BPM 1/144th Heinkel He-111

 I wanted to add to my existing German medium bomber fleet, so along with the Austers,  I ordered an He-111 from BPM.

It is a pretty crude model, very similar to the APL Ju 88 I bought last year. I wasn't about to spend 16 quid(!) on a resin one, so got the cheaper one and boy does it show. The entire model is very grainy, and as with the Ju 88, comes with the fuselage in two halves and the engines in two halves.

Once assembled it is a gigantic lump of solid plastic, with some fairly unsightly mould lines, gaps etc. 

However, some filling and a large amount of sanding turned it into something far more pleasing. Being plastic, it is fairly easy to sand and I got it much smoother and eliminated the gaps with filler.

While I was at it, I added the dorsal, forward and waist MGs out of 0.5mm brass, which give it a bit more texture. Curiously the canopy has hardly any support struts moulded on (unlike the BPM  Ju 88 and Stuka) - maybe this is an older model? The windows look a bit plain anyway, so I'll have to paint those carefully.

The other annoying thing that the dorsal MG position  is actually open at the rear irl, but for some odd reason it is moulded as having a perspex cover over it. I would have been simple enough to mould it as open and I'm not about to start filing it down. I just stuck the MG barrel through the perspex.

The underside is still a bit crude, I didn't do a very good job filling around the engines, but I don't worry too much about the undersides anyway. I did add one MG to the gondola, which unlike the main cabin has quite nice little windows moulded into it.

When it is all painted up it doesn't look too bad though. I just did it in standard splinter with sky blue undersides. It is based on a real plane, but I can't recall the squadron now.

I painted on all the missing canopy struts by  hand, which was a bit fiddly but worth the effort. The asymmetrical cockpit didn't make it any easier. Once the canopy struts were dry I edged them in black with a 0.1mm micron pen to give them some contrast and depth.

Eagle eyed readers will notice that between photos the number '3' on the fuselage has mysteriously disappeared! 

I had a few decal disasters with this one. The original (Zvezda) balkan crosses disintegrated as I put them on, and the number 3s (also Zvezda) fell off overnight! The decals must have got too old to use or maybe they didn't like the remaining graininess of the surface. The yellow 'D' are Zvezda though and stuck on OK, the rest are Doms Decals.

My other decal disaster was that I usually varnish the decals to make them matt, but I think my varnish must be off or maybe I didn't shake it enough, as it left white streaks everywhere and made the decal surrounds stand out even more than usual. I'm going to have to paint around them with the base colours again. Argh!

I re-did the blacklining on the cockpit struts too and they stand out better now.  

Despite being such a rough model, it came out fine and it is a smart looking plane. Those huge wings give it a very sinister aspect, and of course they were stars of the show in the 1967 "Battle of Britain" film. It can join the Ju 88s and Dornier in my 'bomber box'. 

Tigers at Minsk 3, KG Sievers

 I've spent a lot of time thinking about the previous two TaM scenarios. This third scenario introduces proper combined arms stuff with infantry, tanks and artillery. I made a few minor tweaks along the lines I suggested previously - now high number rolls are always good. I've also introduced a separate morale check for pin and stun recovery based on troop quality instead of what sort of cover they are in (essentially the Crossfire system). I'm not a fan of tactical games which don't include troop quality to some degree, and although it is factored into the overall force morale in the standard rules, I prefer to see individual element morale too. 

I've also differentiated between vehicle MGs and HE fire. MGs were always the preferred weapon of AFVs against infantry, so all tanks etc get 2D6 of VMG out to 4 hexes (500m).  The standard anti personnel factors, I regard as firing HE, so beyond 4 hexes, things like Pz 38s are only getting 1D6 of HE (and SU152s 3D6!), which also requires a successful to hit roll.

