Bodged Barn Door

 Courtesy of Tims 'slightly used military equipment' Emporium I became the proud owner of this Pak 43. The Pak 43 was the final development of the 88mm gun into a dedicated anti-tank weapon, and its carriage and mount were so enormous, it was christened the 'Barn Door'. 

Unfortunately I forgot to take a photo of it in its original state, it was still in dark grey undercoat and with a somewhat longer barrel. I gather that originally it was a scratch build and supposed to be 1/76th scale but measuring it up it seemed more like 1/87th - probably the result of whatever was used for the donor gun.

It needed a little bit of light fettling. One of the feet had gone missing and I made a replacement, but the main thing was that the barrel was too long and it had an enormous oversized muzzle brake. I cut the barrel down to 1/100th scale and replaced the muzzle brake with one salvaged from a spare 105mm StuH barrel.

As it is a fairly large gun I tried to use fairly large gunner figures, I had a couple of spare Forged in Battle gunners who are rather 'heroic' in size and I added a spare PSC Russian gunner with his hands over his ears. Painted grey he looked fine alongside the other two. 

It is actually very hard to find photos of the gun in action on the cruciform mount with the shield (there are plenty of the alternate K18 mount with no shield) , but I found a couple of 88mm L71 Waffentrager photos with gun shields and the crew look about the right size.

I just painted it in standard late war three colour camo as that was the most common scheme. I used Desert Ochre as the base this time instead of Desert Sand I  think it looks more like some shades of Dunkelgelb. I didn't bother with a wash but I did give it a drybrush to pick out the highlights. Mercifully the cruciform mount is at roughly 45 degrees to the gun so although it needed a big base, it didn't need a ginormous base.

I real life the towed 88L71 wasn't very successful as it was so heavy to move, and many were simply abandoned on the battlefield after firing a few rounds. Hence the rush to get them onto SP mounts, Nashorns, Jagdpanthers etc. I'm struggling to imagine how it will get used, but I do have one scenario which features them as surprisingly 21st Panzer Div had a whole battalion of these, deployed northwest of Caen on D-Day.

 

Galleys R Us (Part 2)

 Pressing on with my paper galley fleets, and having worked out a basing scheme which seemed to be OK, I went ahead and based up a load more of the ships into roughly a 'green fleet' and a 'red fleet'.

And this is how everything ended up. I'm still not 100% convinced by the light blue bases, but it would be easy enough to paint them dark blue instead. I've got a big bit of the light blue card left which will do for a battle board for 3x3 type games anyway, so I'll leave them as they are for now.

So this is the 'Red Fleet'. I've added small wakes to all the ships using my Posca Paint Pens and added flags, prows and hull sides in a mix of red and yellow, with red being predominant. The yellows are in there for variety and so I can represent allied contingents. I've also labelled them as light (3/4 bank), medium (5/6/7 bank) and heavy (8/9/10 bank). I haven't bothered with individual numerical codes but it would be easy to add them.

There are also a couple of red flags off the original counter sheet, to represent admirals or whatever.

And this is the 'Green Fleet', actually a mix of green and white. Some of these ship counters have corvus (corvii?) printed on them so are presumably supposed to be vaguely Roman. Those 'green' flags look yellow to me!

I made up both sides identically, they have eight bases of light galleys, eight mediums and two heavies, although the specific types vary. Green Fleet tends towards heavier ships (4s instead of 3s, 6s instead of 4s etc). They are all on 40mm x 40mm bases and my original plan was to use them in pairs so I can represent lines and columns and possibly stack them for the wierd circular defensive formation.

These are the odds and sods. The original Red Fleet had loads of the little rowing boat things. I've no idea what they are supposed to be so I based a few of them in groups of three and labelled them as Very Light. There are also six merchantmen/transports which are just medium galleys with unfurled sails drawn on in a variety of colours. I stupidly labelled them as M, which of course is just the same as a Medium galley, so I had to rename them MM. I wish I'd picked T (for transport) instead!

