probably fixable, but can I be bothered? I'm not sure. It is however an interesting scenario and would be easy to translate into a larger scale One Hour WW2 game.

There are some other games in the series which also look like interesting scenarios, in particular each of the D Day beaches and a four scenario collection of Bulge games, but I'll have to see how they play before investing heavily.