The biggest change is in the AT system, I just don't like the maths of the existing one, especially coupled with a D10 which produces the same wild spread of results that it did in Firefly. Instead we now have a 2D6 based to-hit system, base score of 5+ keeping the various tactical modifiers which already exist (as I think those are very clever) plus some to hit  range attenuation in 4 hex (500m) increments which mirror those in WRG

If you do hit something, I've borrowed the AT effect table from Neil Thomas which is D6 based and has an equal chance of no effect, stun or KO. The dice throw is modified by the difference between the AT and DEF values, and I am going to use the Spearhead values ones (having corrected the +1 bias for being German). they have similar differentials to NT, and so now, it really is impossible for a Sherman to KO a Panther or Tiger from the front, although they may stun it. Multiple stuns on the same target now force a morale test, and if failed, the target is KO instead. Think the "bail" result in Flames of War. So you can get a Tiger with lots and lots of hits and hot dice.

Righto, to battle.

Here is the battlefield, somewhere in Ukraine in 1943 (I suspect in the vicinity of Tamarovka and the Vorshla valley). KG Sievers has fallen back to this village, hotly pursued by Russians. The Russians have 40 minutes to reduce the German morale to 0 by destroying four units.

The Russians are quite an interesting force, 6 x T34/76 and 4 x SMG tank riders. The tank riders have to stay mounted as long as possible and attempt to do the 'Panzerblitz assault' thing of charging, dismounting and the CCing the enemy. They are supported by a single fire mission with an observer. I'll treat these guys as average for morale purposes, so pin and stun recovery is on a 4+ 

KG Sievers has four x Panzergrenadiers (high firepower infantry), an HMG and 2 x Panthers. The latter are unreliable and break down on an 11+ after movement. There is also an entrenchment which provides cover in the open for one unit. In my head I think of all these units as Charles Grant style 1:3, so actually rifle platoons and and sections of 2-3 tanks and support weapons. The ground scale doesn't make much sense otherwise.

The Russians can come on from any direction except the German baseline, so a degree of all round defence is called for. Tanks can't enter building hexes unless on a road, and I don't see any roads, so the Panthers wedge themselves behind the BUA, protected from flank shots. Each tank is escorted by a PG section, one being dug in as I don't like the look of those fields to the west. The rest of the infantry are sited to cover the front with the HMG stacked with a rifle section to absorb hits. I'm hoping to use the MG for opportunity fire as MGs potentially have multiple OF shots, so a wide field of fire is required.

The Russians rather like the look of all the cover in the north so move on that way. This also allows them to make multi-hex moves as they are out of sight for much of the way, they only have to halt in LOS. Sadly the arty observer lags behind on foot and ends up stuck on the reverse slope of the hill, but I need him up high to get his observation bonus. I do like the way the terrain masking works in these rules, they are the complete opposite of Phil Sabins 'Fire and Movement' , but they allow for cunning use of terrain.

Sadly for the Red Army, the German opp fire is devastating. One tank rider is shot off pinned and a T34 is hit and burns. The HMG manages to get two shots off before ending its opp fire. I don't bother opp firing the infantry as they can just shoot normally in their turn.

Now they know where the Russian threat is coming from, the Germans redeploy their infantry. The two PG with targets manage to finish off the pinned tank riders and pin another. The  Panther and HMG remove their opp fire markers while the second Panther makes a move of three hexes (being masked by the village) out on to the flank. It then promptly breaks down! I've just realised it shouldn't have changed facing at the end of its move. Oh well.

The Russians and Germans continue to trade shots. More T34s go up in smoke, but one T34 manages to flank the immobilised Panthers and knock them out (frontally the best they can get is a stun). The new to hit/to kill system is working well and plays smoothly. I also manage to get the stonk on target on the MG position where it does absolutely no damage at all. Perhaps I should have rolled the stonk against each target in the hex? In any case, I'm not convinced the few wooden buildings of a typical Russian village provide much cover against artillery fire. I've already reworked the terrain effects so woods and fields don't provide cover vs indirect fires, so I'll differentiate between wood and stone buildings too.

The Russians do manage to pin some of the Germans with the MG, and one plucky SMG unit managed to stay unpinned long enough to even advance an entire hex towards the Germans! But generally the hail of German small arms fire precluded any advance and the remaining Panther picked off T34s one by one. The Panzergrenadier sections have as much firepower (3D6) as an HMG, albeit without the opp fire bonus, so can put up a real wall of lead against the Russian infantry. 