The entire collection fits very neatly into a single business card box, with half a dozen spare counters and plenty of space left over. I've not even used half of the counters I printed off, so I can make up some more bases if I feel the need. I just need to actually play a game with them now, but they weren't an enormous amount of work to put together. 

Hilariously, having completed these, I have become distracted by other projects (I blame you, Bill Farquar), so 'Dominion of the Galley' will have to wait a bit while I fiddle around with WRG 1925-50 and work up Alexander the Brief. 

Sheffield CALF 2025 - One Hour Eylau

 After solo testing my One Hour Napoleonic version of the Eylau scenario in Bloody Big Napoleonic Battles, I thought it deserved a public outing at CALF 2025. It was scheduled late in the afternoon, so I only had four players, but that was fine.  Jerry and Tom took the French, while Chris K and Phil S took the Russians.

View(?) from the east. Apologies for the appalling photos, the light in this room was very poor and even the super camera on my new phone struggled.

Eylau is the town in the depression on the left, with around half the Grande Armee drawn up around it. The Russians under Bennigsen are on the other side of the valley on the right. The rest of the French army is arriving from the east (Davout) and the west (Ney), the latter is pursuing Lestocqs Prussians who are marching to the sound of the guns.

The battle is complicated by frequent snow storms blowing across the battlefield, although all the streams are frozen over. To win, either side must hold the majority of the towns and villages, the Russians currently hold three and the French just Eylau itself, so the onus of attack is on the French.

The Russian left is the obvious spot to attack as it is isolated from the main army, and Davouts Corps comes trudging on to attack it. Just visible on the left is Murats reserve cavalry Corps, also heading for the hill.

Along with attacking on his right, Napoleon, perhaps unwisely also pushes Soult into the valley on the left. The Russians outnumber the French 2:1 in this sector, and it will be quite some time before Ney arrives. Sensing an opportunity, Bennigsen (Phil) begins shuffling units around.

Back in the east, the weather clears, allowing Davout and the French reserve artillery to shoot Murat in, who overruns the Russian redoubts on the hill! This does leave them under a crossfire from the main Russian position, but it is very heroic.  

The Russian reserve cavalry swings around the French left flank, shot in by the Russian divisions on the heights. One Cavalry Corps falls back rather shot up (you can just see the heap of hit markers on it), but the other is neatly across the stream and ready to roll up the French flank.

The French have to fall back towards Eylau, and form a new line facing northwest.

Murats cavalry withdraw to deal with the new threat, leaving Davout to take the village on the hill. It is on the reverse slope so the French infantry can advance under full cover. 

The Russians keep up the pressure on the French left. They engage the French centre and start pushing infantry across the valley. The French line is looking more concentrated now, but their left flank is still hanging in the air. Murat is now in close support of the French infantry.

Davout is now trying to take the village, but villages are tough.

With Eylau firmly held, Soult extends his line back along the ridge line again. There is a major firefight in the centre.

Soults westernmmost units are very exposed and take a hammering from the Russian infantry divisions in the valley. Lestocq has now arrived and marches to join the main Russian army and garrison the right end of their line on the ridge.

The Russians keep pushing hard and gaps appear in the French line. Ney has now appeared, but it is too little, too late. Lestocq is in the village up on the ridge. 

The Russians overrun Soults battered infantry, despite the best efforts of the French cavalry.

View from the west. Ney is trying to take on the Prussians, but the main Russian army is now hard up against Eylau and things aren't looking too good for Napoleon. Davout still hasn't cleared the Russians out of the eastern village, and with the ratio of objectives still very firmly 3:1, we call it a well earned Russian victory.

That was a great game and very different to my solo replay. The Russians were very aggressive and took full advantage of their initial numerical superiority. The weather was also much better than in my solo playtest, and although there was considerable light snow which restricted visibility, there was only one blizzard and even a few clear weather turns, so unlike my solo game, there was plenty of scope for sweeping manouvre. I was probably a bit over cautious as the Russians in my solo game, but I think if I was playing this again, I'd use cards for the weather instead of dice to give an average result as it has such a big  impact on the flow of the game.

I used a very minimal set of the rules for this, stripping out the morale rules completely as they added extra complexity but had very little impact on the game. Units in fact retreated when it was sensible to do so of their own (or player) accord. One thing I did keep was rallying, and the players seemed quite happy to do that. As only half the hits are regained and the rest become permanent, it isn't game breaking, and it gives something for leaders to do if units are in a tight spot.

Another Panzerjaeger 1 and another command bus

 I actually bought two Panzerjaeger 1s from BPM, I did one for DAK which I've already reported on. I wanted the other Panzerjaeger for early war stuff. At the same time I was painting this up, I also painted up a spare (post war) Mercedes Command Bus.

Here are the pair of them conquering the dining table.

Just like the other JgPz 1, this has very visible striations on the hull front despite being resin, although they aren't so visible on this one as the sand coloured one. It may be that the panzer grey hides them more.

As I usually do with panzer grey vehicles, I did loads and loads of mud around the wheels and running gear. Otherwise it was just overall grey and a light drybrush. There isn't much room inside so I just put one crewman in it.

This Mercedes Unimog is courtesy of Tims lightly used vehicle emporium. I guess it is Roco (maybe Roskopf?). It didn't need much doing to it, I just took it off its original base and touched up the paintwork. It already had jazzy white outlines on the mudguards so I highlighted those.

It also had what looks like a custom decal for the rear numberplate, so I left that. Otherwise it was just grey and a drybrush. Lots of raised detail which came out nicely. 

A pair of useful additions to my ever expanding pile of stuff. I've got a scenario already which needs a Panzerjaeger 1, so I'll get that set up at some point. 

Alexander the Brief- playtesting

 In a fit of enthusiam for Dominion of the Spear, I thought it would be an ideal engine for a participation game at a show, specifically to highlight the genius of Alexander the Great by fighting his major battles in quick succession. The players would take on the role of Alexander in each of three battles. Many thanks to Tim for the title! 

I'd originally planned to fight Granicus, Issus, Gaugamela and Hydaspes but after some reflection, thought that might be a bit much for a short session, so in the end I decided to just focus on Alexanders battles against Persian and ignore Hydaspes. 

I spent a fair bit of time looking at existing scenarios for these three engagements, and lightly modified some of the standard DotS orders of battle. The main changes to the standard Macedonian army were to give them one Elite Armoured Pike and one Armoured Hoplite for the first two battles, and then upgrade those to two Elite Armoured Pike for Gaugamela. I kept the standard two cavalry units (one being the elite armoured Companions) also included a fifth unit of Peltasts as the optional suggestion for armies with only four units, which also added an extra Persian unit. 

This gave the Macedonians more of an edge over the standard OB, but generally players need a positive experience with a bit of jeopardy for a decent participation game.

I did custom OBs for the Persians for each battle, and used the deployments in Peter Sides book to lay them out. Granicus featured a cavalry heavy Persian force, with their unfortunate mercenary hoplites tagging along. Issus was lighter on cavalry and included two units of Kardakes and Darius himself, while Gaugamela went back to massed cavalry supported by archers but also Scythed Chariots and the Immortals.

Granicus playtest. Macedonians have their Companions, Thesssalians, one Pike, one Hoplite and some Peltasts. Persians have two cavalry, one horse archer, two foot archers, mercenary hoplites and some random Persian foot. The Persians are deployed as historically, with the first line consisting of cavalry.

The first run through was a disaster! The Companions were routed on their first encounter with the Persian cavalry, and to add insult to injury, the Pikes were routed by the second Persian cavalry unit without loss. After that the Macedonians were rapidly rolled up and it was game over. Oh dear. The odds of that happening  are approximately 1:250, but it does show that Alexander can lose, despite his super powered army.

My plan if that happens during the game is just to commiserate the player and move onto the next battle, having outlined the historical result.

. 