Finally the Russian force morale broke and they fell back towards their baseline. With only 14 minutes left on the clock, there wasn't a hope of breaking the Germans so I called it there.

That was a good run through and so far my changes all seemed to be working OK. It was quick enough to play that I thought I'd try another run through.

The Germans did the same setup, but this time the Russians went for a massed tank assault from the east. The artillery observer headed for the hill again, not sure if he should treated as on foot or motorised?  My thinking was that this direction was the minimum distance to cover, but at least still had some cover (woods, fields) for the tank riders.

The German HMG banged away with opp fire but missed.

To face the threat from this direction the Germans need a big redeployment. Some of the infantry shuffled around and the Panthers swung around the edge of the village, keeping their frontal arcs towards the Russians. Neither broke down this time. 

The Russians essentially pushed forwards in a big clump, trying to get some tank riders within CC distance of the HMG position. German small arms fire once again ripped into the Russian infantry and most of them were forced off their tanks, pinned. The two T34s on the baseline concentrated on the Panther to the left and managed to stun it, which was very helpful. Even more helpful was that it failed to recover. The other Panther picked off one of the lead T34s though. The Russians managed to drop (yet another) ineffective stonk on the church and massed T34 MG fire routed one of the German infantry (with a double 6).

At turn end I managed to roll a double! Some random events. The Russians got a free rally, and Germans a chance to move and fire one unit

I stupidly hadn't noticed that the right hand Panther now had its flank exposed to the the lead T34 (frontal arcs are 120 degrees in these rules) and it was duly hit and destroyed. With the other Panther still stunned and a free rally on one of my pinned infantry, it was time for a general advance, but a hail of lead  from opp firing German infantry just mowed the Russians down. The Germans used their move and fire event to bring up the last infantry unit to occupy the space of the dead one. The Russians were now very close to their break point.

The Panther became unstunned and knocked another T34 out, and by now there were no Russian infantry left so the remaining tanks began to back away as they had reached their force break level. In an amazing turnaround over two turns however, the Russian armour managed to hang on long enough to rout not one, but two German infantry with massed MG and HE fire with 3 minutes left on the game clock! The Russians had finally won!

I really enjoyed those games, they were very quick and decisive but with ample scope for a degree of tactical cunning. The new AT system worked very well too, and didn't feel like it added any great complexity. I think separating the damage effects from the to hit allowed for a richer range of results, and I much preferred the morale rating based unit recovery. It makes it so much easier to translate commercial scenarios into games if you can model some degree of troop quality, particularly scenarios from Crossfire or Fireball Forward where troop quality is the single most important factor.

I will have a bit of a think about artillery and some of the terrain mods, but otherwise I think that is ready to go into something a bit more ambitious as Scenario 4 is a lot bigger than this. I'm having lots of fun with this, so thanks Norm!

En Garde once more!

 Regular reader may recall that we started playing En Garde back in 2023: https://tgamesweplay.blogspot.com/2023/05/en-garde.html. Rather like our Gereon Rath Berlin Noir RPG sessions they aren't hugely photogenic so I tend not to report on the them much, but we are still plugging away with En Garde two years later!

Readers of a certain age will recall this being published back in the late 1970s. We used to while away our lunchtimes at school duelling, for a time anyway. It is fairly typical of games of the era and is extremely table heavy, much of it reminds of Traveller, hardly surprising given the publisher. 

Now of course we just while away our time doing it on Zoom instead in a variety of silly hats. We've played several sessions since my report back in May 2023, and it is still an awful RPG as there is almost no player interaction at all, but the character development is lots of fun. Essentially a lengthy extended Traveller style character generation sequence.

Although it it supposed to be about this (sword fighting) , we've managed to play two entire years without a single swordfight, despite Nick going around looking for fights a couple of sessions ago. The regular umpire, Russell, puts a huge amount of effort into the background and develops group activities for us to do. 

There is a regular newsletter, La Depeche, describing our exploits. The most recent major activity was the Siege of Carcassone at the end of the summer campaigning season. This was appallingly bloody and a number of characters died, some of who had taken extremely dubious heroism bonuses in a attempt at glory. 

One problem in the game is that is is possible to be come caught in the 'poverty trap', you don't have enough income to afford an increase in social status, but without increased social status, you can't generate any income. One way out is to seek glory (or death) in battle but increasing your chance of heroic actions at the expense of surviveability. A number of players did this and paid the price.

Some others, myself and Tim for example, did rather well: being showered with booty and medals, although not as much as Pete who received an absolute fortune in loot.

Our gathering this week was the occasion of the funeral of one our number who died at the siege, and as he was a noble by birth, the King himself attended! This generated tons of status points by association and some great opportunities for advancement.

Along with the bulletin are a number of other resources, such as the directory of lovely ladies. Here is my delightful Judith Bonboniere, both wealthy and influential, a great asset to a poor Major of a shabby regiment in these difficult times. I spent a great deal of time and cash wooing Judith, but now she is happy to accompany my 'on the town' and being influential will come in very handy. Many of the players now have lady friends, and the supply is running a little short. I can foresee trouble ahead.

Our session this time took us up toe the end of December 1607. Russell distinguished himself in battle on the frontier and was promoted from the ranks to become a Captain. Tim managed to wangle himself a Lt Colonelcy in the Picardy Musketeers by manouvering the incumbent Lt Colonel out on the back of his medal from Carcassone. Lord Mark popped in briefly but was mainly engaged in trying manouvre a wardrobe upstairs to which we gave helpful advice. Privates Roche and Armatys continued to soldier on in their place.

And what of Major du Moulin? Well, I'm still a Major, but I am now a Major in the Crown Prince Cuirassiers, a rather better regiment than the 27th Foot! A move which consumed a large part of my loot from Carcassone. I retain my position as Brigade Major in the 3rd Brigade of Foot. By deft manouvering of various positions, club members and the favour of the King, I managed to advance no less than three social levels in three months. Not bad going. And now I have my eye on a new prize in January, so watch this space....

First however, the King has announced a swordfighting competition with generous cash prizes, so time to practice with the old Rapier.

It is a great fun, very absorbing and makes an enjoyable change of pace from our usual stuff.

Zvezda 1/144th I-16 Rata

 I was a picking up some planes anyway so I thought I'd add to my early war Russian air fleet. Like the Ju 52 I had a vague idea about doing this in SCW colours, but in the end I just did it as a WW2 plane. I don't play enough SCW these days to justify getting 1/144th scale planes for it when I have loads of 6mm ones. 

There it is all finished, waiting to deal with the fascist Hitlerites. I can't believe these old clunkers were still in service in 1942 and even later in some sectors. They have a bit of a Tin Tin feel to them.

Here it is in its raw state. It is a pretty basic kit! It only had a few parts but the nose assembly was unnecessarily complicated. It went together fine though and hardly had any flash. It has lovely fine detail moulded on, perhaps too fine in the case of the MGs, radio mast etc which are so thin it is hard to see them surviving any sort of handling. 

I opted for undercarriage up. It is a bit of a scrappy assembly as I haven't got the wheels flush, but I don't bother much with the undersides in any case. I've only just noticed that there are teeny tiny MG case ejection slits moulded onto the underside of the wings. Blimey.

Although I have my 'Soviet Aces of WW2' as a reference for paint jobs, I did a bit of digging into WW2 Soviet aircraft paint schemes and the modelling consensus now is that the predominant schemes up until mid war for VVs fighters is olive green with black or dark green disruptive No brown at all! Well blow me down with a feather (bombers and assault aircraft are different). Sadly it means my Mig 3s are the wrong colour, but my Lagg 5s in their late war grey/dark grey are fine.

Anyway, it looks rather smart in green and black with the wierd loop pattern on the wings, and it really makes the decals pop.

Just to emphasise how small the I-16 is, here it is next to a Lagg (by no means the worlds largest fighter).

And here it is flying over the dining table on its 'flight stand'. I've moved over to using acrylic cups for all my planes now, they are just so much more stable than flight stands. The only exceptions are my heavy diecast planes which use their heavy duty supplied stands as long as they are stable enough. 

Not sure how much action it is going to see, but it is nice to have one 'just in case'. I'm sure I can work it into a game somehow. 