I gave it another run though, once again with the historical Persian deployment, but this time I put the Thessalians in reserve and packed the Macedonian front line with the Pikes, hoplites and the Companians. For activation I'm letting Alexander choose the order of activation (he is Alexander the Great after all), but having all three sectors fight to keep it quick.

This run through went much better for the Macedonians, the mass of Persians (they have seven units) fell like flies, the only Macedonian loss being their hoplites. This picture above was the decisive moment when the Companions found themselves unopposed and conducted an outflanking attack on the mercenary hoplites which routed them, and this then allowed the Pike phalanx to outflank the last Persian archers and wipe them out without loss.

The Persian army was utterly wiped out, and as in real life, the mercenary hoplites had been encircled and destroyed. OK, that is looking good, and at a very opportune moment, Shaun Travers posted some of his ideas about tweaking DotS, including the very sensible idea that melee infantry shouldn't be allowed to mutually annihilate each other. I'll borrow that. I was also pondering how best to treat the Macedonian light infantry, originally I put them in as melee infantry without any bonuses (which makes them more like DBA Auxilia) but actually I think they work better as Light Missile infantry, particularly based on their use at Issus.

Anyway, I did a few more playtests to try out some rules tweaks, scenario balance and most importantly, timings.

Granicus again. For this run through I'm making all melee combat hit on a 4+ basic roll, with the caveat that melee infantry can't mutually annihilate and I'm also treating the Peltasts as missile infantry. Same sort of setup as last time. It was probably not a good idea to put the Macedonian hoplites up against the Persian horse archers...

But they got away with it. Rather a one sided first round, three Persians down to no Macedonians. The Persian archers and infantry are now in the line. Alexander is facing infantry archers, but the Macedonians are armoured.

Another wipeout, the entire Persian front line is destroyed without loss, leaving the mercenary hoplites to be encircled and destroyed at leisure. irl Alexander executed all the ones he captured pour encourage les autres.

Issus, the Persians are more infantry heavy here and have an infantry heavy front line with Kardakes flanked by archer units.  Alex led with infantry to clear away the archers.

The Persian left flank archers were defeated by the Peltasts (historically the Macedonian archers worked their way through the hills on the flank) and more Kardakes filled the gap. The rest of the infantry combat was inconclusive. The archers vs hoplites all missed, and the Kardakes vs Pikes both hit but using the 'no mutual annihilation rule' this became no effect.

The deadlock broke next turn. The Peltasts were defeated by the Kardakes so Alexander moved up on the Macedonian right. In the centre the pikes defeated the Kardakes and the Persians put in one of the cavalry units, while on the right the Macedonian hoplites overcame the archers who were replaced with the mercenaries. This was probably an error and the Persians should have put the mercs in the centre, but Alexander was controlling the battle sequence in each sector.

Armoured elite heavy cavalry against a Persian infantry rabble? No contest, Alex broke the Persian left. Parmenio had defeated the Persian cavalry in the centre first, forcing Darius to commit his last cavalry reserve there. Over on the right the hoplites kept pushing and shoving to no effect.

On the following round this allowed Alexander to outflank the Persian cavalry (2+ to rout), and the potential for Paermenios pikes to outflank the mercenary hoplites (3+ to rout).

And so it came to pass that the Persian line was outflanked and wiped out, leaving Darius no option but to flee.

Finally we have Gaugamela. Alexanders army has upgraded its hoplites to a second pike unit. His heavy infantry were all pretty good by now. The Persians have lots of fun stuff, two units of horse archers and scythed chariots in the front line (which also include around a dozen elephants), in reserve two units of cavalry, infantry archers and an actual unit of Immortals, with Darius himself. In the real battle there were also tens or even hundreds of thousands of other soldiers/camp followers lurking somewhere to the rear, but irl they contributed little so I left them off.

Alex has put the Companions and Peltasts against the Persian horse archers, with a pike block against the scythed chariots.

Disaster! While the Peltasts take out the horse archers, the other archers take down the Companions on a lucky six. the Scythed Chariots break the pikes.... the unfortunate order of combat results means Alex ends up putting the reserve pike block on his left and the Thessalian Cavalry in the centre. Not ideal. The only bright spot is that the Persians have put their cavalry against the Macedonian peltasts.