Tigers at Minsk - training scenario 2

 Training scenario 2 for Tigers at Minsk introduces the basics of infantry combat: Infantry units, MGs, wire and smoke, but no indirect fire weapons (yet). 

For this one we are back to Kursk, and everyones favourite battle, Ponyri Station. The Elephants have rumbled off through the Russian lines, and the German infantry are struggling to follow. Naughty Russian infantry have infiltrated back behind the heavy tank destroyers and the Germans need to break through to support them.

On the German side there are three woods, while there are a couple of orchards (basically open woods), a couple of village hexes and a scrub hex on the Russian side. The Germans have 50 minutes to get one section off the Russian baseline. As before, these are 125m hexes, and each turn is 2D6 minutes long (I really like that game clock!). 

Here are the Germans, they have six rifle sections and an MG section. I've spread the infantry out to stack one per hex as there are fire bonuses against stacked infantry. Infantry get 2D6 fire, MGs get 3D6 but can malfunction if their total score is 15 or more. Hits result in pins, two pins will destroy a unit. Pins can be recovered like stun results on tanks.

I've set the Germans up to go left flanking with a base of fire in the woods (a rifle section and MG). They are close together to stay in command. They also have a Squad Leader style variable smoke capability and are guaranteed to to be able to lay one smokescreen, which I plan to use to get into the orchards on the left. 

Having seen the German deployment, the Russians set up. They have two rifle sections and two MGs. I put a rifle section in the left hand orchard and village, while the other MG goes in the right hand village. There is an awful lot of open ground for the Germans to cover! The Russians also have a section of wire which I put in the left hand orchard to cover their rifle section.

Wire isn't much of an obstacle, with a 1:3 chance of non tracked units getting hung up, but every little helps.

The Russians go first and lay down a withering barrage of fire which pins two German units and destroys a third. Ouch! The German return fire is ineffective but the Germans do manage to lay their smoke screen. To add insult to injury, the two reserve German units go out of command. Not a great start.

Next turn the Russian fire is less effective. One of the pinned Germans recovers and the reserves move forward (into nice big juicy stacks). The German firebase manages to pin the Russian infantry and MG in the left building.  Pinned units can retire to cover but not advance, and only fire with 1D6, so that is helpful. 

Although the Russian fire is weakened, it inflicts two hits on one German hex. The Germans destroy one of the units so they can advance with the other. Two Germans are now in the smoke hex, although one of them is pinned. The isolated Russian MG goes out of command and is pinned, which means it can't recover or remove its opportunity fire marker. The Germans manage to hit the left hand building and the Russians remove the rifle squad. The MG is left pinned and with an opp fire marker.

The Germans continue to advance inexorably up the left flank. The Russians manage to remove the pins on their MGs (it is easier in cover) and the various German units also rally.

In a decisive turn the leading German rifle section is pinned but the Germans manage to rout the Russian infantry in front of them. The Russian morale break level has been reached, but both MG teams pass their morale tests. One of the stacked Germans is pinned too but the spare Russian MG team is now moving left to cover the flank. The German smokescreen also dissipates now (it goes away on a 1 or 2).

The Germans finally unpin just as the firebase goes out of command! They manage to overrun the wire but time runs out before they can exit the board. A Russian win.

I enjoyed the overall feel of that, it reminded me of Squad Leader in lots of ways and felt a lot less plodding and clinical than WRG infantry combat. I need to try the scenario again to see if I can get the balance of fire and movement right - although the Germans did manage to suppress the Russian defences in the end, there wasn't enough time to get off the table as well.

There are probably some changes I'd consider making: I've spent lot of time thinking about obstacles in WW2 games and for wire I'd treat infantry as 'pinned' for firing purposes while they are in it. I'd also probably borrow the Crossfire concept of ground hugging for units in the open and let stationary units claim cover against direct fire.

 It also strikes me that this is the same size table and ground scale Phil Sabin uses for his Battalion level 'Fire and Movement' game so infantry ranges probably need a bit of thought. The effective range for infantry units in WW2 was about 200m, although LMGs and light mortars might stretch it out to 500m, which would be 2 hexes and 4 hexes in this ground scale. Tripod MGs would generally engage out to around 1000m (8 hexes).