The Peltasts take down the horsemen, but the Thessalians are routed by the Persians. The Persian cavalry in the centre can make an outflanking attack from there but wont get any bonuses.

Phew! The pikes rout the horse archers and the Peltasts see off the Persian archers. Darius has to commit the Immortals on the Persian right.

Alexanders luck runs out. Parmenios outflanking attack rolls a '1' and the ensuing Persian attacks destroy the Peltasts, leaving the Macedonians with just one unit and defeated. Oh well.

I ran the entire battle sequence through twice and it took around 15 minutes to resolve all three, including the time to shuffle the units around between engagements. Out of a total of 15 individual battles, the Macedonians have lost three battles, so definitely have an advantage which is as it should be. The chat to introduce the game, each phase of the campaign and the battle resolution system added another 10 minutes, so the whole thing should run at under half and hour, which is perfect. We can accommodate single players and also groups who want to play as a team.

I'm fairly happy with the revised rule mechanisms, but I've got a couple more tweaks in mind to improve the narrative, avoid some of the frustrations of extreme dice rolling and speed it up. I also need to try it out with some other humans to get some feedback for improvements, tweak some of the text and sort out the toys and supporting props we will need.

1/144th scale Bristol Blenheims

After mentioning at a recent WW2 desert game that I could do with some more British desert aircraft,  my pal Pete very kindly printed off two Blenheim Mark 1s! I've got loads of desert fighters but I wanted something more appropriate for the bomber role than the European coloured B25s and Beaufort I occasionally press into service alongside my sand coloured B26.   

And here they both are, painted up in two different Mediterranean schemes. They are single piece resin prints so no assembly at all required (unlike the BPM planes which come as two halves and usually with separate engines etc too). They just had a few bits of flash around the wings to clean up but nothing major.

Here they are 'in progress' as I'm adding the topcoats over the grey primer layer. The STLs have very pronounced engraved panel lines, which is fine, but I know some people hate these and spend ages filling them in. Although exaggerated panel lines are popular in some parts of the modelling community, irl they are very fine and hard to see and I prefer a plain aircraft. I just painted over them and I'm not going to make any effort to shade them as they still stand out.  

This one is in a proper desert scheme based on my 'British Aircraft of WW2' and the Airfix Guide to RAF Camouflage. It is Dark Earth with the Dark Green disruptive replaced with Light Stone. I actually found this very hard to paint as I perhaps foolishly did the undercoat as sand, so had to fill in the brown in reverse. For RAF planes I usually do the Dark earth coat first, and it felt very counterintuitive.  

In principle it should have Sky Blue undersides, but the colour plate for this particular squadron showed light grey, so I did the underside grey instead.

You can see where I've got a bit too much Dark Earth in the official scheme, but it isn't hugely noticeable. The decals are mainly my I-94 RAF decals, but I had some Zvezda fuselage markings left so I used those for the squadron markings. 

The moulded panel lines came in very handy for lining up the decals as well as the dividing line between the upper and lower surfaces paint schemes, so perhaps they have some use after all. 

Here they are flying across the dining table. I've largely given up on wire stands as they are just too unstable outside solo play, and have instead adopted these rather useful acrylic cups. I still need to add some magnabase strips to the cups to hold SP markers.

I did the other Blenheim as a squadron based in Palestine (84 Squadron I think?). This had the standard green/brown disruptive but sky blue undersides. I was vaguely tempted to do the 1940 black underside bomber scheme, but that was uncommon in the Mediterranean for these aircraft types. I can use it in France 1940 as well if required as it is green/brown alongside my long suffering Fairey Battle.

I'm very pleased with those, yes they are very much Mark 1s but I'm not overly fussed about using the right versions in the right years. They will work for lots of theatres early war, and later war I've got my RAF B25s/B26s and my recently discovered Mosquito (found alongside the Gladiator I'd completely forgotten about).