I'll hold off for now until I've tried a few more games though, as it plays solidly and is both fun and fast. Hilariously I also failed to roll a single random event in this one, just like the last game.

Dettingen and Blenheim with Dominion of the Musket - a DotS variant

 After playing around with the Johns two player version of Dominion of the Spear,  we got onto what he'd actually wanted to do - a Horse and Musket version of DotS he had worked up. Essentially this is the Ancient set with a more restricted set of troop types, and a couple of tweaks for artillery and terrain. Again, it is designed as an opposed game so used his revised I itiative and reserve management mechanisms. 

We had a bigger turnout this evening, seven players and an umpire, but we each took it turns leading one of the sides accompanied by our 'Greek Chorus' of advisers.

First up was a generic Napoleonic battle. Four red 'missile infantry' and two red melee cavalry, vs two blue melee cavalry, one elite melee infantry, one normal melee infantry, and one melee infantry with attached artillery - which essentially gave it a +1 in combat. These might possibly by British and French.

Tonights innovation was a single use re-roll dice for each side, effectively similar to the 'rally' option in the Pike and Shot set, but the re-roll can apply to any dice roll. 

Jim and Mark took this one on. The British/Scots deployed in quite a Marlburian fashion with cavalry on the wings and infantry mainly in reserve. The French largely mirror imaged it.

As you would expect, the cavalry duly wiped each other out and then it was missile infantry vs melee infantry. If they made contact, the melee types would have an advantage over the missile types, but they had to weather the storm of British musketry first, which inevitably rolled a lot of '6's and shot the French off the the field.

Personally I'd be more inclined to make good quality infantry or those with good skirmishers, 'armoured' so they are more resiliant, not much point of giving them a +1 in attack if they get shot down in the same old way. I like the melee vs missile matchup, this is very like the relative troop ratings in 'Horse, Foot and Guns', however I'd be inclined to downgrade the melee cavalry against all infantry types. In this period, horse really need those flank attacks to be able to take on steady infantry.

That was nice and quick though, and food for thought going on.

Next up was Dettingen, using the 3x4 format. The real battlefield was constrained by a big river (maybe the Danube?) on one side and forested slopes on the other.

The French have two cavalry and four musket infantry. While the British have one cavalry, two regular musket infantry and two elite musket infantry.

The initial setup the French have packed their left flank with cavalry.

The British pull ahead mid game having gunned down a French infantry and cavalry for the loss of one British infantry.

But then the British centre collapses and it was game over soon after with an ahistorical British defeat.

In real life the French snatched defeat from the jaws of victory by advancing over the marshy stream they were defending to attack the British. As the onus of attack was on the British (being cut off), this was an insane manouvre and cost the French the battle.

In this iteration the French have wisely stuck behind their stream, which gives them a defence bonus. 

Hard pounding sees both sides whittled down!

And in the end it is a knife fight with just one unit left on each side, but the British are fortunate and get to go first, breaking the last French unit.

Both of those battles were fun, I think this rules variant works better for linear eighteenth century warfare as it has more in common with Ancients, than Napoleonics do. 

Next up is a bold experiment. Blenheim on a double width map! French at the bottom, Allies at the top. 

This is the historical (and rather unusual) deployment, which arose as both sides had two armies in the field and ended up deploying adjacent to each other. The villages give a defensive bonus.

Really, it is just a massive great slogging match, rather like the real battle. The Allies are burning through their reserves.

Not looking too good for Marlborough. Jerry declared that at this point that he would have retreated, having committed all his reserves, but we played on.

And inevitably the French superiority became more pronounced until the Allies fled.

That also worked quite well, but it has moved away quite a bit from the original DotS concept (although the Dominion rules do suggest options for bigger battlefields). Although it allows you to model the OOB better, it extends the playing time and I'm not convinced it adds much in terms of army level decision making, although if playing it as an opposed game it gives both sides a bit more to do.

Since we played these variants, Dominion of Frederick the Great, Dominion of Marlborough and Dominion of Napoleon have all been published, which cover much the same sort of thing but very sensibly breaks it down into sub periods as the troop type relationships change. I'll have a look at those in due course to see how they treat this period.